November 27, 2025 - 247 views
A new film charting the rise of a choirboy turned global conman is set for a world premiere in North Wales.
Astonishing new revelations show how Kenner Elias Jones – who carried the cross and sang at the 1969 Investiture of the then Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle – went on to become one of the world’s most infamous fraudsters.
The smooth-talking trickster, who spent years posing as a doctor, priest and charity boss, even managed to deceive his own wife for four years while drifting across continents under a string of false identities.
Once seen proudly leading the Investiture procession in his home town, Jones would later leave a trail of deception, debt and heartbreak stretching from Wales to North America, Europe and Africa.
His extraordinary destructive double life is laid bare in a powerful and emotional documentary from Caernarfon-based television production companies Cwmni Da and Awen, who finally tracked him to a care home in Germany.
The film’s premiere will be held at Galeri in Caernarfon on Tuesday (December 2) with the event already attracting national interest.
Among the guests of honour will be his ex-wife, former Canadian TV journalist Lee McKenzie, whose appearance in the film has added an extra layer of intrigue to the screening
Also attending will be producer Marc Edwards, who has spent more than three decades following the story of the prolific con artist from Caernarfon who has married three times, arrested several times and served prison sentences in Britain, Canada and the United States for fraud.
In the New year, the story will be turned into a two-part television series, Con Jones: Twyllwr Gorau'r Byd (Con Jones: World's Best Conman), and will be broadcast on consecutive nights on S4C.
Marc Edwards said: "I feel a special attachment to the story because I have followed it for 30 years. Ken is a character, a person who can captivate someone with his personality.
"He can make someone feel that they are the most interesting and important person in the room, and he can tailor any story to any situation and to any individual. There is a certain special charm that belongs to him — I have never in my life come across it in anyone else."
Soon after the Investiture ceremony for the then prince, now King Charles, he enrolled as a student at Sheffield Polytechnic where he helped the Liberal Party win its first seat on the city council in years.
But he later disappeared leaving a trail of debts and was sentenced to three years' probation on charges of obtaining money by deception and ordered to attend the North Wales Hospital at Denbigh for psychiatric treatment.
But the cons continued and Mr Jones was given two more prison sentences, in Coventry and London, before he returned to his native North Wales.
It was on the promenade at Llandudno during the summer of 1979 that he charmed a Canadian journalist who was in Wales researching her family tree.
Lee McKenzie and Kenner Jones later married and moved to Vancouver before the relationship fell apart when Mr Jones was found to have plundered his wife's savings for thousands of pounds.
Police turned up at the television studios where she worked to arrest her after Jones forged her signature and passed bad cheques in her name.
Interviewed for the programme, Lee McKenzie said: "I got to know that Ken Jones was willing to sell the people who loved him right down the river. I cried for a long time because the person I had loved had hurt me and used me.”
After returning to Wales from North America with his second wife, Elsie, Kenner Jones applied for a job at the BBC in Cardiff. His former school-mate, David Williams, was then editor of Wales Today and was a member of the panel who interviewed him.
"He came in and I knew straightaway who he was. He gave a great performance and everyone was impressed. I turned to him and asked if he recognised me as we had been in school together.
"For a moment the mask slipped a little but he regained his composure very quickly.
"The panel wanted to employ him but I told them he had been imprisoned for fraud," he said.
BBC Cymru officials began investigating Kenner Jones who had also impressed members of the Liberal Democrat party in Wales becoming a keen volunteer and addressing a party conference in Conwy in 1995.
After his wife Elsie's death he was due to stand trial over fraud at Lewes Crown Court in 2003 but fled the night before and has not been caught in the UK since. He moved to Kenya and began a new chapter in his life which Marc Edwards describes as "very dark".
Kenner Jones approached a Catholic order and told them he had been trained as an Anglican priest. He prayed with them and taught them new hymns. He also told them he was a retired doctor who had carried out heart surgery and held clinics to help people suffering from AIDS.
During this period in Kenya he began a relationship with a local woman and decided to get married.
"It was not a small wedding, there was a huge party. Kenner had persuaded a bishop to conduct the service and he wore a clerical collar and Kenner was in his element," said Marc Edwards.
But there were bills that did not get paid and the Kenyan authorities began to investigate what was described in local media as "his conmanship winning his way into the hearts of local people and then their pockets".
Ex-wife Lee McKenzie even wrote a book about him, The Charming Predator, which was published in 2017.
She thought that would be the end of the end of the story but in a dramatic twist she received a phone call and the film reveals what happened after the couple were reunited.
When Con Jones: Twyllwr Gorau'r Byd is shown on S4C in the New Year, English subtitles will be available and the programme will be available to be streamed on demand at S4C Clic and BBC iPlayer and other platforms.
