Yahoo News Mum stunned after discovering 'secret agent' husband has fathered 13 children to six women
She thought she had the perfect marriage until one day a phone call turned her life upside down.
Mary Turner Thomson, 53, from Edinburgh, met William Allen Jordan, who claimed to be a CIA agent on secondment at the Ministry of Defence, online when she was a single mum with a tiny baby.
But in April 2006, after 14 years marriage, a woman calmly told her she was the other Mrs Jordan before unravelling their husband’s lies.
Jordan a prolific bigamist turned out to have fathered at least 13 children with six women.
She recalled: “For more than an hour, I listened to Michelle as she pulled my life apart. She calmly told me that she and my husband, Will Jordan, the father of my two younger children, had been married for 14 years and had five children together.
“He’d had numerous affairs and had fathered two children with Michelle’s nanny. As she talked I realised that all three of us, Michelle, her nanny and I, had four-year-olds with the same father.
“We had all been pregnant at the same time; in fact, they had both been pregnant when Will first contacted me through an online dating agency.”
She says the scenes are like something straight from the BBC One thiller Mrs Wilson, inspired by the true story of war-time spy and bigamist, Alexander Wilson.
Mary told the Daily Record: “Watching the series has been very like looking at my own story.
“I met William online when I was a single mum with a nine-month-old baby. He was very charming.
“We started dating and he actually asked me to marry him within two weeks of meeting – I said, ‘No’, but we did eventually get engaged then we were married for four years.
“After six months of being together, I fell pregnant, which was a huge surprise because he told me he was infertile.”
After duping vulnerable Mary into believing he was a secret agent he would tell her he was being deployed on a ‘mission’ – only to use the time to visit his other children.
He even persuaded her to hand over £200,000 to pay blackmailers who he claimed had threatened to kidnap their children, Robyn, now 19 and from Mary’s previous relationship, along with Eilidh, now 16, and Zach, now 13, who she was pregnant with at the time.
She said: “I thought if we didn’t give them money, they would kill the kids. I was living in abject error.”
The American’s lies fell apart when the other Mrs Jordan rang Mary in April 2006. He was jailed for bigamy, illegally possessing a stun gun, fraud, and other offences.
He served two-and-a-half years of a five-year sentence, and was deported to the US but carried on defrauding women and was jailed. Mary says he is now free again and still living the life of a conman.
Mary, now an author, added: “Will was, and is, very, very good at what he does. He finds a victim, then finds a weakness and uses it. He has been doing it all of his life. I was the perfect prey – a single mum who was a bit lonely and wanted someone to love me.
“Looking back at the way he manipulated me, the best comparison I can draw is that of a cat playing with a mouse: the cat has no emotion or compassion for the mouse; it is just a game and about control. It is fun. Will is the predator; we are the prey.
“I do not take it personally, because it is not personal. The cat does not choose one mouse in particular – it could be any mouse that strays into its path.”
