When Jenny Esler first met Susan Goose just over ten years ago she certainly never envisaged this nondescript woman would come to ruin every aspect of her life — her business, her marriage, even her health.
Jenny, busy running a thriving seafood business, knew Susan only as the mother of her lodger Danny, who lived in the annexe of Jenny’s comfortable rural home, set amid four acres in the Norfolk village of Upper Sheringham.
If anything, she felt sorry for Susan: through Danny, she knew that in 2006 her daughter Chloe had been killed aged just 14 after the car in which she was a passenger careered out of control and crashed. The 19-year-old male driver, who also died, had been over the limit, and speeding.
A genuine tragedy then — one which would come to play a significant part in Jenny’s own future.
For, over the next eight years, Susan Goose, 63, callously manipulated Jenny, 70, into bankrolling a bogus legal battle over an alleged inheritance from a former friend she claimed had sexually abused Chloe before her death.
Susan Goose, 63, pictured, callously manipulated Jenny Esler, 70, into bankrolling a bogus legal battle over an alleged inheritance from a former friend she claimed had sexually abused her daughter Chloe before her death
In 2006, Susan’s daughter Chloe was killed aged just 14 after the car in which she was a passenger careered out of control and crashed
The size of the inheritance — which changed over the years but which Goose once claimed was £10 million — was his way of showing remorse. But his will was being contested by his sons, she said.
Who could not be moved by such a terrible tale? And, as Jenny says, who could ever imagine anyone would lie about such a thing?
‘It would be almost beyond belief,’ as she puts it.
Except that heartless Susan Goose was a liar — a ruthless liar, as the police would later find.
Using her dead daughter as ‘bait’, she persuaded seven different victims — including Jenny — to hand over large sums for the legal fight she maintained she was undertaking in Chloe’s name.
But there was no abuse, no legal battle, — and never had been. Susan was blowing at least £130,000 on online gambling sites.
By the time Jenny and her family discovered the truth, it was too late.
Jenny had handed over about £252,000 and in the process lost her beautiful home, her business, her marriage and even her health. The stress of her now catastrophic financial situation brought on a stroke in 2019.
How could anyone be so cruel? It is a question that has haunted Jenny and her youngest son Dan, today a 27-year-old accountant.
‘To ruin lives the way she did is despicable,’ says Jenny.
Dan, meanwhile, remains ‘in shock’ that Susan played on the loss of her daughter and lied about her to swindle thousands of pounds from her victims.
‘You just can’t imagine someone being sick enough to do that can you?’ he asks.
Last month, Goose’s vile crime spree finally came an end when she was jailed for six years at Norwich Crown Court for swindling seven people out of about half a million pounds.
She admitted five counts of fraud against five victims and asked for two others to be taken into consideration.
Although the court heard Goose pocketed nearly half a million, police think the true figure may be far higher, with other victims too embarrassed to come forward.
Jenny understands that sentiment, but is speaking out today as she wants to show Goose that she has not taken everything from her.
Susan used Jenny, pictured, to hand over large sums for the legal fight she maintained she was undertaking in Chloe’s name. Jenny handed over about £252,000 and in the process lost her beautiful home, her business, her marriage and even her health
‘I have lost everything financially, but there are some things money can’t buy, like my wonderful sons, and the love of family,’ she says.
That much is clear: Dan has been a pillar of strength for his mother in recent years.
‘What hurts most is that she exploited mum’s good nature,’ he says. ‘She is such a trusting, caring person, always looking after other people.’
But Jenny is also no fool, working hard to make her way in life. She raised her eldest son almost single-handedly after her first marriage broke down, after which she began a business selling seafood, driving a delivery lorry up and down the country.
When she met her second husband — father to Dan and his two older brothers — she set up another business selling dressed crab from a shed in the grounds of the family home.
With its four acres of garden, which included a steam train line at the end of it, that home was a source of huge pride.
‘Mum worked hard to keep everything immaculate,’ Dan recalls.
Then in 2013, when Dan was 17, Susan Goose came into this happy domestic set-up. A family friend had heard that her son Danny needed a place to rent while working in a local pub.
By then divorced and married to her third husband, Jenny welcomed the extra income of about £400 a month.
Goose would pop by to help clean her son’s room, sometimes buying a dressed crab or two.
Then, after a few months Danny began to default on the rent and his mother started to drive over and pay it herself, in cash. Was this when she began her plan to lure Jenny in? Who knows.
‘I had a big house and a business — if that was how her mind worked she must have thought she was on to a good thing,’ Jenny muses. ‘I see the best in people before I see anything else. It’s who I am.’
And so when, Danny had been living there for six months, Goose arrived one day, sporting an official-looking letter. Jenny took what she had to say about the document at face value.
‘She said she stood to inherit £40,000, but had foolishly signed a document saying that she would pay the £2,000 processing costs,’ Jenny recalls. Money Goose didn’t have. Of course, if I had known the law I would have known it was a load of bunkum. But I felt sorry for her.’
So Jenny paid her £2,000 in cash, the start of multiple similar transactions. ‘She told mum shortly afterwards that another will had been found which gave Susan two-thirds of a huge amount of assets,’ Dan recalls.
‘According to her, this man, a friend of Susan’s who she had cared for on his death bed had a house in Norwich, a boat on the Thames, properties in Canvey island. Over time she started talking about hidden assets, too, and further legal battles which of course all cost money.’
Jenny with her son Dan when he was a child – Dan has been a pillar of strength for his mother over recent years
And so, during 2015, Jenny paid Goose £72,855 in cash, withdrawn in sums of up to £10,000, while her family remained oblivious. ‘I thought I could deal with this on my own, as I had always been so independent,’ she explains.
All the while, Goose would bombard her with calls — reassuring her the money was coming back, although when exactly this would be was never said.
By 2016, by now concerned there were no receipts, no official money trail, Jenny began to make bank transfers instead of handing over cash — with Goose now saying she needed to pay expensive barrister’s fees.
The following year, as Jenny started to ask more questions, Goose relayed a devastating story. She revealed that the man from whom she was inheriting the money had sexually abused her teenage daughter, who had been killed. The money — now apparently millions — was guilt money.
Certainly, no-one could deny that Chloe’s life had been tragically cut short: local newspapers reported how the ‘beautiful’ schoolgirl had suffered fatal head injuries when a car driven by 19-year-old amateur golf champion Craig Waugh crashed into a shop front .
It was later revealed at an inquest that Waugh had been over the drink-drive limit and was travelling at up to 70mph through a Norfolk village when the accident happened.
It was against this backdrop that Jenny made the disastrous decision to place a £118,000 charge on her family home — giving a local solicitors’ firm a legal interest in the property in order to release money to help with another son’s fledgling business. She did so in the belief that her own payday was imminent.
‘Susan owed me £128,000 at that point and knew I had to have that money back by a certain deadline or I would lose the house. She promised me and I genuinely believed that, on this occasion, she wouldn’t let me down,’ Jenny recalls.
She was wrong. No money was forthcoming, and with the deadline for repayment passed, Jenny was forced to put her beloved home on the market.
For reasons including an ongoing £100,000 mortgage and other debts, she received just £10,000 from the sale.
If it were not for the fact that her husband owned a small one-bedroomed flat, the family would have been completely homeless.
Dan, then aged 21, a trainee accountant who was on £8,000 a year, was forced to move in with his new girlfriend and her mother.
He admits now, ‘My relationship with mum fell to pieces.
‘It was such a huge part of my life to lose my family home and it came out the blue.
‘Mum was just in shock because she never thought it would happen. She didn’t explain it very well, partly I now realise because she couldn’t understand it fully herself.’
The pair did not speak for the next year.
All the while, Goose was telling Jenny not to worry, and that all would come good.
‘Knowing I’d lost the house — I don’t know how she lived with herself,’ she says quietly.
At this point, Jenny did try to fight back. ‘I took her to my solicitor to get her to sign a contract: she had to pay £450,000 by a certain date to recoup the value of the house and money owed and if she failed she would be on interest of eight per cent a day.’
Unsurprisingly, the deadline came and went, with Goose now employing a different strategy, occasionally transferring large sums back into Jenny’s account as a ‘gesture of faith’.
One transfer was for £56,000, but what Jenny didn’t know was that the money was provided by other innocent victims Goose had befriended.
She had spun the same tale around her daughter’s death and produced the same fake documents about her alleged legal battle. ‘In effect, robbing Peter to pay Paul’ as Dan puts it wryly.
By July 2019 Jenny had lost her business, her marriage had broken down and she was living on a tiny pension. That same month, she had a stroke from the stress.
Yet even while living in mounting poverty herself — sometimes relying on foodbanks when her pension did not stretch far enough — Jenny was still sending Goose funds, including money Dan was giving her.
‘We’d reconciled and I’d been supporting mum where I could, even though I did not have very much money, little knowing that some of it was going to Susan Goose,’ he recalls.
Of course, the question is why? Why did she keep giving money to a woman who showed little sign of ever repaying it?
Like many long-term fraud victims Jenny struggles to explain the hold Goose had over her.
‘I was in too deep; I suppose,’ she says. ‘I felt I had no other option but to hang on in there and pray that I would get my money back. And when I tried to raise my suspicions with Goose she would turn on the tears, telling me that if we didn’t continue to pay legal fees all was lost for both of us.’
Dan adds: ‘The reality was that mum had lost everything. Do you write off all that money or do you keep following what you are being told in the hope you get it back?’
And so on it went, although after emerging from the pandemic Dan started to contact Susan directly, receiving the same treatment as his mother.
‘I got thousands of text messages, saying she would call me — she never did — and that the money was coming,’ he says.
Finally, by September 2023, after learning Jenny had given Goose another £50 — money Dan had given her to pay for a glasses prescription — he snapped.
‘I made mum call Susan, tell her she was blocking her and that from now on she had to come through me,’ he says.
He then arranged to meet her face-to-face along with his partner Jessica.
‘We walked around a park for an hour, and I asked to hear the full story from start to finish,’ he recalls.
Once again, Goose reiterated how Chloe had been abused. ‘I have to hand it to her, she sounded legitimate,’ says Dan. ‘Even knowing what I knew it was easy to believe her.’
Reason won out however, and in autumn last year Dan went to the police.
Goose was arrested in early January and charged with fraud by false misrepresentation. It was at this point that Jenny and Dan learned she had several other victims.
‘It was bittersweet,’ as Jenny puts it. ‘I felt terrible that others had gone through what I had, but it was also a comfort to know I was not alone.’
One of Goose’s other victims has since died without seeing her meet justice, while another lost his wife to a stroke attributed to their financial stress.
All the while, Goose showed not a jot of emotion as her victims read their impact statements in court. Her ruthlessness was described as ‘staggering’ by DC David Block, the officer who investigated her crimes.
Now safely behind bars she can, at least, not hurt anyone else — for now.
Although a Proceeds of Crime hearing later this year may shed some light on where Jenny’s money has gone, she has had to reconcile herself to the fact it has gone for good — courtesy of a woman who stooped about as low as it is possible to go to get her hands on her money.