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- [00:06]
A
What does it take for a person to gain trust, gain control, gain whatever they want? In the French town of Agues, there are two powerful forces. A man called Gilles de Torres, the local mayor with an ever extending web of influence, and his trusted mystic.
- [00:37]
B
I'm Anna Richardson, TV presenter, journalist and qualified hypnotherapist.
- [00:41]
A
And I'm Leo Chic. I'm a journalist born in France and I've been living in the UK for over two decades. For the past year, I have been captivated by these two charismatic figures and how they use their power. This is the mystic and the Mayor. Episode five. So, Anna, we are pretty far into the story of the mayor of Agues, Gilles de Tor, and his medium, Sophia Martinez. Just remind us, where are you at with Sophia in terms of what you know about her?
- [01:14]
B
I think that she is a very successful, resourceful, resilient woman who's very popular, who clearly appears to have this ability as a medium, but who's had a very troubled, traumatic childhood. So this is somebody who is used to being able to manipulate people, I would say, and has managed to inveigle herself into the powerful corridors of agda. That's who I think Sofia is.
- [01:49]
A
Okay. And just to be clear, when you said it appears that her powers are real.
- [01:54]
B
Yeah.
- [01:55]
A
You're convinced by everything that we've heard?
- [01:57]
B
What I understand from some of the testimony, people believe that she has a gift.
- [02:02]
A
We heard from Louise Colcombe, the journalist with Le Parisien, that Sophia shows up in AG and she tells people that she's been a high ranking administrator at a hospital. She's got a photo of herself in a police officer uniform on her wall. But there were other more outlandish claims as well. She told one friend she was a secret agent.
- [02:23]
B
I mean, this is just delusional, isn't it? Because the idea that somebody will have been a high ranking copper, a secret agent. Oh, but I've also done a load of admin at the. I mean it just. This is nonsense.
- [02:37]
A
It, it does all sound really incredible. And as you said, she has had a hard upbringing. If parts of this are true, seems like she's managed to live an exciting and successful adult life or just, you.
- [02:49]
B
Know, highly creative and sort of pack of lies.
- [02:52]
A
Right. I mean, when I spoke to Louise Colcombe, that is what comes out.
- [02:57]
C
I know for a fact that some, some stuff that she kept on telling to everyone wasn't true. One of her friends put it this way, she told me there's always a part of truth, but the rest of it is Exaggeration. For example, when she said she used to be a policewoman, that's not true. She went to police school but she never graduated. I don't know if she was expelled or if she stopped on her own, her own will, but she stopped after a few weeks. But she had displayed in her house a photograph in the uniform. So that would be really credible that she was an ex policewoman. She said she had a high ranked role in the hospital, but she was actually just working as a security.
- [03:53]
B
I mean, this is really interesting to me because there's a grain of truth in everything that Sophia is saying. It's just that she has got this grandiosity. She's clearly embellishing the truth and making herself out to be special. I mean, if you think about it, I guess we all blow our CV up a little bit, don't we? That we go, yeah, I used to manage a team of 10 and you know, brought in millions. So. But this is on another level. What about the secret agent? But are you telling me that she did actually go to spy school?
- [04:23]
A
So after Louise mentioned this, it was a kind of one off in the interview and I went back to her and she told me that a close friend of Sofia's told her that as an anecdote.
- [04:32]
B
We just don't know whether she actually had anything to do with possibly training to be a spy.
- [04:38]
A
I mean, it could be all sorts of things. It could be that she had aspirations or it could be that, you know, met someone. She was like, I could do that. I don't know what prompts people to build these things.
- [04:47]
B
But we do know that she clearly is a fast and loose with the truth. You've got to hand it to her. If nothing else, this is a very resourceful and resilient woman.
- [04:59]
A
That's. I completely agree. There's, you know, whether there's portions of lies or part of the truth, that's resilience that I read into that as well. So Sophie, who we know from the last episode is now going by Sophia, moves into a small apartment in AGS and starts practicing hypnotherapy and mediumship there. And she starts becoming really popular, giving out free sessions and pretty soon starts charging for them.
- [05:22]
B
So again, she's completely reinvented herself. Clearly she was popular. Do you know how much she was charging people?
- [05:30]
A
Note to self, between 60 and 100 for 45 minutes.
- [05:36]
B
What I mean, that's really average. So for her, look, she's clearly made a lot of dough somewhere and €100 for a Session is not an enormous amount of money.
- [05:46]
A
It's not extortionate, is it? And that's interesting in itself because Sophia was leading an increasingly lavish lifestyle. On top of her flashy wedding. The small apartment in AGD is long gone, and she's in a beautiful villa, and she's taking her children on exotic holidays.
- [06:03]
B
I'm interested to know where she got her cash from.
- [06:05]
A
Well, allegedly, one to one sessions weren't the only thing she was selling.
- [06:09]
B
Well, that makes sense.
- [06:10]
A
A man told his story as an exclusive to Jean Marc Aubert, a journalist for a local paper called Metropolitan in Montpellier. I asked Jean Marc if I could have the permission to have it voiced up so you and I can really experience what happened to him.
- [06:25]
B
Okay. Intriguing.
- [06:27]
A
He told his story anonymously, but to make it easier to follow, let's call him Philippe. And we've edited some of his sentences so they're clearer once translated.
- [06:40]
D
I met Sophia a few years ago. She was recommended to me by my physiotherapist, who had asked Sofia to contact her deceased father. I was in the same mental state because I had been really affected by my mother's death. And the person that referred me assured me that Sofia could put me in touch with my mother when I first met with her. She leads me into her sitting room and points to an armchair. I sit down and she sits in front of me. There's a table between us. I don't say anything. All of a sudden, a pen flies from the table towards the ceiling. It was not a dream or a hallucination, but that scene remains so fresh in my mind. And then she tells me, your mother is here and tells me her first name. I was a volunteer firefighter at the time. And Sophia, your mother, is the same age as the firefighter uniform you wear. How did she know I was a firefighter? How did she know the age of my mother? It was all too much, and I collapsed in tears. She pulled tarot cards and knew very precise details about my life. I thought, it's undeniable. She clearly has clairvoyant gifts. She sells me a tiger's eye stone on a cord, and she said it was necessary.
- [08:31]
B
Well, hang on a minute. So this guy goes to see Sophia because she's been recommended. He's grieving his dead mother, and he sits down and a pen flies off the table towards the ceiling. I mean, was this trickery? But then, hang on. She then knows that he's a firefighter, that his mother died at the same age as his uniform or whatever. So she's got detail.
- [08:59]
A
Well, is that detail?
- [09:01]
B
Well, I'd say so. I mean, how does she know that he was a firefighter?
- [09:04]
A
How does he know the age of his firefighter uniform? I just feel like comparing something to an inanimate object is maybe a very safe route to go if you're not sure of an exact year.
- [09:14]
B
But he's blown away either way. He's like, this is incredible. Okay, carry on.
- [09:24]
A
Just a few days after seeing Sofia for the first time, Philippe is walking in the town's market square on Saturday morning with his two children by his side. Pop up gazebos line both sides of the street, their white covers reflecting the morning sun. The family ambles through the crowd, past vendors selling dried meats, French cheeses and freshly baked loaves. Philippe's phone begins to ring. There's no caller id.
- [09:54]
D
Bonjour.
- [09:55]
A
Hello?
- [09:57]
D
Who is this?
- [09:58]
B
The Archangel Michael. I have been told to give you a message.
- [10:04]
D
What? What do you want?
- [10:08]
B
I have a message from Sophia.
- [10:10]
D
Sophia?
- [10:11]
B
Yes, Sophia. Her birthday is next week. It is important that you are there. You must follow this command.
- [10:21]
D
Okay, I'll be there.
- [10:25]
A
Reeling from the call, Philippe rushes home from the market. As soon as he's through the door, he dials Sophia's number. He had seen her the previous week for his first session and he needs to tell her what just happened. She is shocked to hear the Archangel Michael has called him. But she says if the Archangel has contacted him, then he must obey. Metropolitan reports that the next weekend he arrives at Sofia's grand villa for a party. As he joins the birthday celebration, he stops to scan around the room. There are families with small children, couples speaking with each other, and groups clustered. But Philippe notices something strange around the room. Small amber stones are glinting in the light. He looks down at the tiger stone on the cord hanging from his neck. It matches the stone the other guests are wearing on their own necklaces and bracelets. Where did they get them? He wonders. Is everyone here also her client?
- [11:38]
B
I mean, what staggers me about this is that Philippe didn't go. Who the hell are you on the phone? I mean, maybe he did, but he rocks up. He rocks up. We know that.
- [11:47]
A
And all the guests are wearing this tiger stone.
- [11:50]
B
Now, the weird thing about that party was that he noticed everybody was wearing the tiger's eye stone, weren't they?
- [11:57]
A
He says almost. Almost all of them.
- [11:59]
B
It's like a cult.
- [12:01]
A
As well as Sofia charging Philippe for one to one sessions and the tiger eye stone, she tells Philippe that the office where he works Needs its energy, cleansed energy. Cleansing is a practice rooted in the idea that negative energy or even deliberate sinister forces like spells can accumulate in a physical location.
- [12:20]
D
She arrives at my company to carry out the cleansing. She lights a stick of sage and walks with a cross and this stick in hand. Draw her the company to purify it, she tells me. Afterwards, I go for a drink with her and her husband. She explains to me that he is a national police officer stationed at the Agre police station. She asks me if I know someone among my many acquaintances to help her with procedures at the Caf de l' Ero because she has six children and cannot obtain certain information and support.
- [12:59]
A
So just to explain that the caf is the location familial, which roughly translates as the family allowance fund. The equivalent in the UK is kind of the child benefit system welfare in the us. So what I understand from that is that she knows that he's sort of has.
- [13:17]
B
So he's got connections.
- [13:18]
A
He's got connections.
- [13:19]
B
Okay, so already she's starting. She doesn't know this guy very well, Philippe, but already she's starting to work the system. She knows that he might have contacts, so she's working him and in the way that she was working Gilles. So it wasn't just Gilles that she was using, by the looks of things.
- [13:34]
A
Exactly.
- [13:36]
D
A couple of weeks later, I get another call from the Archangel Michael asking me to help with Sophia's husband, the police officer. I ask him how to help him. He tells me that the person I introduced to her from Kafka is in a very influential network and that they know great leaders and even high ranking people in the national police who can help her husband move up the ranks because he is very unhappy at the AGD police station. I didn't promise anything, but I told him I would see what I could do. He tells me that it is an order to help an angel on earth, in this case, Sofia. As soon as I hung up with the voice, I called Sofia to tell her everything. I couldn't hide the fact that I was anxious. She assures me by saying that I am under the protection of the Archangel Michael and that that's a very positive thing.
- [14:44]
B
Right? Okay, so here's the thing. And I'm quite sure that people listening are going to feel the same way about this. If I got a call from the Archangel Michael saying, look, you have now got to go and help Sapphira, you'd straight away be going, who the actual hell is this on the phone? I'm so interested in why Gilles, Philippe and other people, after getting a call from an archangel, didn't go, what the hell is going on here?
- [15:17]
A
Well, that was the last time Philippe received a call from the archangel. But he kept seeing Sofia until he catches her doing something shocking.
- [15:29]
D
I continued to see Sofia to connect with my mother and for energy cleansings at my office. We talked, we connected. It made me feel good. I didn't see anything else like the pen flying around the room until she returned to do another cleansing of my company. This time, my secretary was there with me. Suddenly, objects started to fall off a table. Sofia told me that this was a sign that my mother was here with me. My secretary convinced me not to believe in ghosts. And after Sofia left, we checked the security tapes on the cctv. We could clearly see Sophia use a discreet heel kick to make the objects fall.
- [16:28]
A
No.
- [16:29]
B
Total scammer.
- [16:32]
A
Oh, my God.
- [16:34]
B
Okay. She's mastered the art of sort of sleight of hand to make things move. Still didn't explain how the pen flew upwards in her apartment.
- [16:44]
A
I mean, I would go for magnets if that were me.
- [16:48]
B
Yes, magnets. Magnets. Oh, my God. But they saw her doing a heel kick, so that things that. Wow. Okay, so he must have said something, surely. Cause, I mean, imagine seeing that on cctv. You're like, holy fuck, I have just been completely scammed by this woman.
- [17:06]
A
Yeah. A little tap of her heel. Maybe it was pulling a wire or something. Using trickery in her sessions. Sophia has been caught in the act.
- [17:16]
D
I didn't talk to her about it. Afterwards, I opened my eyes, but it was too late. I understood that I was going through a very difficult period of unhappiness due to the death of my mother. I had become fragile and vulnerable. I never called her again. She tried to contact me several times. We had become friends because we had been talking for three years. But I'm a little ashamed to admit, in total, this psychic still took €10,000 from me. And that's not a small sum to me. Ashamed and sad. I understood that I was abused, trapped and defrauded for three years.
- [18:12]
B
That is truly shocking. That is truly shocking. €10,000 over three years. Wow. Wow. It's so complicated, this story, isn't it? Because I keep swinging between having sort of sympathy and empathy for Sophia. You know, she was a very abused child. She is hugely resourceful. She also has this desire to really want to help other people in their trauma. So there's also a good person in there that's trying to say I'm a good person. I don't want you to suffer in the way that I've suffered. And I want you to be able to connect with the people that have left you in the way that I was left when I was little. So there's all of that goodness in her, in a way. And yet here is this charlatan who is clearly manipulating and abusing people as well. It is so complicated.
- [19:02]
A
It's worth mentioning that I did speak to past clients of Sophia's who we heard from in previous episodes. And there were lots of people who felt truly soothed and helped by her.
- [19:14]
B
I just wonder whether there were just certain clients that she did this to. You know, clients who were in a position of power that could help her. So this is a woman that's just trying to get what she can from people who are powerful. Because then you've got all this other testimony, haven't you? These other clients saying, I was really sued, I was helped, and I never heard. And did they all hear from the Archangel Michael, all of her clients?
- [19:37]
A
Yeah, not all of them. All the clients I spoke to were women. And I did wonder if there was a correlation. There was the Archangel Michael only bringing powerful men. But we know at least one woman received a call from the Archangel Michael. And it was that call that would take the story from underground intrigue to worldwide news. And I'll tell you more about that in the next episode.
- [20:05]
B
The mystic and the Mayor was presented by me, Anna Richardson, and presented, researched.
- [20:10]
A
And produced by me, Leo Sheikh.
- [20:12]
B
The series was written and produced by Palama Kaufman. Our executive producers are Kelly Windsorbergin and Elsa Rochester.
- [20:19]
A
Sound design is by Kelly Craig Edmondson.
- [20:22]
B
The mystic and the Mayor is a co production between Audio Always and Bite your tongue Productions.
- [20:28]
A
I made multiple attempts to contact Gilles de Tor 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, Gilles and Sophia. And all defendants in the current investigation are presumed innocent until judgment.