The former best friend and college roommate of central heroine Victoria Lord (Erika Slezak), she arrives asking Viki to permanently adopt her 16-year-old daughter, Tina Clayton (Andrea Evans), as she is ostensibly dying from terminal cancer.

Soon later, her legal widower Ted Clayton arrives in Llanview in 1980 hoping to con assumed daughter Tina and her adoptive mother Viki out a portion of the Lord family fortune.

After leaving town, Tina returns to Llanview in 1984 with Irene's diary, which reveals that Ted Clayton was not her biological father.

[4] Later, Tina discovers a secret room beneath the Lord estate, Llanfair, and finds a letter from Victor meant to be delivered to Viki.

David forges the parts of the diary in a scheme to get his hands on the Lord family male inheritance, posing as the secret son of Victor and Irene.

The letter, written by his then-deceased apparent mother, Barbara "Bitsy" Jones Manning, reveals that Todd is adopted, and Peter to be Irene's cousin.

It is revealed when Todd Manning crosses over in-continuity on soap opera General Hospital that after Todd is charged and prosecuted by Llanview District Attorney Nora Buchanan, he is acquitted of his mother's killing because of emotional duress suffered in an episode of post traumatic stress disorder when Irene lied about having killed his relatives.