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- [00:07]
A
Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of the mystic and the Mayor. I'm investigative journalist Leo Chic, and throughout this series I've been joined by TV presenter Anna Richardson to unravel the story of Mayor Gilles de Tor and mystic Sophia Martinez. As you know, Gilles and Sophia were both arrested on charges including embezzlement, corruption and fraud. Since episode six, we know Gilles has been questioned by police again over a property issue. He also requested to return to AG to work. This was declined. They have both spent time in pretrial prison and are now in summer 2025 waiting for justice to run its course. I was drawn to this story because I specialize in cases of corruption and financial fraud. And this story was particularly fascinating to me. It has a sprinkling of magic and motives we can all relate to, like grief, power, loneliness. Anna came to it for different reasons. As well as being a TV presenter, she's also a qualified hypnotherapist and she's worked on many shows on the paranormal. Not only is she a brilliant journalist, she's also very open to the unexplained. As I found out while we were working together, she uses tarot in her day to day life. She sees it as a useful tool. So after six episodes of seeing what answers we can get via good old fashioned journalism, let's see what we can get from the other side.
- [01:51]
B
So, Leo, you want me to do a tarot reading, is that right? What are you hoping to find out? I need a question.
- [01:56]
A
So I actually want to know about Sofia and Gilles.
- [01:59]
B
Huh? I mean, I could. I'll tell you what I could do. I could certainly pull a card for Gilles. I could pull a card for Sofia and I could have a look at the bridging card between them. I mean, we could have a little bit of a play and a mess and see what comes up. What is it that you want to know specifically about them?
- [02:17]
A
I think I'm really interested in their power dynamic.
- [02:20]
B
Oh.
- [02:20]
A
And I really want to know sort of where the control lies between them.
- [02:26]
B
Let's just. I'm just going to give them a quick knock and a shuffle. We want one card that represents Gilles. Okay. And this is where he is now. Right. Okay, pull this one. Okay. So we have got the five of pentacles, which makes perfect sense to me. And then we want one card for sphere and just the bridging card between them. Well, that's very peculiar. Okay, so I'll tell you what has come up. I'll tell you what's come up. The card, the five of pentacles to represent Gilles. This is two people, two beggars left out in the cold. And the pentacles always represent money, often, and material things. So two beggars left out in the cold, and they can see the money and the wealth and the comfort that is behind the window there. They have been cast out. Okay, so that would really represent Gilles at the moment, that all of the power, the status that he had, he's now like a poor beggar outside that's unable to get to the wealth and the comfort within.
- [03:38]
A
That's wild.
- [03:39]
B
That would make sense. That would make sense for him. Now, when we pick for Sofia the six of Cups, this is a card of almost sort of like childlike, sort of sibling like love and familiarity between two people. It's a card of so real comfort and knowing somebody very, very well. So she's in a place where that would represent a place of sort of quite nice and sort of comfort all around family. I'm thinking that if she's in prison or being held somewhere, that wouldn't make sense unless she's around her kin. But that would sort of be with living with a sister or a sibling or, you know, something like that. But it's qu. A nice card. It's a card of nostalgia and sort of childhood. And the bridging card between them, the thing that connects them, just doesn't make sense to me at all, because it's the 10 of cups, which is happiness, happy families. Now, if we go back into the story, you could argue with this, that the card that connects in the relationship they had was very much family and happiness and togetherness. Because you can see the sort of the husband and the wife and the two children there. They were familial to each other. So that is quite interesting that that's the card that connects them. But then we know. I'm presuming that Gilles loathes Sofia now and that she probably also loathes him. I mean, what is interesting about this card is that with the pair of them, they were searching, weren't they, for a very, very happy family. Just a beautiful somewhere over the rainbow, 10 of cups, happy family life, you know, that sort of idealistic, secure family.
- [05:25]
A
Well, he was looking for a family member, and she was searching for that familial security I could see. But could this be retrospective? Maybe? The search is still ongoing.
- [05:37]
B
I mean, the bridging card between them, the card that connects them, is that search for happiness and a happy family life. And that's how they became quite codependent. You were gonna ask who had the power dynamic, Was that right?
- [05:52]
A
Yeah. Who sort of. Who's leading who? I think is my biggest question. But I think that you've kind of answered that with that card by saying.
- [06:00]
B
The search for happiness.
- [06:01]
A
Well, neither of them are leading either. They were in it kind of together out of solidarity, almost. That's what I'm hearing from you.
- [06:09]
B
Yeah. I mean, that would make sense to me that here are two people who found each other. He was searching for his father, who he adored. She has always been searching for a happy family life. So that is the connection between them, which makes sense.
- [06:28]
A
A question that I have is about where it started to go wrong. So I guess when I say who is leading who, what we can see there is really positive. And I do have. I'll tell you something. When I interviewed one of her clients, my software for recording calls messed up. And it has never done that, and it hasn't done it since. So I do have this sort of thing where I think Sofia's interfering through waves.
- [06:54]
B
Well, that's often the way. So whenever I've worked with psychics and mediums in broadcasting and I filmed with them, then, I mean, it sort of goes without saying that, you know, the camera would always cut or there'd be a problem with sound or something. I mean, that isn't unusual. So that's weird. It does happen to you.
- [07:14]
A
But it makes me vigilant to the idea that I might be reading into things. But Sophia, given that this is a tarot reading and she is clocked into the occult, that she might be leading the way with the cards.
- [07:29]
B
That's a very interesting. That's a very interesting thought. I mean, I just want to sort of go back to, you know, Sofia in relation to Gilles with this Six of Cups card. And I'm intrigued to know what you know about her because in a sense, she sees Gilles as family, almost like a sort of sibling, like that. There's a real recognition between these two children.
- [07:51]
A
So Sophia and she both went to prison for about three months in pre trial prison. And then when they got out, they were not allowed back to the region that AGD is in erault. They both went to people who lived outside of that area. So staying with people that. That they know.
- [08:07]
B
Okay. So that would make sense for the Six of Cups. So again, to begin with, when I pulled this with Sofia, I was a bit like, I don't really get this, the Six of Cups, because it is very much, as I say, the sort of sibling like relationship. So we know that she's staying with somebody. Dewey, that could be an old friend or it could be a family member. The Six of Cups then. Makes sense. There's a lot of love between these two people. And then Gilles, we know that he's done prison time and there he is now, sort of disgraced within society. So that card would make perfect sense. And then, of course, we've got the 10 of cups between them. Okay, we know where they are. I just do want to pull a card in terms of what went wrong. Yeah, what went wrong? Let's try and pull this Queen of Swords. What went wrong? I mean, the Queen of Swords is the Queen of heartbreak, in a sense. She is absolutely without emotion. She holds the sword up against her heart. So she's the Queen of logic. So what went wrong? You could use this as representing Sophia. What went wrong is that Sophia was just using this situation to her own advantage. She was using logic and cold, hard ambition to get what she wanted.
- [09:32]
A
I would assign that a lot more to Gilles.
- [09:35]
B
Well, Yep. Well, that's androgynous. So the Queen of Swords is androgynous. So it's two people who were just out to get what they wanted without any emotion at all. The sword is the sword of truth. So this is what it was about.
- [09:49]
A
What strikes me is how opposite what you just said is to the idea of searching for family. One of them is pure love and community, and the other one is ambition and ruthlessness.
- [09:59]
B
Yeah, they are, aren't they? And she is. The Queen of Swords is ruthless. So often she is referred to the Queen of heartbreak. So she gets what she wants through logic. I'm just gonna pull one more just for me. Cause I am searching for a particular card. Okay. That's the Hangman. So currently they're on pause. They're on pause. They're both at a crossroads in their lives.
- [10:18]
A
Right?
- [10:19]
B
They're both at a crossroads. I could literally do this all day. In terms of what went wrong between them. Does she really have a gift? I tell you what, shall we ask that? Does Sophia truly have a gift? A psychic gift? And we've pulled out the hierophant. Okay. It's a major arcana card. The hierophant is the card actually, weirdly, of sort of like marriage and its morality. And it is sort of structure and organizations that. That are to do with what's right and morality. So I would say in answer to that, does she truly have a gift? I'd say yes. La la la.
- [11:08]
A
Over the Past six episodes, I have dumped on you absolutely everything that we could find about this story.
- [11:14]
B
It's been amazing.
- [11:15]
A
So I wanted to know, what do you make of all this?
- [11:19]
B
I think you've got two people. One, Gilles, who was a very respected mayor, who was grieving the loss of his father, clearly very, very, very. There's a great deal of love there. Who was introduced to a hugely talented medium. She's got great testimonials out there. She was recommended by people in positions of authority. That is quite a seductive introduction, because if you are grieving somebody and you believe in the afterlife, or you're willing to suspend your disbelief and hang onto the hope that you might just be able to reach your dad for one more time with this incredibly talented. Then I think it's as simple as that, that these two people met, that they found each other, and that she was able to connect with Gilles Dad. And I just think there's a very simple human connection there of a grieving guy who found this woman, and then a woman who has come from a really disrupted traumatic childhood, who found a very loving father figure in Gilles. So it's a perfect codependent relationship, in my view, that went horribly wrong.
- [12:42]
A
So I've got a question for you, which is, was it worth it? Was it worth it for Gilles and Sofia? Obviously they both gained something from this relationship. So I don't think he got an awful lot out of it, to be honest. You know, he got access to a kind of father figure, in a way, and also a daughter figure. Sophia got access to a father figure. She got some acceptance from someone in a powerful position. She possibly allegedly gained material benefits from that relationship. But they also both lost a lot. When the media got wind of this, the police got wind of this. So Gilles lost his position as mayor. They both lost access to their families, to kind of the whole surrounding of everything that they knew before that, the win, and lost the balance sheet. Do you think it's worth it for them?
- [13:28]
B
So let me throw a question back to you and for everybody listening as well. Have you ever been in love with somebody or had an affair with somebody that was so intoxicating, it was so all consuming, that you would have done anything for that person? And the trouble. I mean, I have, and I look back and go, what was I thinking? So if I throw that question back, was it worth it? It's an interesting question, isn't it? That if you think about the person you were involved with, the person that you fell in love with, that you had this insane Affair with. Was it worth it? Of course not. But if somebody at the time had said to you, don't do this. It isn't worth it, you would have carried on. It's this kind of. What's the word? There's that phrase in French, the kind of like madness.
- [14:17]
A
The folie a deux.
- [14:18]
B
Exactly. The folie a deux.
- [14:20]
A
I looked up that phrase. It's actually a clinical term.
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B
Is it?
- [14:23]
A
Um. So I've been trying to hold back from using it, but in its common use.
- [14:27]
B
But what. What does it mean in front of falie? I do. It's a sort of madness of two. Is it?
- [14:30]
A
Yes.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You have these relationships where you come up with an idea that to most people, it might feel off the wall, and you're with someone who just really gets you and really gets it, and you're just like, yeah, let's do this. This sounds like a really great idea. And if they're both reinforcing each other in that way in their own little bubble, you can see how it can get out of hand.
- [14:50]
B
Completely how it gets out of hand. I think it's really worth reiterating the fact that as far as we. Any affair that went on between, there's never anything sexual. So this is a magnetism and an attraction that goes beyond that. That, you know, you could say it's familial. You could say that it just feels that they got each other, but without question, it was something that was unbreakable.
- [15:14]
A
Okay, but with those love stories, when you've been in love with those people and you look back at that, would you want to erase that from your past?
- [15:23]
B
Great question, actually. Because if you think about the end of your life, imagine that you are sitting in a rocking chair and you're reviewing your life and you're looking at all the things that have happened to you, all the loves you've had, all the losses that you've had, would you want to erase those mad loves that you've had? I don't think I would. Even though it's caused an enormous amount of damage to other people, to myself? Would I never wanted to have done that in my life? No. I think I still would have taken the risk. That's crazy, isn't it?
- [15:57]
A
Yeah. Well, that's the definition of. It is Folies Deux.
- [16:00]
B
It's.
- [16:00]
A
You know, it is. There's a craziness. Yes.
- [16:02]
B
Your logical side would go, of course you would never want to get involved with a psychic and a mare. And look at what's happened. Of course, you don't want to do that, but your emotional side would say I'd do it all over again.
- [16:19]
A
Thanks for joining us for this bonus episode of the mystic and the Mayor. We'll be back when we learn more about the upcoming trials of Gilles and Sophia.
- [16:28]
B
But for now I've been Anna Richardson.
- [16:30]
A
And I've been Leo Chic. If you have thoughts on the mystic and the Mayor, please email us at themysticandthemareudioalways.com the mystic and the Mayor was.
- [16:41]
B
Presented by me, Anna Richardson and presented.
- [16:44]
A
Researched and produced by me, Leo Sheikh.
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B
The series was written and produced by Palama Kaufman. Our executive producers are Kelly windsorbergin and Elsa Rochester.
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A
Sound design is by Craig Edmondson.
- [16:56]
B
The mystic and the Mayor is a co production between Audio Always and Bite your Tongue Productions.
- [17:03]
A
I made multiple attempts to contact Gilles de Torre and Sophia Martinez through their lawyers, but they did not wish to speak on the record. The invitation to speak remains open to both of them.