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Swindlers - Season 1 - Episode 01: The Julia Holmes Story
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00:00Em, let's start at the beginning.
00:03What do you remember of Julia coming into your life?
00:09I remember people calling her by different names as a child.
00:13Probably all of us have a little sense of the dark triad in us for certain things.
00:17We just don't go as far as Julia did.
00:19She wanted hugs, she wanted to be told that we loved her.
00:22There was no way she was getting the kids, and that's all she wanted.
00:26Julia Parrish, Crone Ruttle.
00:28He had invested $392,000.
00:32I think she was compelled to con.
00:35She had pretty much swundled half the businesses in this town.
00:39Yeah, but what if I'm wrong?
00:40Because apparently she's dying of cancer.
00:43There was no feeling, no emotion in her eyes, she would just...
00:46You're looking there for a second, saying, right, he shot her, he shot himself.
00:50Evil is what you call her, just pure evil.
00:54What did you know about her past life?
00:57That she told me or that I found out?
01:00That she told you.
01:00Okay, this is fun.
01:02You ready?
01:03Buckle up.
01:03Yeah, thank you so much.
01:33I would have sent home.
01:38On the 18th of May 2015, a gang of thieves who broke into this house in Bula Glass in
01:44Askeaton to steal scrap metal made a grim discovery.
01:50You know, burglars finding two dead bodies, reporting it to us before our knowledge.
01:56Could we have predicted who this woman would become in our investigation?
02:02There was names coming at us, different first name, different second name.
02:07Julia appeared to be the common trend.
02:09Put this lady's name into a search engine and put guns.
02:13This lady was infamous.
02:17She was wanted by the PSNI for fraud offences.
02:20She had been convicted in the United States.
02:23She certainly burned a lot of people.
02:26Who is this woman?
02:28We had to identify what kind of footprint, and it was a big footprint that this lady left.
02:45For Cecilia Julie McKittrick, life begins in the small rural town of Castledarg.
02:51Born in 1952, there's very little known about her early years.
02:55What is established, though, is that when she's 19, she marries a British soldier.
03:00She has a son with him, and then when he's six months old, she leaves.
03:05I guess the biggest date, sort of the beginning of this whole journey, was the abandonment of her son in
03:101972.
03:12And then we jump forward 11 years to 1983, and she's in our mad jail, the women's prison.
03:18We think she was in there because of some issue over missing television sets.
03:23Not a pleasant place to be.
03:24You go forward another year, she's then moving her mind into America.
03:30But instead of going to America illegally and, you know, getting a visa, you know, getting the tickets, getting everything
03:35done properly,
03:36she goes into Canada, and then she skips into America, and she does that illegally.
03:43You embody the goals that guide the Republican Party, and you represent the future, a future of opportunity.
03:51Now is the time to become active.
03:54Do you remember how they met?
03:55Yes, they met through mutual friends at a party.
03:59Our parents had recently divorced in 1984, and we went from our parents being divorced to this woman with us
04:06everywhere we went.
04:09She did this thing where she would be very relatable to you.
04:12You know, I have a dog.
04:13Oh, I have a dog too, you know.
04:15And I went here.
04:16Oh, I went there too.
04:17Isn't it lovely?
04:18And even if it was total farce, she was definitely trying to relate to you in some way.
04:23And she wanted to insert herself in every aspect of your life.
04:30I don't believe that my dad ever saw his parents without her after they met.
04:35Can you see why your father fell in love with her?
04:38Yeah, she was charming.
04:40She was sweet.
04:41We went from my dad being our caretaker when we were at his home to Julia being our caretaker, and
04:47that happened overnight.
04:49It happened in the blink of an eye, and there was no transition to that.
04:52She just was so keen on inserting herself into our lives.
04:56And I think my dad was like, this is great.
04:59It's a built-in mom.
05:01She marries this guy, poor Clyde Parrish, not telling anybody that she's already married and has never divorced.
05:08So that's a big a mismarriage.
05:10That's a pretty big crime in most states.
05:19My memories of Julia.
05:22I first met Julie in March 2011.
05:29Dad said he had split up with his then-girlfriend, who had actually a really grunt-like.
05:35She just kind of came out of nowhere.
05:39His mother told him basically everything to do, and I think that's what he saw in her.
05:48He was very kind, very shy.
05:50He wouldn't be the one to put himself forward, but genuine.
05:54You know, if he said something, he meant it.
05:56You know, there was no bull with him.
05:57He was a lovely guy.
05:59Lovely guy.
05:59Sure, I was with him.
06:00He was lovely.
06:04Tom actually said he met online, dating app, yeah.
06:08She saw him coming.
06:10You know, a man with two children, having him every second weekend.
06:14Oh, this is lovely.
06:15I can go and hide in that lovely little family group.
06:19She was kind of running his life, I would say, at that time.
06:23And that was only the first time I met him.
06:27When we met her, she had constantly asked us, do we love her?
06:31And we were kind of, I was 14 at the time, so.
06:37Maybe it was the first weekend that Ian came back, and he said to me that she keeps asking
06:44me, Mum, do I love her?
06:46And she wanted hugs and everything, and Ian just said, sure, I don't know her, Mum.
06:51I kind of felt guilty that I didn't love her, but this is probably the second time that
06:56I met her, so she wanted this family image.
06:59I don't understand, really, what it was about.
07:091972, her son is born, and she leaves him.
07:12She's in County Down by this stage, and he's six months old.
07:15He's left to be raised by his paternal grandparents.
07:19Not much is known then about her early life, generally.
07:21Very little.
07:22You wonder when the liar in her starts.
07:25Did you talk about her son?
07:27Paul died at 13 from leukaemia.
07:31I was sorry I knocked the door, because the look on his face has never left me.
07:37It was shocking to me when I found Paul alive and doing very well.
07:41My heart broke for him, because he said,
07:45I don't want anybody to think I have anything to do with her.
07:48She left that child to become a professional fraudster.
07:53Dodged a great big bullet by her leaving.
07:55It was probably the best thing that could have happened to him, was her leaving him.
08:03It started in Houston.
08:05You know, she was going by Julia Holmes, Dr. Holmes, because, did you know, did you guys know that she
08:10said she was a psychiatrist with a medical degree?
08:13Then it turned into a PhD, so I don't really know which one.
08:19The reason it's so ingrained in my brain was that she was actually seeing a little boy who was around
08:24my age and claiming to be a child psychiatrist.
08:28She had a framed diploma.
08:30She saw patients.
08:31She took money for those services, and she provided counseling.
08:35It was a very strange thing.
08:36It was a very brazen thing to do.
08:41The adults were so charmed by her, and they were enamored by her.
08:44She was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to them.
08:46And the kids, we weren't so much.
08:49One little mistake and one little error, she would hit us hard.
08:54It was very cunning, because she wouldn't do it in front of other adults.
08:57We would say, well, she just hit me.
09:00She would say, oh, no, no, no.
09:02They're just saying that.
09:02And she would spin it as, they don't like me because I'm the stepmother, and they're trying to push us
09:08apart.
09:09And as an adult, that sounds very reasonable, because she's a child psychiatrist.
09:13Don't you know?
09:17I think there was never a time until I was a teenager that I was with her that she wasn't
09:21hitting me.
09:24My dad worked and always has worked very, very hard.
09:27He's an incredible work ethic.
09:29He had a place on Corfe, and then I'm sure that the lease that he had on that place, she
09:34probably messed that up in some way.
09:36And then he had to run his shop out of our garage.
09:38It was the first sign of, well, that's a big shift.
09:42And within a year of her coming on board, he's now in a garage.
09:51Julia had made a rule that we were not to see my dad's parents anymore.
09:57I guess at some point, they've realized that something's a little off.
10:01Creditors calling things that way.
10:03I remember it like it was yesterday.
10:04We had gone to my dad's, and it was a Saturday.
10:07I was sitting behind my dad's, so she whipped around, and she said to me,
10:12you've been seeing your pa and granny.
10:15We told you if you saw your pa and granny anymore, you would no longer see your dad and I.
10:20And at this point, my sister's crying.
10:22I'm crying.
10:23The entire way there, she berated us, called us liars, called us everything you could think of to a small
10:30child.
10:31I don't know what my dad was thinking.
10:32I don't remember him saying anything the entire time.
10:35When we arrived back at my mother's home, Julia lunged at my mother and physically attacked her in our driveway.
10:44Very soon after that, very, very soon, they left.
10:47Looking back, I know now she had run up bits and picking a fight with me and having that reason
10:52to leave.
10:53That was just the beginning of, we have to get out of here.
10:55Oh, look at your daughters.
10:56They're so hateful.
10:57They don't even appreciate that you're here.
10:59So I've always thought she always had an idea of where she wanted to go next.
11:02And I've always felt like she had sort of pre-planned it.
11:22There was a jewelry store located next to their print shop.
11:25And it was so crazy.
11:27She somehow convinced them to allow her to borrow jewelry.
11:31And then she would go back and tell them, I never borrowed that jewelry before.
11:35I'd spoken to the jeweler and they said, oh, yes, she stole all of that from us.
11:52So there's this trail of crime that they're leaving behind, but she's never been convicted yet.
12:00It boggled my mind that she could continue to.
12:03And it probably was the reason that gave her so much confidence.
12:12At the end of March 2011, I remember getting a phone call and I answered it.
12:16It was Tom and he was just, he was very different.
12:19He was very cocky, very sure of himself.
12:22And right away I went, something going on here.
12:24I don't know what it is, but I know there's something going on here.
12:28So she came on the phone then and she ate the face off me and told me, I wasn't fit
12:34to be a mother.
12:35You've met your match and all this kind of stuff.
12:38And I went, oh my God, I don't know what is going on here.
12:41My world just tumbled down right in front of me.
12:46What was the impression of the woman shouting down the phone at you?
12:49She's crazy.
12:50She's absolutely crazy.
12:52She started telling me that they had been in a relationship before.
12:55And I knew this was all lies.
12:58Lies, lies, lies, everything.
13:00Tom had only met her for three weeks.
13:02A couple of days later, when Ian got his new card,
13:06he accepted her request, you know, to be friends.
13:10And she had put up a post about,
13:12I've met a fantastic man and I'm really in love with him.
13:16And in the package is two lovely boys.
13:22In my head, I just saw red.
13:23That's it.
13:24I know what she's after.
13:25There was no way she was getting the kids.
13:27And that's all she wanted.
13:33I believe by the time they got to Arizona,
13:37she was no longer a doctor.
13:38So, but yeah, I remember her having all these different names.
13:42And I remember people calling her by different names as a child.
13:45Someone would call her Jay.
13:46And she had a big story when they lived in New Mexico
13:48that she could not be known to be a female business owner.
13:52So she had to change her name to Jay.
13:54J-A-Y.
13:55So the woman we got to know as Julia started life as Cecilia Julia McKittrick.
14:01But she had dozens of names throughout her criminal enterprises.
14:05Elizabeth Holmes, Parrish Watson.
14:08Jay Holmes, Jay Parrish.
14:10Julia O'Neill, Julia Hunter, Julia Greer, Julie Ruttle,
14:14Julia Ruttle, Jules Ruttle, Julianne Ruttle.
14:17Julia Parrish, Crone Ruttle.
14:20I think Julia Greer or Julie Greer.
14:23Silver Light Ruttle posing as a high priestess witch on Facebook.
14:27And she was also white wolf quiet spirit.
14:30And she posed then as a shaman on Facebook as well.
14:32And people responded to her.
14:33She started saying that her name was Bonnie Parrish
14:36so that she could say that she and my dad were Bonnie and Clyde.
14:40I think she would frequently use a different name and then have to backtrack
14:45and then try to gaslight you into believing that she never said that.
14:48She never said her name was PJ.
14:50Why would you make that up, Morris?
14:52Why would you do that?
14:53You're fibbing.
14:54That's a lie.
14:56And she was very convincing.
14:58She was gaslighting before any of us used the term gaslighting.
15:05Where do you store all that history for when you want to convince your next person
15:10that you're going to groom who you are?
15:13Do you keep a book?
15:14How do you do that?
15:16Because if you work from truth, you've only got one set of memories to deal with.
15:19But if you work from all of her lies, she had acres of lies.
15:25What did you know about her past life?
15:28That she told me or that I found out?
15:30That she told you.
15:31Okay, this is fun.
15:32You ready?
15:33Buckle up.
15:34Okay.
15:35She was the only girl and she had two older brothers.
15:39They owned all this land in Ireland and they were very wealthy
15:42and they called her every Sunday.
15:44I don't know who she was talking to, but she would have conversations on the phone
15:47like with someone in Ireland, supposedly.
15:49They were always coming to visit.
15:53But you've heard the term like catfishing, right?
15:56She was doing a reverse catfish.
15:58They have two little boys, exactly my sisters and my age.
16:02I mean, we are just ecstatic.
16:04These are cousins.
16:05They're coming to see us.
16:06Before we go to the airport to pick them up, Julia gets a call.
16:10The entire family is wiped out.
16:12They're all dead.
16:14They're all dead.
16:16Fiery car crash on the way to the airport to come to Houston to see his sister,
16:20his beloved sister, his wife is dead.
16:22The two children are dead.
16:23Fiery car crash.
16:24Dead.
16:24All of them dead.
16:26She had so much loss in her family of people who were coming to visit us that just died.
16:30It was the craziest thing.
16:32I remember being really upset that these people had died.
16:36And no, they weren't dead because they never existed.
16:39But what was she then?
16:40She had to just go into the room and lock herself away.
16:42And she was very distraught.
16:44And, you know, oh my goodness, the entire world has ended.
16:48She should have been an actress.
16:50She would have won awards.
16:59The only contact we had was text messages, phone calls.
17:06But it was never dad that was on the other end of the phone.
17:08It was always her.
17:09You need to know that nobody is fighting at this end.
17:12We're not fighting at all.
17:13She had him controlled at that point.
17:17You're trying to tighten it, okay?
17:19It's not a real call.
17:21Love you.
17:21Bye.
17:22Three or four months later, she kind of confronted me and asked me,
17:26did I have a problem with her?
17:28And it was that same day that she told me she was pregnant.
17:31She would have been 59 that day.
17:34So I'm not entirely sure what that was about.
17:39So they were going to get married.
17:41And at this point, it was too crazy for me.
17:45It was too crazy for me.
17:46And she knew she wasn't getting the boys for this so-called wedding,
17:50which wasn't a wedding.
17:51It was a blessing.
17:52And she got very, very cross at that.
17:54So then she made up that Ian was making the dinners
17:57and he was looking after the kids, all this kind of lies.
18:00So she rang social services and said all that stuff to them.
18:05And I was taken into social services.
18:08She was doing everything in her power to get the lads.
18:16We actually ended up going up to the house a couple months later.
18:20There was nobody there.
18:21They weren't there.
18:22Ian was really pining for his dad at this point.
18:24So I stayed in the car and then they arrived into the yard.
18:31There was nobody there.
18:33So we went walking in the field where he usually has the bees.
18:38And then they shut up.
18:41I don't remember what they said or anything.
18:43I just remember being behind Ian, just looking at the grass.
18:49He just told me, just leave, just leave.
18:53He said it was legal matters between him and my mum.
18:56So we just had to leave.
18:58It's a lot of funerals that you kind of push down.
19:04She didn't even look at either of us.
19:06She just walked straight into the house.
19:18There are three types of folks from East Texas.
19:21You got law enforcement, you have preachers, and you have criminals.
19:26And on occasion, there might be one or two of the same.
19:34As you look into the background of people, it's very interesting to see
19:38to what extent they will go to bolster their own reputation
19:43as being reliable and dependable and someone that you can trust.
19:47And that's essential to be a good con artist.
19:49People have to trust you.
19:51And for Julia and Clyde, both of them claim to be ministers,
19:58people of the cloth.
19:59And in East Texas, this is the, not only the Bible belt,
20:04this is the buckle of the Bible belt.
20:06So if you are a minister, you have very high standing in the community.
20:11But to be a minister, you simply need to proclaim you're a minister.
20:15And in Julia's case, she just put it on her business card
20:19that she was Reverend Julia Parrish.
20:26She was a rock star in Athens.
20:28She was part of whatever the county Republican Party group supporters were.
20:36She was very involved in community service there
20:39and bought a little piece of land in town
20:41and put some mobile homes on there,
20:43and they rented them out or sold them.
20:47In East Texas, there's an organization called the Cattle Barons Association.
20:52And every year, they put together a big gala, a big ball to raise funds for cancer.
20:58And she was part of that.
20:59And she even made a large donation.
21:02The community saw that.
21:03And they saw that she was willing to sacrifice her own personal funds.
21:08Little did they know, they weren't her funds.
21:11They were people she swindled.
21:14She was making very large purchases, larger than anything I'd ever seen her make before.
21:20The land, very expensive jewelry, very expensive coats.
21:25I remember going with her and her telling these young ladies she was showing off her jewelry
21:30and her saying, you know, if you get a rich man too, he'll buy you jewelry like this.
21:34And I remember thinking, my dad didn't buy her that, you know?
21:40There's something called the dark triad.
21:44Psychological traits that we often see in con artists.
21:49There's narcissism, which is where people have a very high regard for themselves.
21:57She fancied herself to be a very strong political advocate of certain groups, certain parties.
22:05She had photographs that she showed people of her with Vice President Dan Quayle, for instance.
22:10She had another photograph that she showed people where she was with the actor Patrick Swayze.
22:15But that helped bolster her narcissism there.
22:20The other one is the idea that you have psychopathic tendencies.
22:25And what that is is simply you don't have any kind of empathy for others.
22:30You don't feel there's a guilt from taking their money.
22:34It's no big deal for a doctor, you know, to take money from him because he's making all this money.
22:39And he's got, you know, people have insurance.
22:41So they rationalized through it.
22:42But still, she had victims there.
22:48The third part of the triad is Machiavellianism.
22:52The idea that you're cunning and you use this cunning to manipulate people.
22:59Get them to do what you want them to do.
23:04There's certain levels of this dark triad that, you know, you see it in serial killers.
23:09But you see it very often in the con artists.
23:17From July 2012, the lads didn't see Tom at all from then on.
23:24The last time, very last time I met him, dad took mum to court.
23:30He was arrears in child support payments.
23:34One of the ways I think that they wanted to get out was he was thinking that I wasn't his
23:40child.
23:42So he wanted a DNA test done.
23:44He did actually try to do this paternity test three times.
23:49It wouldn't recognize him.
23:51I just remember he was very cold, very distant.
23:56Have you stooped that low?
23:59How low are we going to go like with this?
24:02You can't step by the main player behind the curtain is Julie.
24:06Oh, yeah, absolutely.
24:07A hundred percent she was doing it.
24:09How can someone that looked after us and loved us so much go so cruel and cold in such a
24:19short amount of time?
24:292001 is when my second son was born.
24:30So after that, we were sort of seeing each other again.
24:33I would go up and spend a few days.
24:35And then whenever my dad was diagnosed with cancer, I think my dad really wanted us back in his life.
24:41One morning, I received a complaint from a doctor, Dennis Rose.
24:46He told me a story that was rather hard to believe how he had been swindled out of nearly $400
24:56,000.
24:59A lot of the victims will basically say, OK, I lost it and I'm not doing anything because I don't
25:04want word getting out.
25:05Well, then again, somebody like Dennis Rose is in a small town, small community, and word's going to get out.
25:12Dennis Rose was Clyde Parrish's oncologist and a well-known and well-liked doctor.
25:17He got to know Julia very well during the time of Clyde's treatment.
25:22I think that my dad genuinely liked them, and he had no idea.
25:28So she's kind of grooming the oncologist while the oncologist is saving her husband's life.
25:34I find that kind of mind-blowing.
25:36And the opportunity was that she had inherited a large bit of land in Ireland, and that land consisted of
25:45old buildings.
25:46She and a cousin of hers who was an attorney had proposed to renovate these old buildings and turn them
25:52into single-family dwellings.
25:55If they would invest now, they could expect to receive up to 700% returns on their investment.
26:02Based on the fact that they were friends and the fact that Dennis Rose had basically saved her husband's life,
26:09this was a believable story, and it was something that he was willing to take part in.
26:16She mentioned to him that other investors had not been able to come up with the money, so this was
26:22an extra opportunity that he had to invest more.
26:26So he continued to invest incrementally until he had invested $392,000.
26:34Julia and Clyde started working on the friends.
26:38From there on, they were able to get at least four other people involved in the scheme.
26:42So we had a total of $517,000 that people had invested into the scheme before it started to come
26:50unraveled.
26:51But it was Dennis Rose that was her downfall in America, because he was told that you'll get a lot
26:56of money back, plus interest and everything, and he wanted his money back.
27:03So I would expect, if this was a legitimate investment, that Dennis Rose's checks would be cashed, and that she
27:11would send that amount over to Ireland for the construction project.
27:15None of that was taking place.
27:17What I did find, though, was that Julia was writing checks for purchase of new vehicles.
27:22She had Rolex watches, all kinds of expenditures that were well above her means.
27:31Looking things up online was sort of the new thing to do.
27:34So I'd always been very interested in her past, because her past was so variable.
27:39It just depended on the day.
27:40I managed to get a hold of the social security number she was using,
27:43and I traced her back to a young lady who had passed away who lived in Ohio.
27:48I've often wondered if me looking into all that threw up red flags.
27:54Once you show your hand, they're scattering like rats, you know.
27:57They're going and destroying evidence.
27:59You know, she wasn't even in the country legally, so she was a flight risk.
28:06One of the best things you can do when you're confronting a con artist is get them to lie to
28:12you.
28:12Let her lay out what this investment was.
28:17We took Julia into her office.
28:19We sat her down.
28:19I introduced myself as an FBI agent, and the color went away from her face.
28:27And I just sat there for a moment and just let her collect her thoughts.
28:32And I said, OK, tell me about Dennis Rose.
28:36She had gone 19 and a half years, and she had scammed everyone that she ever met.
28:41She had become so proficient at walking that line and playing that game.
28:47I think she believed she was untouchable.
28:49She explained the investment from top to bottom at that point.
28:53I said, Julia, I don't think that is true.
28:56I think this is a fraud.
28:57I think you've defrauded Dennis Rose.
28:59And she said, oh, no, no, I haven't done that.
29:01This is an actual investment.
29:02And then I put before her the telephone records.
29:06You don't have any calls to Ireland.
29:08And then she turned another shade of white.
29:12And then I put before her the bank records.
29:14And I said, do you see these bank records right here?
29:17There's no indication that any of the funds that you've taken in have gone over for any investments.
29:23That's when she came up with her next lie.
29:27You don't understand.
29:28I've been involved in gambling, and I have all these gambling debts.
29:33And that's what I would use.
29:33I intended to send it over there.
29:35And then I said, Julia, that's not the case.
29:39You spin it.
29:40You got Rolex watches, other investments.
29:43Clyde had an ultralight aircraft.
29:47And at that point, she pretty much said, OK, you got me.
29:50That's the point that I arrested her.
29:57Between July 29, 2002 and continuing until at least December 18, 2003, Julia Parrish, who was then Clyde Parrish's wife,
30:09devised a scheme and artifice to defraud and to obtain money by means of false pretenses, representations and promises from,
30:17among others, Dennis Rose.
30:20There wasn't a whole lot of evidence that she produced showing this investment in Ireland.
30:25You know, she was well-known in the community.
30:26She was well-respected in the community.
30:28And if she said, I have this property in Ireland and you can make money investing in it, that seemed
30:33to be good enough.
30:35The next thing is, is we've got to keep her detained.
30:39We can't let her get out on bail, because if she does, she's gone.
30:43So we made a case, a very strong case, that she was a flight risk.
30:46And the judge listened to our side and kept her in jail until we could be prepared for trial.
30:54As part of the scheme, Julia Parrish, on various dates, communicated via email with Rose to encourage him to invest.
31:04In the federal system, if you use the Internet as, for example, send email, that's wire fraud.
31:11So she pled to that one count and got 27 months.
31:15Once it was just presented to him, he was like, oh, my God, I had no idea.
31:21Should he have known?
31:21Yeah.
31:22But we all should have known.
31:24Like, someone should have done something at some point.
31:28Clyde ultimately wound up entering a plea to what we call misprisoned felony,
31:32which in layman's terms means that he knew she was committing fraud, and he helped cover it up.
31:41He ultimately pled guilty and did prison time.
31:45Clyde never went back into the dark realm of being a criminal.
31:55As far as being like a wife and doing like the homemaking stuff, she was amazing at that.
32:01But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how well kept you are, you really have to know
32:05someone for who they are.
32:06And I don't, you know, and even if he did see those things, I think that we all have blinders
32:12on with people that we love.
32:16She was above average intelligence.
32:18And I would have thought for sure, you know, she would see the error of her ways and straighten up.
32:24But that wasn't the case.
32:45Strabant's a small town.
32:47Everyone knows everyone.
32:48So to have someone blow into town the way she did, this hurricane of color and energy and ideas and
32:54creativity,
32:55and she was going to do this and she was going to, yeah, it was fun in a sense.
32:59She was American as well, which gave her this sort of air of mystique around here as well.
33:06She was looking for an advertisement.
33:08I invited her into the office and she was there in her red coat and black hair and she had
33:12a colorful scarf on.
33:14And, yeah, very confident and flirty and nice.
33:18And she says, hi, I'm JJ.
33:19And I says, OK, JJ, what's your second name?
33:22And she says, don't worry about a surname.
33:24Just JJ's fine.
33:27She's calling herself JJ now.
33:29She starts working then in Sand Mills in a spa, health and wellness center.
33:35She had somehow talked her way into that and was talking about buying that business.
33:39And that's what the advertorial ended up being about the well-being span, how she had taken it over.
33:46What's the first time you remember when things don't seem to be right with JJ?
33:53I suppose when we didn't get paid for advertisements, that was slightly alarming.
33:59There was a guy who was an Australian and had been in a really serious accident.
34:04He ended up, you know, getting compensation.
34:07She groomed him.
34:09She convinced him that she was a qualified, trained and experienced psychiatrist and that she could help him through this
34:16PTSD and help him deal with the trauma that he'd lived with.
34:19So the poor guy believed her, handed over his money and that was it.
34:25She sort of worked her magic on me pretty well.
34:29And the initial amount that went in there was approximately 54,000 euro.
34:38It was hard to get anybody to be named.
34:40I could see the evidence.
34:42I could see the proof.
34:42I could sit down with people and look through where money had gone missing.
34:46Then I would have made an approach and they would have been just mortified.
34:52She had managed to work her way into clothing businesses, furniture businesses, hardware.
34:58She'd managed to get her house furnished.
35:00She had pretty much swindled half the businesses in this town, including Mr. Man Chronicle.
35:07I spoke to Denise Adams, a lovely lady.
35:10Denise suffered very badly.
35:12Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds.
35:14She'd either signed over the business or given a lot of money to Julia Holmes out of her own pocket.
35:20And I think it's almost bankrupt her.
35:24When I'd done all my paperwork and there was no more to be done, it was time now worth keeping
35:29you, JJ.
35:30So then she started making excuses that this million pound was coming, million and a half was coming, and it
35:36never did come.
35:37And she talked about receiving a letter from Julia Holmes, just talking about, you'll be fine, you're a very strong
35:44woman.
35:45And I think she was just resigned to the fact that she had lost money.
35:48She wasn't going to let it destroy her.
35:50I think it nearly did.
35:53I first came across her, she was back in court in Downpatrick, in County Down, for another fraud of one
35:59gentleman to the amount of £18,000.
36:03She'd already been in prison twice, and she was at this stage heading for prison again if she'd got into
36:08a trial.
36:13When she came into that huge courtroom, you could see her coming in to scan, and she scanned everybody.
36:18And I know she would have clicked onto me.
36:21I wanted her to see me.
36:22I wanted her to see, I'm watching you.
36:26She had a tag on at that stage, an electronic tag, and she had applied for the tag to be
36:31removed because she said it didn't suit her.
36:33It wasn't meant to be a fashion statement, but anyway, she wanted that removed.
36:37And then she just skipped on.
36:47Her trail just vanished.
36:48She could have been anywhere at that stage.
37:06One afternoon, about four o'clock, I got a phone call on the shop phone from a friend of mine
37:12who was in a hotel around the corner.
37:13She said she was with this couple who were creating this honey.
37:22Could she ask them to drop around to me and try and get the honey to the right people?
37:28She said, just so you know, the woman is wearing a wig as she has terminal cancer.
37:35And I said, okay, well, I'll see what I can do for them.
37:39The gentleman, Tom, seemed a very nervous type of person.
37:42Not at all comfortable.
37:44Not at all comfortable.
37:44Whereas she was quite forward, walked straight up to the desk I was standing at, introduced herself and said, oh,
37:52we're creating this.
37:53And if you can get these to maybe some of your friends in Dublin.
37:56And I said, yeah, yeah, leave them with me.
38:00I picked the phone and rang a friend of mine in Dublin who was a senior journalist and said, look,
38:07I have some products here.
38:09I mean, some of it has been suggested to be sent to you.
38:13But just instinctively, I feel something about this that I don't trust and I don't know why.
38:18And she said, oh, go with your instinct, Paul, go with your instinct.
38:20And I said, yeah, but what if I'm wrong?
38:23Because, you know, apparently she's dying of cancer.
38:29I only remember when we were beekeeping with him.
38:34He even bought us the suits, the two of us.
38:40He would have a special tool that you do to uncap the honey.
38:47It would pull all the honey out into this bucket and then we'd just share it.
38:54They got invited to everything and anything.
38:57I mean, they won an award for the honey, as you probably know, the Bloss na Heron Award, which is
39:01a highly regarded, well-respected award for food producers in Ireland.
39:07They went to restaurant awards, you know, that everybody sort of goes to make sure they got their photos posted
39:13with the right people in the right places.
39:18She was constantly tweeting quite a few of us and showing photos of products, trying to get promotion and stuff.
39:26One day, this person in the UK tagged into our photos and to our tweets and said, don't believe that
39:35woman, she's a fake.
39:53So, in May 2013, the PS&I were getting pretty desperate to find Julia Holmes and they launched a public
40:02appeal through the media.
40:06A glamorous granny who jumped bail on fraud charges two years ago, maybe in the Galway area, police had said.
40:13Julia Holmes, who also goes by the name of Dr. Watson and Julia Parrish, vanished after being accused of an
40:19£18,000 fraud.
40:23I found out that she had absconded and she had gotten away and they were looking for her.
40:27Then I was really sleuthing then, because now I'm doing international sleuthing.
40:32She had created this, like, fake company in which she was claiming to have cancer and she had all these
40:40bees and this was harvesting honey from her own hives.
40:48They only found one beehive, they obviously knew there was no way you could go into production with just one.
40:55And then it was discovered that they were just buying honey from a reputable supermarket store and decanting it into
41:04a sort of a posher jar, shall we say.
41:08She was entering honey contests and this is ending up on not just social media, but media.
41:16Like, she's showing up in newspapers, so she's back to being very brazen again.
41:21You know, totally different name, of course, but it's still her.
41:23I think someone had called out the fact that she wore wigs and that's where the cancer thing started, was,
41:29oh, I have cancer.
41:32If the story had been true, if she actually had cancer and if they were creating that honey, it was
41:37a good product, obviously, and a genius, really, you know.
41:47This particular sunlight was rather quiet and, as I said, it just landed a few days before.
41:51So we're settling in and was getting to know the new unit.
41:57One of my colleagues came out and said that there's a man wanted to speak with you, so went into
42:02the public office.
42:04I saw a family that I would know locally, the leader of the family, and four young males belonging to
42:11him.
42:11They were very upset. They were blessing themselves with the holy pictures.
42:17Brought him into a room out back. The story then he started to tell us was amazing.
42:25The four lads that were with him had gone out on the Eskeaton Ratkeel Road, down near Nanton and Cemetery,
42:31and they knew that the place had been vacant. They reckoned that the people living in it had been gone
42:36for some time.
42:39He said that they set about looking for scrap around the sheds and the yards,
42:44and that it got the better of them then that when they weren't disturbed, they decided to break into the
42:49house to see if they could find more.
42:57Myself and Ian were in Limerick, and Ian was swimming heavy at the time, right, so he was inside doing
43:02a gala.
43:03So we said we'd go up the road and we'd get a paper and a sandwich, and there was splashed
43:07all over the front of the paper.
43:09Two people absconded, blah, blah, blah, nobody knows where they are.
43:13So we saw the article in Limerick later.
43:16We went to the neighbours to see if there was any movement in the last while.
43:21We just went in and had a look around.
43:24Looking back on the timeline, it would have been exactly when everything actually happened, the weekend that we were there.
43:30She obviously had a plan, and that was, that was that really.
43:41The leader of the family had said to me, the Ruttle man up from Nanton and Cemetery was the house
43:47we were looking for,
43:48and that the lady with him was wanted by the police in the north.
43:55Bear in mind, it's nearly ten to three in the morning at this stage, and we landed to the farmhouse.
44:00I suppose what was in our head was we had to keep an open mind that what the people at
44:04the station were telling us mightn't be necessarily what's going on.
44:09We climbed over this gate, myself and five colleagues, and went into a house with no power, no light, no
44:16electricity.
44:19Scrap on the ground, placed in total darkness. We're all operating with torchlight.
44:26Straight away, even though it was May, you could feel the coldness in the house.
44:31Walked then into a kitchen, and you could see a big table with a lot of notes and letters on
44:37the table.
44:39If you find us, don't revive us. We've said goodbye, words to that effect.
44:46Got up to the top of the stairs, and the first door on the left was slightly ajar.
44:51I stood into the room, and there they were, as described.
45:00Two corpses, very much decomposed, had been there a long time, and a shocking sight.
45:09It was an absolute shock for us all.
45:13They didn't get to say goodbye to him or anything, or, you know.
45:17And there was a lot of things unsaid.
45:27It looked for all the world was that it was a murder-suicide, that there was a firearm used.
45:33Because of the position of the bodies, and her face had been damaged, I took it that under a bad
45:40light that she may have been shot.
45:42What I did notice was there was an ash bucket at the end of the bed, and there was other
45:46bits and pieces around, but there was nothing remarkable else.
45:50Tragedy calls to a rural community.
45:53The bodies of Thomas and Julia Ruttle were discovered by Gardaà in an upstairs bedroom at their home here, just
46:00before three o'clock this morning.
46:02It was clear that both had died violently.
46:06Then the post-mortem took place, and there was no firearm discharged.
46:12The inquest into their deaths today heard how the embers of three makeshift barbecues were found in a fireplace in
46:18the bedroom.
46:19There was a chimney in the room, and there was windows and whatever else fence had all been sealed.
46:23It cancelled all the air of the room.
46:26The state pathologist Mary Cassidy said the cause of the couple's death cannot be confirmed,
46:30but the circumstances were consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning.
46:35Coroner Antoinette Simon said verdicts of suicide were the only option.
46:43It just seemed a really strange turn of events for her to go out like that.
46:49I just thought she would just continue on until she died, a little old lady at 90 still conning people
46:54out of their money.
46:56In the inquest, I really wanted to know who died first.
47:00Did she force him to do that?
47:02It's all those notes that they left.
47:04She wrote them all, you know.
47:05Most of them lies, but she wrote everything.
47:11She did it.
47:12That's what I like to believe anyway.
47:14We'll never know, obviously.
47:19Evil. Evil is what you call her.
47:21Just pure evil. Evil.
47:24Evil.
47:30She was on the run the whole time, but she didn't care about that trail of destruction that she left.
47:37You can always make more money.
47:40But the damage that she did to families.
47:46My whole personality is kind of built around it.
47:48I had to put up kind of a wall.
47:52That was Ian's birthday.
47:53And you were given out.
47:54He was vulnerable.
47:56And this person just took him over.
47:58And took over his whole life.
48:00Changed it completely.
48:01And yes, I'm angry.
48:02Because everything would have been so different.
48:04And the boys would have their father.
48:06And he would love to see the men that they've turned out.
48:12Because he had a lot to do with it.
48:13God.
48:14Sorry.
48:16Sorry, that's...
48:19Oh my God.
48:20I'm sorry, I didn't expect that.
48:23Anyway.
48:25Anyway.
48:25Sorry.
48:26Because...
48:27Yeah.
48:28Um...
48:30Yeah, and if he was alive, he would be part of our lives.
48:34Sorry.
48:50Rationally, I have been assured by police that they did a DNA test and they are 100% it's her.
49:02It just seems so unbelievable in such a strange and very dramatic end for a person who lived a very
49:08dramatic life.
49:12There are days that I think, hmm, was it really her?
49:30The End
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