Mum's horror after discovering 'psychopath' husband was bigamist conman
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A mum has shared her horror after discovering her ‘psychopath’ husband was a bigamist conman who had been lying to her for years about his double life – or, rather, lives.
Mary Turner Thomson had her entire world thrown upside down after finding out her husband, William Allen Jordan, wasn’t quite who he said he was, having been fed a ‘complex web’ of lies about everything from his job to his personal life.
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It wasn’t until a phonecall from the ‘other Mrs Jordan’ in April 2006 that the truth came out - with Mary now warning that it could happen to anyone.
She is speaking out about what happened in a brand new ITV documentary, The Other Mrs Jordan – Catching the Ultimate Conman, which has now been added to the channel’s on-demand service ITVX.
“This brand new documentary series for ITVX unravels the complex web of the multiple ‘other Mrs Jordans’ and follows the real time manhunt led by retired US Marshal Tex Lindsey, to track down the shady figure who left so much pain and confusion in his wake across the globe,” a synopsis says.
“Mary Turner Thomson had grown used to her husband’s frequent and often sudden trips away to far-flung locations as well as the secretive nature of his work, which meant he was regularly unable to maintain contact with her.
“She convinced herself that these challenges were a necessary sacrifice when your spouse, William Allen Jordan, was a CIA agent working in counter terrorism in the early 2000s.
“Or so she thought, until a fateful phone call in April 2006 from someone saying she was ‘The Other Mrs Jordan’ blew her world apart.”
Mary had met William online back in 2000, going on to marry and have two children together.
However, it later transpired that he had not only managed to con her out of £200,000, but also that he was also a serial bigamist with at least three wives, along with 13 children with six women.
He was also a convicted sex offender, having been convicted of molesting a girl between the age of nine and 13 in 1997 - just three years before he struck up the relationship with Mary.
“When I first met Will Jordan, I felt such a strong connection, he was tall, dark and handsome, and it was instant attraction,” Mary recalls in the documentary.
“About three months into the relationship, he told me what he actually did for a living – he was recruited straight out of uni by the intelligence services, CIA.
"He was a spy. He was the guy in the van. He told me he was in the Palestinian Territories.
“I was pregnant, I was struggling financially. I spent all the time that he was away actually really, really worried for his life.
“Being married to somebody who’s working for the intelligence services was terrifying, it was really, really frightening, but we were husband and wife.”
Mary said her ‘reality just crumbled’ after she discovered a trail of other wives and children, but that he'd ‘messed with the wrong woman’ when he crossed her.
In 2006, William pleaded guilty to bigamy, obtaining funds by deception, failing to register as a sex offender and possession of a stun gun, serving two-and-a-half years in prison in Britain before being deported to New Jersey.
However, when he arrived back in the States, he targeted another woman called Mischele Lewis with a similar story - only for her to tip off the police upon finding out about his past crimes.
William was arrested again in 2015 and sentenced to three years in state prison.
Mary added: “The people sitting there at home right now thinking, ‘This could never happen to me, I would never be so gullible or stupid to believe somebody like that,’ don’t ever think it can’t happen to you.”
Watch The Other Mrs Jordan – Catching the Ultimate Conman on ITVX now.
Topics: TV And Film, Documentaries, ITV, Sex and Relationships
