All language subtitles for Swindlers.2026.S01E01.The.Julia.Holmes.Story.1080p.RTE.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-DoRN_track3_[eng]

INTERVIEWER:
Let's start at the beginning.

What do you remember
of Julia coming into your life?

I remember people calling her
by different names as a child.

MAN: Probably all of us have a
little sense of the dark triad

in us for certain things.

We just don't go as far
as Julia did.

She wanted a hug.

She wanted to be told
that we loved her.

There was no way she was
getting the kids,

and that's
all she wanted.

Julia Parrish, Croein Ruttle.

He had invested $392,000.

I think she was compelled to con.

She had pretty much swindled
half the businesses in this town.

Yeah, but what if I'm wrong?

Because apparently
she's dying of cancer.

There was no feeling,
no emotion in her eyes.

She would just...

You're looking there for
a second, saying, right,

he shot her, he shot himself.
Evil is what you call her.

Just pure evil.

INTERVIEWER: What did you
know about her past life?

That she told me or
that I found out?

And when?
That she told you.

Okay, this is fun.
You ready?

Buckle up.

(intriguing music plays)

REPORTER: On the 18th of May,
2015, a gang of thieves who broke

into this house in Boolaglass
in Askeaton to steal scrap

metal made a grim discovery.

You know, burglars finding
two dead bodies,

reporting it to us
before our knowledge.

Could we have predicted who this
woman would become in our

investigation?

There was names coming at us,
different first name,

different second name.
Julia...

appeared to be
the common trend.

Put this lady's name into a
search engine and... up it comes.

This lady was infamous.

She was wanted by the PSNI
for fraud offences.

She had been convicted
in the United States.

She certainly burned
a lot of people.

Who is this woman?

We had to identify
what kinda footprint,

and it was a big footprint
that this lady left.

For Cecilia Julian McKitterick,
life begins in the small

rural town of Castlederg.

Born in 1952, there's very little
known about her early years.

What is established, though,
is that when she's 19,

she marries a British soldier.

She has a son with him,
and then when he's six

months old, she leaves.

I guess the biggest date,
the beginning of this whole

journey, was the abandonment
of her son in 1972.

And then we jump forward
11 years to 1983,

and she's in Armagh jail,
the women's prison.

We think she was in there
because of some issue over

missing television sets.

Not a pleasant place to be.

You go forward another year,

she's then moving
her mind into America.

But instead of going to America
legally and getting a visa,

getting the tickets,
getting everything done properly.

She goes into Canada,
and then she skips into America,

and she does that illegally.

You embody the goals that guide
the Republican Party,

and you represent the future,
a future of opportunity.

Now is the time to become active.

INTERVIEWER:
Can you remember how they met?

Yes, they met through
mutual friends at a party.

Our parents had recently divorced
in 1984, and we went from our

parents being divorced to this
woman with us everywhere we went.

She did this thing where she
would be very relatable to you.

I have a dog.
Oh, I have a dog, too.

And I went here. Oh, I went there,
too. Isn't it lovely?

And even if it was total farce,
she was definitely

trying to relate to you in some
way, and she wanted to insert

herself in every aspect
of your life.

I don't believe that my dad ever
saw his parents without her

after they met.

Yeah, she was charming.
She was sweet.

We went from my dad being
our caretaker when we were at his

home to Julia being our caretaker,
and that happened overnight.

It happened in the of an eye, and
there was no transition to that.

She just was so keen on inserting
herself into our lives.

I think my dad was like,
this is great.

It's a built-in mom.

JILLY: She marries this guy,
poor Clyde Parrish,

not telling anybody that
she's already married and

has never divorced.

So that's a bigamist marriage.

That's pretty big crime
in most states.

My memories of Julia.

I first met Julie in March 2011.

Dad said he had split up with his
then-girlfriend, who I'd

actually really grown to like.

She just came out of nowhere.

His mother told him
basically everything to do.

And I think that's
what he saw in her.

He was very kind,
very shy.

He wouldn't be the one to put
himself forward, but genuine.

If he said something,
he meant it.

There was no bull with him.

He was a lovely guy.

Sure, I was with him.
He was lovely. (laughs)

Tom actually said they met
online, a dating app.

She saw him coming.

A man with two children,
having him every second weekend.

Oh, this is lovely.
I can go and hide

in that lovely
little family group.

She was kinda running his life,
I would say, at that time.

And that was only
the first time I met them.

When we met her,
she had constantly asked us,

do we love her? And we were...
I was 14 at the time.

Maybe it was the first weekend
that Ian came back and

he said to me that she keeps
asking me, Mum, do I love her?

And she wanted hugs
and everything.

And Ian just said,
I don't know her mum.

I felt guilty that
I didn't love her, but...

this is probably the
second time that I met her.

She wanted this family image.

I don't understand really
what it was about.

1972, her son is born
and she leaves him.

She's in County Down by this
stage and he's six months old.

He's left to be raised
by his paternal grandparents.

Very little. You wonder when
the liar in her starts.

Paul died at 13 from leukaemia.

JILLY: I was sorry I knocked
the door because...

the look on his face
has never left me.

It was shocking to me when I found
Paul alive and doing very well.

My heart broke for him
because he said,

I don't want anybody to think
I have anything to do with her.

She left that child

to become a
professional fraudster.

Dodged a great big
bullet by her leaving.

It was probably the best thing
that could have happened

to him,
was her leaving him.

It started in Houston.

She was going by Julia Holmes,
Dr. Holmes, because

did you guys know
that she said she

was a psychiatrist?
With a medical degree?

Then it turned into a PhD,
so I don't really know which one.

The reason it's so ingrained
in my brain was that she was

actually seeing a little boy
who was around my age and claiming

to be a child psychiatrist.

She had a framed diploma.

She saw patients.

She took money for those services,
and she provided counselling.

It was a very strange thing.
It was a very brazen thing to do.

The adults were so charmed by her,
and they were enamoured by her.

She was the most wonderful thing
that had ever happened to them.

And the kids, we weren't so much.

One little mistake and
one little error,

she would hit us, hard.

It was very cunning because
she wouldn't do it in front

of other adults.
We would say, she just hit me.

She would say, Oh, no, no, no.
They're just saying that.

And she would spin it as,
they don't like me because I'm

the stepmother, and they're
trying to push us apart.

And as an adult, that
sounds very reasonable because

she's a child psychiatrist,
don't you know?

I think there was never a time
until I was a teenager that I was

with her,
that she wasn't hitting me.

My dad worked, and always
has worked, very, very hard.

He's incredible work ethic.

He had a place on Korff,
and then

I'm sure that the lease
that he had

on that place, she probably
messed that up in some way.

Then he had to run his
shop out of our garage.

It was the first sign of,
well, that's a big shift.

Within a year of her coming
on board, he's now in a garage.

Julia had made a rule that
we were not to see

my dad's
parents anymore.

I guess at some point,
they've realised that something's

a little off. Creditors calling,
things that way.

I remember it like it was
yesterday,

we had gone to my dad's,
and it was a Saturday.

I was sitting behind my dad,
so she whipped around,

and she said to me, you've
been seeing your Pa and Granny.

We told you if you saw your
Pa and Granny anymore,

you would no longer see
your Dad and I.

And at this point,
my sister's crying, I'm crying.

The entire way there,
she berated us,

called us liars,
called us everything you could

think of to a small child.

I don't know what
my dad was thinking.

I don't remember him saying
anything the entire time.

When we arrived back at
my mother's home,

Julia lunged at my mother

and physically attacked
her in our driveway.

Very soon after that,
very, very soon, they left.

Looking back, I know
now she had run up debts.

And picking a fight with me
and having that reason to leave.

That was just the beginning of,
We have to get out of here.

Oh, look at your daughters.
They're so hateful.

They don't even appreciate
that you're here.

I've always thought she always had
an idea of where she wanted to go

next, and I've always felt
like she had pre-planned it.

There was a jewellery store
located next to

their print shop,
and it was so crazy.

She somehow convinced
them to allow her

to borrow jewellery,

and then she would
go back and tell them,

I never borrowed
that jewellery before.

I'd spoken to the jeweller,
and they said, Oh, yes,

she stole all of that from us.

So there's this trail of crime
that they're leaving behind,

but she's never
been convicted yet.

It boggled my mind that she could
continue to, and it probably was

the reason that gave
her so much confidence.

At the end
of March 2011,

I remember getting a phone
call and I answered it.

It was Tom, and he was
very different.

He was very cocky,
very sure of himself.

And straight away, I went,
something going on here.

I don't know what it is,

but I know there's
something going on here.

So she came on the phone then
and she eat the face off me

and told me
I wasn't fit to be a mother.

You've met your match,
and all this kinda stuff.

And I went, Oh, my God,

I don't know
what is going on here.

My world just tumbled
down right in front of me.

She's crazy.
She's absolutely crazy.

She started telling me that
they had been in a relationship

before,
and I knew this was all lies.

Lies, lies, lies, everything.

Tom had only met her
for three weeks.

A couple of days later,
when Ian got his new card,

he accepted her
request to be friends.

And she had put up a post about,
I've met a fantastic man.

I'm really in love with him.

And in the package
is two lovely boys.

In my head, I just saw red.
That's it.

I know what she's after.

There was no way she
was getting the kids,

and that's
all she wanted.

I believe
by the time they got

to Arizona,
she was no longer a doctor.

But yeah, I remember her having
all these different names,

and I remember people calling her
by different names as a child.

Someone would call her Jay,
and she had a big story when they

lived in New Mexico that
she could not be known to be

a female business owner,
so she had to change her name

to Jay, J-A-Y.

So the woman we got to know was
Julia, started life as

Cecilia Julia McKittrick,
but she had dozens of names

throughout her
criminal enterprises.

Elizabeth Holmes, Parrish Watson.

Jay Holmes, Jay Parrish.

Julia O'Neill, Julia Hunter,
Julia Greer, Julie Ruttle,

Julia Ruttle, Jules Ruttle,
Julian Ruttle.

Julia Parrish, Croein Ruttle. I
think Julia Greer or Julie Greer.

Silver Light Ruttle,

posing as a high priestess
witch on Facebook (chuckle),

and she was also
White Wolf, Quiet spirit.

And she posed then as
a shaman on Facebook as well.

And people responded to her.

She started saying that her name
was Bonnie Parrish

so that she could say that she and
my dad were Bonnie and Clyde.

I think she would frequently
use a different name

and then have to backtrack

and then try to gaslight you
into believing

that she never said that.

She never said her name was PJ.

Why would you make that up,
Morris?

Why would you do that?
You're fibbing.

That's a lie.

And she was very convincing.

She was gaslighting before any
of us used the term gaslighting.

Where do you store
all that history

for when you want
to convince your

next person that you're
going to groom, who you are?

Do you keep a book?

How do you do that?

Because if you work from truth,
you've only got one set

of memories to deal with.

But if you work from all of her
lies, she had acres of lies.

That she told me or
that I found out?

Okay, this is fun.
You ready?

Buckle up.

(man chuckles)
Okay.

She was the only girl,
and she had two older brothers.

They owned all this land
in Ireland, and they were very

wealthy, and they
called her every Sunday.

I don't know who she was talking
to, but she would have

conversations on the phone with
someone in Ireland, supposedly.

They were always coming to visit.

But you heard the term
catfishing, right?

She was doing a reverse catfish.

They have two little boys,
exactly my sisters and my age.

I mean, we are just ecstatic.
These are cousins.

They're coming to see us.

Before we go to the airport
to pick them up,

Julia gets a call.

The entire family is wiped out.
They're all dead.

They're all dead.

Fiery car crash on the way
to the airport to come to Houston

to see his sister,
his beloved sister.

His wife is dead.
The two children are dead.

Fiery car crash, dead.
All of them dead.

She had so much loss in her family
of people who were coming

to visit us that just died.

It was the craziest thing.

I remember being really upset
that these people had died.

And no, they weren't dead
because they never existed.

She had to just go into the room
and lock herself away,

and she was very distraught.

And, oh, my goodness,
the entire world has ended.

She should have been an actress.

She would have won awards.

(crackly voice recording)

The only contact we had was text
messages, phone calls,

but it was never dad that was
on the other end of the phone.

It was always her.

She had him
controlled at that point.

Three or four months later,
she confronted me,

and and asked me,
did I have a problem with her.

And it was that same day that she
told me she was pregnant.

She would have been 59 that day,
so not entirely sure

what that was about.

So they were going to get
married.

And at this point,
it was too crazy for me.

It was too crazy for me.

And she knew she wasn't getting
the boys for this so-called

wedding, which wasn't a wedding,
it was a blessing.

And she got very,
very cross with that.

So then she made up that Ian was
making the dinners and he was

looking after the kids,
all this lies.

So she rang social services
and said all that stuff to them.

And I was taken
into social services.

She was doing everything in her
power to get the lads.

We actually ended up
going up to the house

a couple of months later.

There was nobody there.
They weren't there.

Ian was really pining
for his dad at this point.

So I stayed in the car and then
they arrived into the yard.

There was nobody there.

So we went walking in the field
where he usually has the bees,

and then they shut up.

I don't remember
what they said or anything.

I just remember being behind Ian,
just looking at the grass.

He just told me,
just leave, just leave.

He said it was legal matter
between him and my mum,

so we just had to leave.

It's a lot of feelings...
that you kinda push down.

She didn't even look
at either of us.

She just walked
straight into the house.

There are three types
of folks from East Texas.

You got law enforcement, you have
preachers and you have criminals.

And on occasion, there might
be one or two of the same.

As you look into the background
of people, it's very interesting

to see to what extent
they will go

to bolster their
own reputation as

being reliable and dependable
and someone that you can trust.

And that's essential
to be a good con artist.

People have to trust you.

And for Julia and Clyde,
both of them,

Claim to be ministers,
people of the cloth.

In East Texas, this is
not only the Bible Belt,

this is the buckle of
the Bible Belt.

If you are a minister,
you have very high

standing in the community.

But to be a minister, you simply
need to proclaim you're minister.

And in Julia's case,
she just put it on her business

card that she was
Reverend Julia Parrish.

She was a rock star in Athens.
She hit her stride in Athens.

She was part of whatever
the county Republican Party Group

supporters were.

She was very involved in community
service there and bought a little

piece land in town and put some
mobile homes on there,

and they rented them out
or sold them.

In East Texas,
there's an organisation called

the Cattle Barons Association,
and every year, they put together

a big gala, a big ball
to raise funds for cancer,

and she was part of that and she
even made a large donation.

The community saw that,
and they saw that she was willing

to sacrifice her
own personal funds.

Little did they know,
they weren't her funds.

They were people she swindled.

She was making very large
purchases, larger than anything

I had ever seen her make before.

The land, very expensive
jewellery, very expensive coats.

I remember going with her and her
telling these young ladies,

she was showing off her jewellery
and her saying, If you get a rich

man, too, he'll buy you
jewellery like this.

I remember thinking,
my dad didn't buy her that.

There's something
called the dark triad,

psychological traits that
we often see in con artists.

There's narcissism,
which is where people have a very

high regard for themselves.

She fancied herself to be a
very strong political advocate,

a certain group, certain party.

She had photographs
that she showed people

of her with Vice President
Dan Quayle, for instance.

She had another photograph that
she showed people where she was

with the actor Patrick Swayze.

But that helped bolster
her narcissism there.

The other one is
the idea that

you have psychopathic
tendencies.

And what that is, is simply you
don't have any kind of

empathy for others.

You don't feel there's a guilt
from taking their money.

It's no big deal for a doctor to,
take money from him because

he's making all this money.

People have insurance,
so they rationalise through it.

But still, she had victims there.

The third part of the triad
is machiavellianism.

The idea that you're cunning
and you use this cunning

to manipulate people, get them
to do what you want them to do.

There's certain levels of
this dark triad that...

you see it in serial killers,

but you see it very
often in the con artist.

From July 2012, the lads didn't
see Tom at all from then on.

The last time, very last time
I met him, Dad took Mum to court.

He was arrears in
child support payments.

One of the ways I think that they
wanted to get out was,

he was thinking
that I wasn't his child.

So he wanted a DNA test done.

He did actually try to do
this paternity test three times.

You wouldn't recognise him.

I just remember he was
very cold, very distant.

Have you stooped that low?

How low are we going
to go, like, with this?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

A 100%, she was doing it.

How can someone that
looked after us and loved us so

much, go so cruel and cold
in such a short amount of time.

2001 is when my second
son was born.

So after that,
we were seeing each other again.

I would go up and
spend a few days.

And then whenever my dad
was diagnosed with cancer,

I think my dad really
wanted us back in his life.

One morning, I received
a complaint from a doctor,

Dennis Rose.

He told me a story that was
rather hard to believe

how he had been swindled
out of nearly $400,000.

A lot of the victims
will basically

say, okay, I lost it, and
I'm not doing anything because

I don't want word getting out.

And again, somebody
like Dennis Rose is

in a small town, small community,
and word is going to get out.

Dennis Rose was Clyde Parrish's
oncologist and a well-known

and well-liked doctor.

He got to know Julia
very well during the time

of Clyde's treatment.

I think that my dad genuinely
liked them, and he had no idea.

She's grooming the oncologist
while the oncologist is

saving her husband's life.
I find that kinda mind-blowing.

The opportunity was, that she had
inherited a large bit of land

in Ireland, and that land
consisted of old buildings.

She and a cousin of hers,
who was an attorney,

had proposed to renovate these
old buildings and turn them into

single-family dwellings.

If they would invest now, they
could expect to receive up to

700% returns on their investment.

Based on the fact
that they were friends

and the fact that

Dennis Rose had basically
saved her husband's life,

this was a was
a believable story,

and it was something that
he was willing to take part in.

She mentioned to him
that other investors

had not been able to come

up with the money, so
this was an extra opportunity

that he had to invest more.

So he continued to invest
incrementally until he

had invested $392,000.

Julia and Clyde started
working on their friends.

From there on, they were
able to get at least four

other people involved
in the scheme.

So we had a total of
$517,000 people had invested

into this scheme before
it started to come unravelled.

But it was Dennis Rose
that was her downfall

in America because he was

told that you'll
get a lot of money back,

plus interest and everything.
And he wanted his money back.

I would expect,
if this was a legitimate

investment,
that Dennis Rose's

cheques would
be cashed and that she

would send that
amount over to Ireland

for the construction project.
None of that was taking place.

What I did find, though, was
that Julia was writing cheques

for purchase of new vehicles.

She had Rolex watches,
all kinds of expenditures that

were well above her means.

Looking things up online
was sorta the new thing to do.

So I'd always been very interested
in her past because her

past was so variable.

It just depended on the day.

I She managed to get a hold
of the social security number she

was using, and I traced her back
to a young lady who had

passed away who lived in Ohio.

I've often wondered if me looking
into all that, threw up red flags.

Once you show your hand,
they're scattering like rats.

They're going and
destroying evidence.

She wasn't even in
the country legally,

so she was a flight risk.

One of the best things you can do
when you're confronting a con

artist is get them
to lie to you.

Let her lay out
what this investment was.

We took Julia into her office.
We sat her down.

I introduced myself as
an FBI agent,

and the colour went away
from her face.

And I just sat there for
a moment and just let her

collect her thoughts.

And I said, Okay,
tell me about Dennis Rose.

She had gone 19 and a half years,
and she had scammed everyone

that she ever met. She had become
so proficient at walking that line

and playing that game.

I think she believed
she was untouchable.

She explained the investment
from top to bottom.

At that point, I said, Julia,
I don't think that is true.

I think this is a fraud.

I think you defrauded
Dennis Rose.

And she said, oh, no, no,
I haven't done that.

This is an actual investment.

And then I put before her
the telephone records.

You don't have any calls
to Ireland.

And then she turned
another shade of white.

And then I put before her
the bank records,

and I said, do you see these
bank records right here?

There's no indication that any
of the funds that you've taken in

have gone over
for any investments.

That's when she came up
with her next lie.

You don't understand.

I've been involved in gambling,
and I have all these gambling

debts, and that's
what I was using.

I intended to send it over there.

And then I said, Julia,
that's not the case.

You spend it.

You got Rolex watches,
other investments.

Clyde had an
ultra light aircraft.

And at that point, she pretty
much said, Okay, you got me.

That's the point
that I arrested her.

Between July 29, 2002,

and continuing until
at least December 18,

2003, Julia Parrish,

who was then
Clyde Parrish's wife,

devised a scheme and artifice

to defraud and to obtain money
by means of false pretences,

representations and
promises from,

among others, Dennis Rose.

There wasn't a whole lot
of evidence that she produced

showing this
investment in Ireland.

She was well in the community.

She was well respected
in the community.

And if she said,
I have this property in Ireland

and you can make
money investing in it,

that seemed
to be good enough.

The next thing is, is
we got to keep her detained.

We can't let her get out on bail
because if she does, she's gone.

So we made a case, a very strong
case, that she was a flight risk.

And the judge listened
to our side and kept her

in jail until we could be
prepared for trial.

As part of the scheme,
Julia Parrish, on various dates,

communicated via email with Rose
to encourage him to invest.

In the federal system,
if you use the internet as,

for example, send email,
that's wire fraud

so she plead to that one count
and got 27 months.

Once it was just presented to him,
he was like, Oh, my God.

I had no idea.

Should he have known?
Yeah.

But we all should have known.

Someone should have done
something at some point.

Clyde ultimately wound up
entering a plea

to what we call
misprison of felony,

which in layman's terms means

that he knew she was committing
fraud, and he helped cover it up.

He ultimately plead guilty
and did prison time.

Clyde never went back into the
dark realm of being a criminal.

As far as being a wife and
doing the homemaking stuff,

she was amazing at that.

But at the end of the day,

it doesn't matter
how well-kept you

are, you really have to know
someone for who they are.

Even if he did see those things,
I think that we all have blinders

on with people that we love.

She was above-average
intelligence,

and I would have thought for sure

she would see the error
of her ways and straighten up.

But that wasn't the case.

Strabane is a small town.
Everyone knows everyone.

So to have someone blow into town
the way she did this hurricane

of colour and energy and ideas
and creativity, and she was going

to do this, and
she was going to...

Yeah, it was fun in a sense.

She was American as well,
which gave her this air

of mystique around here as well.

She was looking
for an advertisement.

I invited her into the office,
and she was there in her red coat

and the black hair,
and she had a colourful scarf on.

And yeah, very confident
and flirty and nice.

And she says, Hi, I'm JJ.

And I said, Okay, JJ,
what's your second name?

And she's,
don't worry about a surname.

Just JJ is fine.

She's calling herself JJ now.

She starts working then
in Sand Mills in a spa,

Health and Wellness Centre.

She had somehow talked her way
into that and was talking

about buying that business.

And that's what the
advertiser ended up being,

about the well-being spa,
how she had taken it over.

I suppose when we didn't
get paid for advertisement,

(chuckle)
that was slightly alarming.

It was a guy who was
an Australian

and had been in
a really serious accident.

He ended up getting compensation.

She groomed him.

She convinced him that
she was a qualified,

trained and experienced
psychiatrist,

and that she could help him
through this PTSD

and help him deal
with the trauma

that he'd lived with.

So the poor guy believed her,
handed over his money,

and that was it.

She worked her magic on me
pretty well.

And the initial amount that
went in there

was approximately 54,000 euro.

It was hard to get
anybody to be named.

I could see the evidence,
I could see the proof,

I could sit down with people
and look through

where money had gone missing.

Then I would have made
an approach and they would have

been just mortified.

She had managed to work her way
into clothing businesses,

furniture businesses, hardware.

She'd managed to get her
house furnished.

She had pretty much swindled half
the businesses in this town,

including the Strabane Chronicle.

I spoke to Denise Adams,
a lovely lady.

Denise suffered very badly.

Tens of thousands, not hundreds
of thousands of pounds.

She'd either signed over
the business or given a lot

of money to Julia Holmes
out of her own pocket.

And I think it's
almost bankrupt her.

When I'd done all my paperwork
and there was no more to be done,

it was time now,
what keeping you, JJ?

So then she started
making excuses

that this million pound
was coming,

million and a half was coming,
and it never did come.

And she talked about receiving
a letter from Julia Holmes,

just talking about,
you'll be fine.

You're a very strong woman.

And I think she was just
resigned to the fact that she

had lost money. She wasn't going
to let it destroy her.

I think it nearly did.

I first came across her.

She was back in court
in Down Patrick in County down

for another fraud
of one gentleman

to the amount of £18,000.

She had already been
in prison twice,

and she was at this stage
heading for prison again if

she got into a trial.

When she came into
that huge courtroom,

you could see her coming in to
scan, and she scanned everybody.

And I know she would have
clicked onto me.

I wanted her to see me.

I wanted her to see,
I'm watching you.

She had a tag on at that stage,
an electronic tag,

and she had applied for the tag
to be removed because she

said it didn't suit her.

It wasn't meant to be a fashion
statement, but anyway,

she wanted that removed,
and then she just skipped town.

Her trail just vanished.

She could have been
anywhere at that stage.

What an afternoon,
about four o'clock,

I got a phone call
on the shop phone

from a friend of mine who was
in a hotel around the corner.

She said she was with this couple
who were creating this honey.

Could she ask them to drop around
to me and to try and get

the honey to
the right people?

She said, just so you know,

Croein, the woman,
is wearing a wig

as she has terminal cancer.

And I said, Okay, well,
I'll see what I can do for them.

The gentleman Tom seemed
a very nervous type of person.

Not at all comfortable.

Whereas she was quite forward,
walked straight up to the desk I

was standing at, introduced
herself and said,

Oh, we're creating this.

And if you can get these to maybe
some of your friends in Dublin.

And I said,
yeah, leave them with me.

I picked the phone and rang
a friend of mine in Dublin,

a senior journalist, and said,
look, I have some products here.

Some of it has been
suggested to be sent to you.

But just instinctively,
I feel something about this

that I don't trust,
and I don't know why.

And she said, Oh,
go with your instinct, Paul.

Go with your instinct.
And I said,

Yeah, but what if I'm wrong?

Because, apparently,
she's dying of cancer.

I only remember when we were
beekeeping with him,

he even bought us the suits,
the two of us.

He would have a special tool
that you do to uncap the honey.

It would pull all the honey out
into this bucket,

and then we just jar it.

They got invited to
everything and anything.

I mean, they won an award
for the honey,

as you probably know,
the Blas na hÉireann,

which is a highly regarded,
well-respected award for food

producers in Ireland.

They went to restaurant awards
that everybody goes to,

made sure they got their photos
posted with the right

people in the right places.

She was constantly tweeting
quite a few of us

and showing photos and photos
of products, trying to get

promotion and stuff.

One day, this person in the UK,
tagged into our photos and to our

tweets and said, Don't believe
that woman, she's a fake.

(phone notification)

So in May 2013,
the PSNI were getting pretty

desperate to find Julia Holmes,
and they launched a public

appeal through the media.

A glamorous granny
who jumped bail

on fraud charges two years ago,

maybe in the Galway area,
police had said.

Julia Holmes,
who also goes by the name

of Dr. Watson and Julia Parrish,

vanished after being accused
of an 18,000-pound fraud.

I found out that she had absconded
and she had gotten away,

and they were looking for her.
Then I was really sleuthing then

because now I'm doing
international sleuthing.

She had created this
fake company in which she was

claiming to have cancer and
she had all these bees,

and this was harvesting
honey from her own hives.

If you all stand over here. I'll
stand in front of the beehive.

Hello, you.

Oh, you're not happy, are you?

They only found one beehive.

They obviously knew there was
no way you could go into

production with just one.

And then it was discovered
that they were just

buying honey from a
reputable supermarket store

and decanting it into
a posher jar, shall we say.

She was entering honey contests,
and this is ending up on not

just social media, but media.

She's showing up in newspapers,
so she's back to being

very brazen again.

Totally different name,
of course, but it's still her.

I think someone had called out
the fact that she wore wigs,

and that's where the cancer thing
started was, Oh, I have cancer.

If the story had been true,
if she actually had cancer,

and if they were creating
that honey,

it was a good product,

obviously, and a genius, really.

This particular Sunday night
was rather quiet.

As I said, it just
landed a few days before.

So we were settling in and
was getting to know the new unit.

One of my colleagues came out
and said that there's a man

wanted to speak with you.

So went into the public office.

I saw a family that
I would know locally,

the leader of the family,

and four young males
belonging to him.

They were very upset.

They were blessing themselves
with the holy pictures.

Brought them into
a room out back.

The story then he started
to tell us was amazing.

The four lads with him
had gone out

on the Askeaton Rathkeale road,
down near Nantinan Cemetery,

and they knew that
the place had been vacant.

They reckoned that the people
living in it had been

gone for some time.

He said that they set about
looking for scrap

around the sheds
and the yards,

and that it got
to better them then

that when they weren't disturbed,
they decided to break into the

house to see if
they could find more.

Myself and Ian were in Limerick,
and Ian was swimming

heavy at the time, right?
So he was inside doing a gala.

So we said we got up the road

and we get a paper
and a sandwich,

and there was splashed all
over the front of the paper.

Two people absconded,
blah, blah, blah.

Nobody knows where they are.

So we saw the article
in Limerick Leader.

We went to the neighbours
to see if there was any movement

in the last while.

We just went in and
had a look around.

Looking back on the timeline,
it would have been exactly

when everything
actually happened,

the weekend that we were there.

She obviously had a plan,
and that was that, really.

The leader of the family had said
to me, the Ruttle man,

up from Nantinan Cemetery, was
the house we were looking for,

and that the lady with him

was wanted by the police
in the North.

Bear in mind, it's nearly 10: 00
to 3: 00 in the morning at this

stage, and we landed
to the farmhouse.

I suppose what was in our head
was we had to keep an open mind

that what the people at
the station were telling us

might not be necessarily
what's going on.

We climbed over this gate,
myself and five colleagues,

and went in to a house with no
power, no light, no electricity.

Scrap on the ground,
place in total darkness.

We're all operating
with torchlight.

Straight away,
even though it was May,

you could feel the
coldness in the house.

Walked then into a kitchen
and you could see a big table

with a lot of notes
and letters on the table.

If you find this,
don't revive us.

We have said goodbye.

Words to that effect.

Got up to the top of the stairs,
and the first door on the left

was slightly ajar.

I stood into the room.

And there they were.

As described, two corpses,
very much decomposed,

had been there a long time,
and a shocking sight.

It was an absolute
shock for us all.

They didn't get to say
goodbye to him or anything.

And there was a lot
of things unsaid.

It looked for all the world to us
that it was a murder suicide,

that there was a firearms used
because of the position

of the bodies and
her face had been damaged.

I took it that under bad light,
that she may have been shot.

What I did notice was
there was an ash bucket

at the end of the bed and there
was other bits and pieces around,

but there was
nothing remarkable else.

REPORTER: Tragedy calls
to a rural community.

The bodies of Thomas
and Julia Ruttle were discovered

by Gardaí in an upstairs bedroom
at their home here just before

three o'clock this morning.

It was clear that both
had died violently.

Then the postmortem took place

and there was
no fireman discharged.

REPORTER:
The inquest into their deaths

today heard how
the embers of three

makeshift barbecues were found
in a fireplace in the bedroom.

There was a chimney in the room,
and there was windows

and whatever else,
had all been sealed.

It cancelled all
the air out of the room.

The state pathologist
Mary Cassidy said the cause

of the couple's death cannot be
confirmed, but the circumstances

were consistent with carbon
monoxide poisoning.

Coroner Antoinette Simon
said verdicts of suicide

were the only option.

It just seemed a really strange
turn of events for her

to go out like that.

I just thought she would just
continue on until she died,

a little old lady at 90 still
conning people out of their money.

In the inquest, I really wanted
to know who died first.

Did she force him to do that?

It's all those notes
that they left.

She wrote them all.

Most of them lies,
but she wrote everything.

She did it.

That's what
I like to believe, anyway.

We'll never know, obviously.

Evil.
Evil is what you call her.

Just pure evil.

Evil.

She was on the run
the whole time,

but she didn't care about that
trail of destruction

that she left.

You can always make more money,
but the damage that she

did to families.

My whole personality
is built around it.

I had to put up a wall.

That was Ian's birthday,
and you were given out.

He was vulnerable, and
this person just took him over

and took over his whole life,
changed completely.

And yes, I'm angry because
everything would have been so

different, and the boys
would have their father,

and he would love

to see the men that they've
turned out because he had

lots to do with it.
(emotional) God, sorry.

Sorry, Lads. It's okay.
Oh, my God.

I'm sorry, I didn't expect that.

Anyway.

Anyway.

Good?
Yeah.

Yeah, and if he was alive, he
would be a part of their lives.

Sorry.

Rationally, I have been assured

by police,
that they did a DNA test,

and they are 100% it's her.

It just seems so
unbelievable in such

a strange and very dramatic end
for a person who lived

a very dramatic life.

There are days that I think,
was it really her?