My father the international CONMAN: The ‘daddy’s girl’ whose world was turned upside down after discovering she was just a ‘pawn in a game’ played by the man who showered her with hugs

• EXCLUISVE: Eilidh Thomson, 21,  has seen childhood pictures with her father Will
• Today, she and her brother Zach, 18, know him only as a bigamist and conman 
• William Allen Jordan defrauded women of hundreds of thousands of pounds

Eilidh Thomson has seen plenty of childhood pictures and video footage showing her with her apparently doting father Will.

He’s beaming, as is she, throughout a photographic carousel of cuddles, trips to the park and playful interludes at the family home in Edinburgh.

In other words, all the hallmarks of an ordinary, loving father – although today the 21-year-old knows that Will Jordan was anything but.

‘I was just a pawn in a game,’ she says. ‘Every time he read me a story, every time he hugged me or put me to bed he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew he was a predator, and it disgusts me.’

Because today, Eilidh, who like her younger brother Zach, 18, has inherited her father’s raven corkscrew curls and dark eyes, knows him only as a bigamist and conman who has left a trail of devastated victims – among them their own mother Mary – in his wake.

Today, Eilidh, who like her younger brother Zach, 18, has inherited her father’s raven corkscrew curls and dark eyes, knows him only as a bigamist and conman who has left a trail of devastated victims – among them their own mother Mary – in his wake

William Allen Jordan – his real name, although he has used many others over the course of his decades long criminal career – not only defrauded women of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but deliberately got them pregnant in order to further manipulate them before cynically moving on to his next prey.

And of prey there was certainly plenty: a vast trail of women behind whom lie legions of abandoned children and stepchildren.

Eilidh and Zach, who now use their mother’s maiden name, are aware of at least 14 half brothers and sisters dotted across the globe, including some in the UK, although they are convinced there are many more they have yet to hear of.

As her mother, Mary, puts it: ‘Will has been operating for decades. We know of at least 21 women he duped, from wives and fiancés to girlfriends, but I imagine that’s the tip of the iceberg and the real number is more likely to be double that, which probably means more children.

‘What we know, to date is that his oldest child is 40 and his youngest is four. Eilidh has three half siblings from other mothers who are around the same age.’

The astonishing story of the multiple ‘Mrs Jordans’ and their families is about to be told in a three part ITV documentary series – part of the ‘Swindles & Cons Season’ of programmes on ITVX – which unravels some of the complex web woven by Will Jordan as well as following a thrilling real time manhunt to track him down today led by a retired US Marshall.

Eilidh and Zach, along with their older half-sister Robyn, 24, feature prominently, discussing the legacy of discovering that the man who brought them into this world (they refuse to call him their dad) is a psychopath – the word that, while he has not been formally diagnosed, their mother now uses to describe him.

‘What this man has done is going to affect generations,’ says Eilidh. ‘My kids won’t have a grandfather and there is so much I don’t know about my own history. It’s more than just a conman conning one person. The ripples go far and wide.’

‘What this man has done is going to affect generations,’ says Eilidh. ‘My kids won’t have a grandfather and there is so much I don’t know about my own history. It’s more than just a conman conning one person. The ripples go far and wide’

William Allen Jordan – his real name, although he has used many others over the course of his decades long criminal career – not only defrauded women of hundreds of thousands of pounds, but deliberately got them pregnant in order to further manipulate them before cynically moving on to his next prey

The astonishing story of the multiple ‘Mrs Jordans’ and their families is about to be told in a three part ITV documentary series – part of the ‘Swindles & Cons Season’ of programmes on ITVX

Mary Turner Thomson with her children Zach (back), Eilidh (front left) and Robyn (right)

READ MORE: ‘My reality just crumbled’: Moment wife of bigamist who claimed to be CIA agent is told ‘I’m the other Mrs Jordan’ by his other wife

Zach, meanwhile, was just a babe in arms when his father abandoned him. He’s speaking out, he says, to warn others. ‘It needs to be out there, that people are doing this and that it can happen to anyone.’

It’s also the reason that along with Robyn, 24 – who was just one when Will Jordan came into her mother’s life – they are speaking to the Mail in this, their only newspaper interview.

Confident, thoughtful and charismatic, it is doubtless a tribute to 58-year-old Mary that the trio are the well-rounded young adults they have become. Robyn – a veritable mini-me of her mum, who saw Jordan as her father – is a happily married tour guide. Eilidh is a film student and Zach works in a local bar. ‘I’m so immensely proud of them,’ Mary says, beaming. ‘All three of them are just sorted.’

An enormously close family, one of Jordan’s legacies is that they have vowed never to lie to each other. ‘We talk about everything,’ says Mary.

Will Jordan’s lies were certainly legion, although his extraordinary exploits were all too real.

Told in mesmerising detail by Mary in two books, The Bigamist and The Psychopath, she relates how she was a single 30-something mother to one-year-old Robyn and running her own marketing business when, in 2000, she met Jordan, now 58, on an online dating site.

The smooth-talking mixed-race American was based in Edinburgh and initially told her he worked in IT, before disclosing that his sudden trips away, and the secretive nature of his work, were a consequence of him working in anti-terrorism for the CIA, from whom he subsequently produced paycheques.

He also told Mary he was infertile due to a bout of mumps as a child. Mary had no reason not to believe him.

They married in 2002, and when Mary subsequently discovered she was pregnant with Eilidh, Jordan proclaimed it a ‘one in a million’ miracle. Zach was planned because, as Mary says wryly, ‘now he “knew” he could conceive after all.’

Eilidh and Zach, who now use their mother’s maiden name, are aware of at least 14 half brothers and sisters dotted across the globe, including some in the UK, although they are convinced there are many more they have yet to hear of

They married in 2002, and when Mary subsequently discovered she was pregnant with Eilidh, Jordan proclaimed it a ‘one in a million’ miracle

Jordan certainly went to extraordinary lengths to uphold his many deceptions: Mary would later discover how he once walked around in boots three sizes too small for a month to create the battered feet that were the hallmark of a daring battle mission, and had burned his testicles with a cigarette butt to emulate a vasectomy operation to convince another victim he could not father children.

As the years went by Jordan’s manipulations became ever more sinister. He persuaded Mary that terrorists were threatening to kidnap their children, compelling her to sell her home to pay a ransom. He had also run up crippling debts of £56,000 on credit cards.

‘By the end I had given him nearly £200,000, and I was living pretty much hand to mouth, diving down the back of couches to find change to buy milk and living in abject terror because he’d convinced me people were coming for my kids,’ she says.

Then, in April 2006, when Jordan was away on one of his mysterious trips, Mary received a phone call which would turn her world upside down. On the end of the line a British woman was someone claiming to be ‘The Other Mrs Jordan’.

‘In fact, she was the original Mrs Jordan,’ says Mary. This woman had five children with Jordan – two around the same age as Eilidh – and had been told the same lies before mounting suspicions prompted her to investigate.

The two devastated women talked through the night, with Mary uncovering a past littered with abandoned and deceived women and children.

Jordan already had six children at the time she met him in 2000 and by 2006 had five fianceés, one of whom was pregnant. It was one of those ‘fiancees’ who’d reported him to police for fraud, leading to the full extent of his deceptions being uncovered.

Mary describes the moment of truth: ‘It literally felt like the walls around me were crumbling to dust. The person I was in love with didn’t exist. He was just an actor playing a part.’

In April 2006, when Jordan was away on one of his mysterious trips, Mary (pictured) received a phone call which would turn her world upside down. On the end of the line a British woman was someone claiming to be ‘The Other Mrs Jordan’

The astonishing story of the multiple ‘Mrs Jordans’ and their families is about to be told in a three part ITV documentary series – part of the ‘Swindles & Cons Season’ of programmes on ITVX

Jordan certainly went to extraordinary lengths to uphold his many deceptions: Mary would later discover how he once walked around in boots three sizes too small for a month to create the battered feet that were the hallmark of a daring battle mission

As the years went by Jordan’s manipulations became ever more sinister. He persuaded Mary that terrorists were threatening to kidnap their children, compelling her to sell her home to pay a ransom

READ MORE: I married a psycho! Mother’s nightmare as her ‘loving’ husband turned out to be a bigamist conman with another wife, FIVE fiancees and several families

Mary subsequently messaged Will to say ‘we’re done’. ‘Even then he didn’t give up, but asked me to have faith in him.’ The next time she saw him was in court, in November 2006, when Jordan was jailed for six years for bigamy and obtaining funds by deception.

Yet undeniably he was still her children’s father – children she now had to tell that their daddy would not be coming home.

It is a conversation that Eilidh remembers starkly. ‘She came to mine and Robyn’s room to tell us Daddy had done something bad, and would have to go to jail. At the time my favourite film was Cat in the Hat,’ she recalls. ‘There’s a scene in it where the little girl says “I wish you weren’t my mother” and when Mum told us the news I said this to her – and she started crying.’

Both Eilidh and Robyn admit to struggling as the years went by.

‘He was rarely around, but when he was, he was fantastic,’ Robyn says. ‘He would play games, we would laugh, and he was just very engaging. On the other side, there was this sense that he wasn’t there much. At the time, it seemed normal – I had no other model for what a father should be.’

For Eilidh, a self-confessed ‘daddy’s girl’, the news was devastating. ‘I really adored him,’ she says. ‘Whenever he was there it was good times. There are so many videos of us playing games. We had a sack game where he would carry us around. Now I look back, it makes me shiver.’

‘There were lots of times when Eilidh just sat on my lap and cried,’ Mary adds. Robyn, meanwhile, was more internalised. ‘Mum was trying to keep a roof over our heads while I saw it as my role to look after my sister and brother,’ she says.

As for Zach, he says that having no memories of his father made it easier. ‘Being as young as I was, I think it was very easy for me to let go of the past,’ he says. ‘Whereas my sisters had good memories and then bad things were being said. It was like they had to pick one of the two.’

Mary describes the moment of truth: ‘It literally felt like the walls around me were crumbling to dust. The person I was in love with didn’t exist. He was just an actor playing a part’

For Eilidh, a self-confessed ‘daddy’s girl’, the news was devastating. ‘I really adored him,’ she says. ‘Whenever he was there it was good times. There are so many videos of us playing games. We had a sack game where he would carry us around. Now I look back, it makes me shiver’

As for Zach, he says that having no memories of his father made it easier. ‘Being as young as I was, I think it was very easy for me to let go of the past,’ he says. ‘Whereas my sisters had good memories and then bad things were being said. It was like they had to pick one of the two’

Mary was open from the start about the fact there were other children, but for many years Eilidh’s focus was her own struggle with her identity, particularly as, like her brother, she is part mixed-race.

‘There’s this whole other side to your genetics that you don’t know about,’ she says. ‘I’ve had lots of health issues, and I just don’t even know where they come from, whether it’s anything to do with him. Then as I became a teenager as well I’ve had friends who in arguments would use my parentage against me. They’d say, “Oh, you’re a psycho, just like your dad”, horrible things like that. That’s really hard.’

After his release from prison on May 2nd, 2009, Jordan was immediately deported to the US.

‘We know now that by May 11 he already had a passport under a different name, and had met and moved in with another woman who was pregnant within a month,’ says Mary.

There were many other women too, among them a 36-year-old nurse called Mischele (corr) Lewis, who got in contact with Mary in 2014 after discovering that Jordan had conned her out of thousands of pounds during the course of their four-year relationship.

Jordan was subsequently jailed in 2015 for three years in the US for theft by deception, while via a Facebook group Mary and Mischele discovered many other victims who started to talk openly to each other about their experiences.

‘It became like a sisterhood,’ says Mary. ‘We were able to share stories and support each other. It has been a real lifeline.’

For Eilidh and Zach, while they have met some of their half-siblings, others have proved more reluctant to be in touch.

‘I think when you go through such a massive trauma, people react in different ways. In our family we have been super open about it, and accepting of the situation, while others just want to move on, which is completely understandable,’ says Eilidh.

She and Zach have however met ‘a handful’ of their half-siblings. ‘There’s one who had exactly the same mannerisms as me and the same smile,’ she says. ‘My boyfriend could not believe how similar we were. It’s really odd because you see yourself in these people. It’s hard to wrap your head around.’

Jordan was subsequently jailed in 2015 for three years in the US for theft by deception, while via a Facebook group Mary and Mischele discovered many other victims who started to talk openly to each other about their experiences

There were many other women too, among them a 36-year-old nurse called Mischele (corr) Lewis (LEFT), who got in contact with Mary in 2014 after discovering that Jordan (right) had conned her out of thousands of pounds during the course of their four-year relationship

READ MORE: Daughter of serial bigamist who had 13 children with six different women says she remembers him being ‘the perfect father’ before his web of lies was uncovered

Both were revolted to discover that their father – now a greying 58-year-old – was most recently in relationship with a woman who was 19 when she met him four years ago. She also fell pregnant almost immediately. ‘She is pretty much the same age as me,’ says Eilidh. ‘It’s disgusting.’

Both Mary and Eilidh travelled to America during the course of filming to meet Mischele face to face for the first time along with another of Jordan’s victims.

It was an emotional meeting which left all four in tears. ‘It brought home how many people’s lives he affected,’ says Eilidh.

The women were together when they learned from former US Marshall Tex Lindsey that Jordan is once more behind bars in Albany, New York State, after being arrested and charged with forgery, attempted grand larceny and petty larceny on charges related to local businesses.

If convicted he faces a maximum of seven years in prison.

The revelation proved bittersweet for Eilidh, who confides that while she does not think of Jordan as her father, she is unable to feel as detached as she would like.

‘In some ways he doesn’t feel like he’s a real person, but there are still certain times where even though you don’t want to have any sort of connections with this person you just see your own face in his.’

Zach is more pragmatic. ‘I feel like I dodged a bullet,’ he says. ‘What he did was horrible, but if he had been in our lives long term, he would have caused even more damage.’

‘The Other Mrs Jordan – Catching the Ultimate Conman is available to stream exclusively on ITVX from Thurs 26 Oct’.

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