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00:02it was a dark cold night when we entered the property together i was scared and it smelt
00:13like death it's literally rotting blackened meat we journeyed up exploring the different rooms
00:25there was pentagram and candles photographs of people satanic artifacts
00:36it felt like i was confronting something that was really evil she was the perfect bogeyman a
00:43witch doctor in the middle of hampstead conning rich people out of a million pounds the whole
00:48story was so weird it beggared billy she said i work with the indigenous in surinam so we can cure
00:56people so she had five or six names initially she was marianne nichols to me i knew her as vanessa
01:04campbell and eventually to us all juliet de souza she was one of the biggest female forces in uk history
01:13we know who this is though she's marian desiree nichols she encouraged people to invest their
01:20savings she and the money vanished she had this incredible eye for spotting vulnerability
01:29and exploiting it faith isolation threat of violence it's a cult
01:39i've always known that there are parts of this story that should be investigated and haven't been
01:45the reality is she could still be out there that for me is unfinished business
02:16i'm from a generation of journalists that went into newspapers because they were inspired by big
02:24stories that made some difference for me journalism comes from doing something that's important to
02:32someone who doesn't have that voice themselves in 2008 when i got the call from the sunday times magazine
02:43the commissioning editor said would you be interested in an unusual story
02:50a journalist career is built out of the unusual because the unusual is is newsworthy
02:56uh but you still don't expect the call to be about shamanism in hamster
03:10hamster was known as a place that had really been a kind of epicenter for the bohemian and it was
03:17a
03:18sort of quintessential village within london so there were a lot of artists who were there and it was
03:24really sort of an old money place but it was also a place where people with money were moving into
03:33in
03:33greater droves by the late 1990s
03:38i think of hamster does a place of gentle liberal intellectuals
03:45so it's not the obvious place to perpetrate a scam and yet it is
03:51because the money is there
03:59take me back to 2008 when this particular story landed on your desk what did you do first i made
04:07contact with keith bender when i met him he was a shell of a man who'd been through an extended
04:16trauma
04:18i wanted to understand how does a successful london osteopath end up at the center of a multi-million
04:29pound faith fraud and so that was the start to hear the story from beginning to end
04:39when i qualified as an osteopath naturopath back at the beginning of the 80s already there was quite a
04:47rising interest in alternative medicine
04:52and it was during the period of the early 90s that i became very very interested in spiritual therapies
05:01in the 90s spiritual beliefs were on the rise certainly within the mainstream within the media
05:10mars planet of victory spins fortunes for aquarius and libra
05:15and sorrow who fitted new lights today the paranormal world of paul mckenna the regression show back
05:22to the present foster the public's passion for magic and mystery the weekly appearance of mystic
05:28meg is a straightforward audience winner everybody was getting in on the act and people were sort of
05:34queuing up to with their yoga mat um uh to to pay for a little bit of spirituality with a
05:40side of health on the side
05:45i was a young buddy noskiopath and my hopes and dreams was just to have a very very successful
05:53practice my wife celia was a heavyweight stage actress which is how in fact i ended up treating
06:00several other actors and actresses keith was a successful professional but his his marriage was in
06:11the difficulties my life was black at home i was losing it in my marriage to celia the wonderful
06:20beautiful incredibly talented actress but uh she had an alcohol problem and it was destroying me
06:27watching her do this to herself and i couldn't do anything you know i loved my family and uh
06:45you know it's just when you see somebody tearing themselves apart it's terrible
06:57then one day celia just suddenly turned to me and said keith i don't love you anymore
07:05i was devastated
07:11the notion of family is extremely strong with keith and commitment is uh you know you don't fail that
07:20you just don't he loved her deeply
07:30keith was working as um an osteopath
07:37that's when marianne nichols makes an entrance into his life
07:44i was at my process one day and there was a knock on the door
07:51there was this patient very well attired um wonderful glossy black silky hair down to her mid back
08:00well she made quite an impact she said well you know can you help me i've got a problem with
08:07my back
08:08she kind of gave me a positive history of what had actually been her early life
08:15she had grown up with brazilian parents high court judges she had an educated accent and a sense of humor
08:31so nice to be in the presence of somebody positive because every time i went home it was negative
08:40then things just went from bad to worse senior just wasn't getting the jobs anymore
08:48we had a very uh large mortgage to handle and our children to support
08:57things were getting very very tough for him
09:01he was about to lose his house and uh he just couldn't cope with everything at the same time
09:08it became just impossible
09:12i'd been treating marianne as a patient for several months and during that period we got to know each
09:19other quite well she became more of a friend the things i told her were quite intimate in many respects
09:29i was in this huge financial black hole and then marianne said to me keith don't worry
09:40i can help you with this
09:47i learned marianne nichols starts off as a very good listener the listening had a purpose
09:56to find all the little bits of a person's life where you can bond so she lent in the money
10:05to pay the
10:06mortgage i mean that was real support nobody else was there and i had no support from anybody else
10:14did you ever wonder where marianne got her money from
10:17i never i never pried into her sort of personal background in that respect but she did tell me
10:26that mr matthew robinson was helping her
10:31matthew came from a very wealthy family basically they created a form of sort of electronics empire
10:39they'd been around together before i'd even known them
10:46so i first met marianne nichols when i worked in london in the summer of
10:53i was going to say summer of 69 but that's the brian adam song isn't it um summer of 89
10:59i was very well spoken she had good taste she would fit in in a millionaire's household
11:25she would fit in anywhere
11:31i came from the countryside ended up in a city living on my own so i was actually quite isolated
11:39at that time i was vulnerable i guess you can almost say getting depressed something was missing
11:48i could talk to her about stuff so she was very good at making me feel valued or listened to
11:58so we struck up a friendship um and hang out um and that got more and more frequent so we
12:08took a
12:09number of holidays i was basically her travel companion
12:14i don't know exactly when it started but i would start to to help her or support her
12:22pay for things she didn't have a bank account so no credit card with the holidays that we took
12:31i would pay for them with my credit card and then she would pay me a lump sum of cash
12:39in an envelope
12:40all very dodgy but never the full amount and so the amount of debt i i guess just just gradually
12:49increased the money she was she got off me was being used to support her lifestyle louis vuitton bags
12:58there are gucci bags five-star hotels she drove a convertible bmw that's very generous
13:05you know well that's one way of putting it very generous or very stupid or um very naive
13:16she had a powerful personality she could convince a lot of people to do anything
13:25i had a little kind of niggle in my neck and marianne knew keith and he's an osteopath and so
13:35i went to
13:35see him he was pretty humble unassuming and a nice guy
13:44through marianne i heard about keith's issues she got me to help him out financially
13:53i liked helping people out and keith just seemed very very genuine very deserving
14:02it was a very hard time i was going through a very very traumatic divorce at the time
14:12i left celia with the children and the house i walked away with nothing i was deeply profoundly
14:21depressed i desperately wanted things to change
14:26so when marianne said i can help you again i was ready she told me an extraordinary secret
14:38marianne told me she was a shaman
14:42she said she could help people with all sorts of problems whether it be personal or health
14:49and uh i was just fascinated i said well you know what does my spirit look like
14:59marianne said to me it's it's very it's very dark and rather sort of sad and i said gosh you
15:07know can
15:07we can we give it back a bit of light you have to imagine a man who's had a lot
15:15of darkness in his
15:16personal life who has an openness to the idea that a a shaman or someone with spiritual connections
15:28to shamans could help you would feel so an angel that come out of the sky
15:38the eerie sounds of men and sometimes women entering a trance-like state in an attempt to
15:45contact the spirit world they're shamans a special cast of people claiming to be able to reach the
15:53spirits communicate with them and return to their senses to heal the sick
15:59they've been found wherever there have been hunter-gatherer societies i got a call from marianne
16:08and she said keith would you be interested in coming to surinam surinam is in south america it's 4 400
16:17miles from hampstead it's a small country where on the fringes you will find shamans
16:34when we arrive this is almost like stepping into an oven we were picked up by marianne's personal
16:41driver it was myself it was marianne and most importantly papa freddie her shaman
16:51and he was a lovely chap he was very gentle very calm and we were going to travel to his
16:59personal
16:59place in the jungle
17:09i was told by marianne these waters have healing properties
17:18i thought wow this is beautiful
17:39in the meantime
17:41in the meantime suddenly i was aware of papa freddie doing a spiritual cleansing for marianne
17:49restoring the spiritual energy to the body
17:56because in the end your well-being depends really on your sort of inner spiritual energy
18:02so if there was something wrong with you they would correct it in terms of sort of helping your spirit
18:11we moved on and we actually met with another shaman me assured us into a very very
18:19rough little hut i mean it was rather like a garden shed actually afterwards i discovered certain
18:27shamanic rituals that will use some sort of form of alcohol it must be to sort of stoke up the
18:33spirit
18:35okay i took a drink of this stuff
18:38it really blew my head off so that made quite an impact on me at the time
19:00so that made quite an impact on me at the time when i had arrived back from suriname
19:03i felt so refreshed it was great
19:08on this trip marianne opened up my uh mind to the possibilities of shamanism
19:15he believed shamanic healing is something that perhaps he could benefit from his openness to the idea
19:23went from abstract to real and so why wouldn't you believe what you saw with your own eyes
19:31in the jungle so many thousands of miles from from london
19:51sylvia was a professional singer for many many years
19:56and when she retired she became a professional singing teacher
20:02my aunt was the kindest person you'd ever meet
20:12sylvia was my first london singing teacher
20:19just a
20:21a truly magnificent person
20:24when i met sylvia her husband tony had already died
20:30and to cope with that she needed support from her friends
20:36she was so trusting and so generous to a full
20:42whatever disposable income she had she enjoyed spending that on her friends
20:49going out to dinners going to the theater friends were everything to her
21:07sylvia and i were on the lower climes of hamstead uh not as affluent as the upper climes
21:16but a lot of bonding between neighbors so it was a great place to be just very much a community
21:26keith bender was part of us in that way he was a very society osteopath if you got a back
21:34problem
21:35you needed keith bender
21:41and sylvia had amazing confidence in him he knew every bone in her body
21:50sylvia was always crooking her back for whatever reason and i had always put it straight she was a
21:56delightful lady uh in her 70s at the time she always had a smile on her face and she loved
22:05animals and
22:06she had a couple of cats
22:10i could never have imagined the path that i would have to walk with sylvia
22:19i feel the sadness she had to suffer this whole fantastical story started with keith bender
22:33marianne said to me just out of the blue keith um you've got a little problem
22:40papa freddy sees that you're going to end up with cancer
22:48cancer is so highly emotive i've got a couple of kids and uh you know it'd be a disaster to
22:55lose both
22:55their parents you know one with alcoholism and the other one cancer
23:03oh i was scared i was really scared that day
23:11he didn't stop to think should i see a doctor should i tell my gp should i get a scan
23:21he had faith he had absolute faith in that he was being told the truth
23:26i truly believed that pepper freddy could see into the future so i said to marian what can we do
23:34about
23:35this well keith uh if you want to be helped you've got to show the spirits that you really want
23:44to do this
23:46often it will be the shaman's purpose to recapture that part of your spirit that has sort of left you
23:56almost uh in a way to protect you against very very serious health issues
24:03and that commitment requires the picture of you
24:10and also a sacrifice which is a sum of monies
24:22the monies will be sent over to papa freddy in suriname in a sealed envelope
24:29it'll be put on a sacred tree in the jungle
24:40so he will then engage his spiritual helpers to restore my shattered spirit
24:49and when my healing is finished no problem money comes back
24:54so he's going to have to find 20 000 pounds
25:10so i'm going to find 20 000 i haven't got a penny to my name at the moment
25:23i was in sylvia's flat one day and she'd left it on the side on the piano
25:34and it was a this iou and it was like goodness
25:42the iou was from keith bender to sylvia
25:50i didn't know that sylvia had a friendship with the chap that would lead her to trust him
25:56to lend him 25 000 pounds at least
26:02and the day that uh silver eaves said yes and that she was going to give me this loan i
26:08felt like i'd won the jackpot
26:10it was fantastic
26:14so i just said look uh you know all i can tell you is that you know absolutely without fail
26:20your monies
26:21will be returned to you the return of the monies thing reinforced the whole notion
26:28that marianne was truly kosher and i immediately rang marianne up and said marianna you know i've
26:35got it we can do it he borrowed the money from the patient that is a terrible breach of professional
26:44boundaries keith has borrowed from a patient how does it go from that to many hampstead residents
26:53being drawn in to a large-scale fraud
26:58i was very very happy because i felt at least then you know i had started my healing in a
27:05fairly major way i thought yeah you know i'm gonna get better marianne gave me some of her cards and
27:13she
27:13was saying you must lose loads and loads and loads of people you could uh possibly uh send one or
27:20two
27:20people to me i suppose she saw this as a a new venture
27:26what experience of shamanism would most people in north london have they're very limited
27:33so she's the gateway to something that's not known or understood by most londoners
27:41i was very excited at the prospect of marianne and the shamans being able to help so many people
27:54very first couple that i introduced to marianne was an australian couple because they told me oh we've
28:02got a friend who's uh suicidal we don't know what to do with her and they agreed to pay a
28:1010 000
28:11pound sacrifice i had a number of other people who were interested a wonderful photographer said to
28:19me could i meet the woman and i said well there you go there's the card ruth i've got problems
28:25with my
28:26eyes she paid something like 169 000. richard's a very gentle man he was about to lose his property
28:35uh jeff was very afraid of losing his job he paid 200 000 virtually as for what marianne did for
28:44them
28:44i can't tell me because this is a personal private matter i think people do lose touch with reality
28:52when they're very vulnerable and they don't have their usual strength of judgment
28:59i ended up seeing a therapist for quite a few months it didn't really kind of unearth a huge
29:05amount i was still not happy in my sort of spirit as it were so i may have you know
29:13bought into the
29:14whole sacrifice thing myself so it might have been three but three or five thousand pounds but um
29:20if someone offers a little bit of hope then you'll grab it
29:40my mother margaret has suffered her whole life with crones
29:43and she ended up totally debilitated and in need of 24-hour care
29:51sylvia and margaret were totally in each other's lives they absolutely adored each other
29:59sylvia reeves came to me at one time i could see she was kind of quite worried and upset about
30:05something i said oh um i'm really worried about my sister margaret she's not very well and i i don't
30:13know what to do i said maybe marianne could help your sister and so that was how
30:20sylvia actually personally met marianne
30:29keith did a beautiful job of advertising her services because he believed in them
30:36he introduced people to the web
30:41there are plenty of other people who i didn't know about who paid major major sacrifices
30:49so it was in a cafe in hamster
30:55and it was with a group of friends including silver eads and there was this lady sitting there
31:05she was a attractive presentable articulate woman quite businesslike we were just talking she looked
31:15for an opportunity at every turn
31:20and i suppose she possibly worked out that i had some money i remember she said
31:26um i work with the indigenous she always used to call them the indigenous
31:35in surinam and i thought that was pretty weird but hey you know didn't want to seem rude
31:44i remember at some point she was she said yes and we can cure people
31:51it's all about bob
31:57i first met bob when we were both working in a law firm in cambridge shortly after i'd qualified as
32:05a
32:05lawyer and we stayed friends even after i left the firm he didn't really fit the bill the normal
32:13sort of bill of a legal executive he was a bit of a wide boy um sort of used car
32:20salesman type but absolutely lovely
32:27i remember when he got the diagnosis of esophageal cancer
32:33and the chances of survival are um fairly slim
32:39you do wonder when a friend falls ill what you can do to help when all conventional treatments have failed
32:51so i contacted this woman
32:56she said that she could cure him
33:00there was a part of me that wanted to believe it
33:04i think we've probably all done this
33:08you'll always say a quiet prayer to god even though i don't believe in god
33:13but you hedge your bets
33:18at the time bob seemed to be short of money
33:22i'd gone to the bank i'd drawn out cash i'd put it in an envelope a few days later i
33:27met her in a bar in
33:29a kensington hotel and handed over 2 000 pounds in cash to bob was skeptical
33:39but nonetheless he went along with it because
33:42he was dying
33:45and he was drinking in the last chance saloon from his point of view
33:51so why wouldn't he have given it a go
34:01mariam genuinely cared so much uh that it was you know sort of warmed your heart
34:07so i thought if i could help in any way i would and i did
34:11i thought how great to have a partnership in health
34:18keith bender did the nuts and bolts of running a shamanic enterprise in hampstead
34:25the errands could involve driving people to banks so they could get the cash that was needed for a
34:34sacrifice and also collecting sacrifices
34:42he got in very deep to something that he believed it was real
35:00marianne very much depended on me
35:02i would be the one fronting up paying for the flights paying for accommodation uh the holidays
35:09and i didn't enjoy it so much of my time and energy was put into supporting someone else's life
35:18how much money do you think you gave marianne in total um i'm not going to say
35:28um it's it's a large amount um it doesn't need to be shared with anyone else you just feel embarrassed
35:36and you don't want to be judged i was getting to the point where i did not have any money
35:42left
35:47i was just questioning things and thinking what do i want out of my own life
35:52i ended up on a dance holiday in barcelona where i met deb
36:09don't know why i'm getting emotional now well yeah the woman i fell in love with
36:14she just took me as i am um there was no judgment and you know i said i wanted to
36:22leave the uk
36:25being away being in another culture away from marianne loved it absolutely loved it it was a big
36:33you know wake up call for nearly 10 years there was a cloud in my head affecting my judgment it
36:42then
36:42shone a light on just how under her spell i was arianne was not just a friend asking for money
36:52this
36:52this was really this is really bad this is not good i said this is it i'm not doing this
36:59anymore
37:04because i wasn't around to do all her dirty work she had got keith to help and of course he
37:10got sucked in
37:11and into that crazy uh chaos
37:21it was a lovely hot summer's day and i was feeling a bit parched and i just thought oh
37:26i think i'll just have a quick half and i hadn't been to the pub five minutes and my first
37:34cell phone
37:34rang marianne said i've just had a call from papa freddy and he's seen you going into this place
37:44what are you doing get out of there you do not go into anywhere where there's negativity
37:52and any kind of drinking house was a negative place i respect the shamans for who they are and what
37:59they do i wasn't about to challenge a shaman who has this kind of capacity to see
38:07i felt i was under a form of spiritual surveillance all the time
38:16and seriously i mean it don't uh putting it basically around with a shaman
38:24if i don't behave myself um she'll just abandon me and i'll be i'll be a dead man
38:33keith can't have a half pint in the sun uh without the threat of cancer being held over his head
38:42the control is tightening
38:48marianne had control over every aspect of my life she was controlling my food intake all the
38:55time you know i had to eat the right things
38:59she told me that uh my healing requires complete and total uh secrecy
39:07i remember you know several times when i thought oh god you know if only i could just uh talk
39:13to
39:13somebody but uh against the rules
39:19that's why whenever i was asked by her for anything i always felt it was terribly important to
39:27uh do whatever she asked for my potential cancer part of the uh decree was that i had to remove
39:35myself from
39:36literally everybody and this is how it was in the end that i stopped seeing my children i stopped seeing
39:44my parents as well at the same time
39:46him he probably didn't do anything significant that he thought might displease her or displease the spirits
39:59i think there was a residual fear of what power those forces might have you feel bewilderment that this
40:10can happen to someone it sounds so implausible because you know here is a person
40:15of professional standing they appear to have agency um over their own life except they don't
40:30we were doing a renovation of four flats on willoughby road in hampstead
40:38and uh went up the stairs and uh there was this woman there that was introduced herself as vanessa
40:49she sort of volunteered herself as someone that had studied at oxford she alluded to being a barrister
40:58very establishment her aura was yeah extreme confidence
41:06she almost put me on the back foot what are you doing here and what's what's going on
41:11she was sniffing out opportunities um it was that was clear and i shared the vision for the uh for
41:20the property she said oh well that's um it's interesting because i've got friends that are looking for
41:26for flats and uh i can introduce you we quickly after that went to lunch
41:34vanessa basically introduced me to the prospective tenant i liked him he was
41:42odd quirky he subsequently signed on the tenancy agreements
41:51the landlord knew her as vanessa campbell but it's not her real name she had five or six names that
42:01she
42:01went under at different stages she was vanessa campbell she'd been marianne nickels
42:10and eventually to us all juliet de souza
42:26willoughby road here we go
42:31here we go might as well park here yep there's the house still standing
42:39marianne was actually the tenant in there initially she had taken two of the flats and as the other
42:47tenants decided to move away she took them over as well my name was on the leases of these four
42:56flats
42:57because she had very poor credit history and so it was impossible for her to actually get a hold of
43:04these places and so at the end of the month marianne was giving me the cash to pay the rent
43:15in 2006 marianne had to depart for surinam
43:20her trips usually blasted a maximum of about three to four weeks but she didn't come back
43:28this was the moment that my life changed
43:35there had been consistency in payment for years and then all of a sudden there was a lapse in one
43:45payment and then another keith was paying the rent he'd signed the lease and i was meeting with keith
43:55so what's the problem i had not heard from marianne i had no contact number for her whatsoever so i
44:04always had to wait for her to call hence there was no money to give the landlord i've got to
44:11pay three
44:11months rent here it's 24 000 i mean i haven't got atp on me never mind 24 000 quid
44:20how could marianne do this to me you know if i couldn't pay the rent i think
44:27the landlord would have just basically had me arrested
44:31i mean at this point i i i i don't know where to put myself i had to break it
44:37to the landlord
44:39i discovered that he was fronting for vanessa she was paying the rent through keith
44:48i said enough's enough you can't pay me you're in breach of your lease
44:53what what's going on i need to inspect the property keith was reluctant to open up the property
45:05because he said you would be cursed marianne was absolutely adamant that if anybody stepped inside
45:13her property they're going to get it you know we're all going to be hurt badly action needed to be
45:19taken
45:24it was a windswept dark cold night we entered the property together okay this is daunting i was
45:36scared what was so important inside these flats nobody was ever allowed to ever step first into
45:45it appeared that she must have been living in one flat and doing things in another flat
45:51it wasn't being used as a home but more like multiple storage it was almost like a sort of form
46:01of aladdin's
46:02cave
46:06and there was sort of a pungent smell where something has rotted and sort of it was everywhere
46:18it smelled like death
46:22there were a number of fridge freezers
46:26i mean i counted nine fridge freezers
46:32i opened one and it's packed with rotting blackened meat
46:39you know what the hell what's going on here you know why has she got
46:45all of this food
46:48as we went further up into the property
46:54mirrors were turned against the wall
46:59one room had the sort of pentagram and candles satanic artifacts
47:05it was another room with photographs of people
47:11it felt like i was confronting something that was really evil
47:19it went further up there was a room that was just full of chanel bags and boxes of big brands
47:30that
47:30had been sort of discarded i mean almost the whole volume of the room is taken up with products that
47:37she's just been buying over the years so you could see where she'd been phoenix
47:42louis vuitton harrods she hadn't even entered some of these things
47:49i mean i'm talking about hundreds of boxes here
47:54i didn't know how she was able to sustain such an extraordinary existence
48:02all four floors was just a mass of boxes and so we started going through everything that was in the
48:12place then i saw something that shocked me terribly
48:17i found several of the envelopes that were required for the sacrifices
48:26i saw the names of several clients that i had personally sent to marianne
48:35these envelopes were literally just been torn open to get the money out
48:41they never went anywhere everything uh that was in those envelopes had gone
48:46into her pockets and she had spent it as she pleased everything she told me was a complete
48:52and total lie a complete and total fabrication by giving her people that i loved and she was meant
48:59to be helping them and what was she doing she was to me it was like taking blood money
49:05you know i felt completely totally betrayed by this woman
49:14all right we chopped these all up it'd be rather nice actually we met up after i don't know how
49:21many years
49:23he lost confidence in himself and his judgment
49:29when i first heard about the whole story i thought i mean how on earth could this happen to you
49:42and bit by bit you start understanding she also had intelligence
49:47intelligence she had wit she had charm she has talent huge talent you know but she was bad
49:58it was many of my own clients who were the victims
50:09people who've lost their entire life savings they're bankrupt
50:15yeah i was blaming myself how could i not see what was happening in front of me
50:23i had to ring quite a number of the victims and there were plenty of them
50:30we then decided collectively to go to the holborn police station
50:42they tried several times to get police involvement that went nowhere
50:48why in your opinion might the police not have taken keith and the other victims seriously when they
50:53first reported what happened if you've given money to someone to protect your spouse from cancer and
51:02the thing hasn't been performed that's in a way is a breach of contract it's a civil
51:06failing not a criminal one and that was the the issue that the police took
51:26so
51:26some of them have got codes on the ones with codes i know what's in them
51:36this is it
51:39i've been entrusted these tapes for safe keeping
51:47Generally, newspapers get to know about injustice when officials or police or whoever the authorities are have failed to act.
51:58When nothing happened, that's when they thought about the Sunday Times.
52:08The thing is, Tim, shamanism is all about the use of invoking spirit.
52:14Basically, if I didn't get the sacrifice, I'm going to die of colon cancer.
52:20It was a very painful story and we spent 19 hours talking.
52:29Keith had been drawn into madness and lived through something that's just inexplicable.
52:41You start with the presumption that someone in a raw state is telling you the truth, but you want the
52:51evidence that supports this unlikely-sounding tale.
52:57I was put in touch with the wider circle of victims I hadn't yet met, perhaps 12 or 15.
53:05And the stories that they told me were very similar.
53:10Apart from having an openness to spiritual possibility, there was nothing that linked these people.
53:17Except they had money.
53:20They fell victim to a very sophisticated, practiced process.
53:28Starting with a small amount for a consultation, a request for a family photograph.
53:37Then finding something wrong, or something in the future that would go wrong, and asking for money to fix it.
53:46I saw the residual fear of these supposed spirits.
53:54I saw the people I was talking to.
53:59Various people did start to get sort of drawn in.
54:03We need to go and see Sylvia because it's a terrible story.
54:08I went to see Sylvia Reeves, an elderly lady, successful professional, whose sister had been very ill.
54:21I went to see Sylvia.
54:21D'Souza took from her, I think it was £272,000.
54:28In the hope that this money would serve to keep her sister alive.
54:40Sylvia became quite frugal in her lifestyle.
54:44She wasn't eating.
54:46She was definitely losing weight.
54:48But more than anything else, she seemed emotionally fragile.
54:53It was pretty scary.
54:55She just wondered, what's going on here?
55:02This is where she actually told me about how much she was paying out to D'Souza.
55:09And so when she started to talk about it, I could see the horror of it.
55:13And I said, just sit down for a minute.
55:15We sat together here.
55:18And sitting here with her.
55:26Um...
55:42Just finding out what it cost her.
55:46It was just a horrible moment.
55:53That's the bench where I realised the pain
55:57and the loss of your experience.
56:00Yep.
56:04There were other victims.
56:06One woman who wouldn't talk to me
56:09had lost £730,000.
56:12A couple invested £42,000
56:16for their son with Down syndrome.
56:20There was a married couple who,
56:22between them, gave £364,000.
56:25These are life-ruining sums of money.
56:33At the time, I thought she might be
56:37the biggest female fraudster in UK
56:42history, Keith, the circle of victims, and I,
56:50we thought that we could add it up to
56:53between £3 and £7 million.
56:57The true scale, I can't tell you,
57:02because she might have had
57:04other networks of victims.
57:14I'd love to have an insight into what was going on in her head
57:19as people's lives disintegrated.
57:23Did she think she was helping them?
57:25Did she see herself as a healer?
57:27Did she genuinely believe
57:31that she was helping?
57:33I don't think so,
57:34but I don't know.
57:40I had to find her.
57:42I wanted to sit down with her.
57:44I wanted to put the allegations,
57:45but I also wanted to understand her.
57:49I had to go to Suriname
57:51to talk to D'Souza.
58:00When I told the fixer
58:01why we were in Suriname,
58:03the colour drained from his face.
58:07Juliet D'Souza was the most dangerous person
58:09I ever dealt with.
58:11I was just scared of her being out there.
58:14I have no doubt
58:15that there are many, many more victims.
58:18She's almost like a huntress
58:19where she's hunting for the next con.
58:22I've always known
58:23that there are parts of this story
58:24that should be investigated
58:26and haven't been.
58:33Behind the headline grabbing topics
58:36like reality show success
58:37and weight loss jabs,
58:39what happens when?
58:40Watch now on iPlayer.
58:42Next tonight on BBC Two Wales,
58:44our music night dedicated to Amy Winehouse
58:46begins with the movie Back to Black.
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