New doc reveals how serial con artist ‘struck fear into the hearts' of women she deceived

Sunday World

11-05-2025

'I was scared that she would come back in the middle of the night and take my child. I slept with a hatchet beside my bed
The Irish mothers who saw the dark heart of serial con artist Samantha Cookes have revealed how they were duped by her lies.
New two-part documentary Bad Nanny follows the fantasies spun by Cookes, who preyed on the desperation or vulnerability of families.
She was given a three-year jail sentence earlier this year for a €60,000 benefit fraud but her criminal history goes back to 2011 when she was convicted of fraud for taking almost £5,000 off a couple in Yorkshire in a surrogate baby scam.
Despite being exposed as a con artist in 2022 after a bizarre TikTok rant about being sued by Airbnb guests who objected to her non-existent disability, and the subject of podcasts including RTE's The Real Carrie-Jade, Cookes continued to deceive families across Ireland under a series of aliases until last year.
When Layla DeJagger encountered Cookes in Tullamore in 2015 she was Lucy Hart, the dream nanny to her family's three children.
'I didn't check for any passports. I didn't call on any references of what she was like. I just took her at face value. She was Mary Poppins,' Layla tells the BBC Northern Ireland documentary.
Cookes was also known as Carrie Jade
'The tales she used to tell. Everything that she would mention she's done it bigger and better so you would get the wow factor from her. She said that her mother was the manufacturer for sandpaper for B&Q. You're sitting there and you're thinking 'wow'.'
Cookes claimed to be a devout Jehovah's Witness who knew through a contact in her church that it had a house available for a low rent, and Layla's family began to plan their move.
'So we boxed everything up. We gave notice to my landlord and each time we asked 'is there any chance we can go and view the place?' there was always an excuse.
'One particular day she was in the car with us we happened to drive up past the house there was a gentleman standing in the garden and all of a sudden she started to feel ill,' says Layla.
Samantha Cookes in Celbridge after she was exposed
They rushed her to a local shop where Cookes pretended to collapse, and Layla realised she'd been conned.
'Why didn't I pick up on this sooner? There is no house.'
Cookes left the family home soon after and when Layla went to clear her room she made a chilling discovery.
'There was a little index card notebook and I just started to read. In one of her lines she puts, 'I stand shoulder to shoulder with the coroner that I did not murder my daughter'. I just went 'who have we had looking after our children?'
'She never mentioned any children to me, that she's ever had any children, that's' strange, very strange.'
In reality, Cookes had three children, two of whom were taken off her by social services, in 2012 in England, and in 2014 in Ireland, when she was arts teacher Sophia Williamson.
Cookes was also known as Carrie Jade
The terrifying reference Layla found was about baby Martha Cookes, born in 2008, who died at four months old on the day she was due to be handed over for adoption, smothered by pillows as Samantha lay next to her. A coroner ruled the death was accidental.
Four years later, the death of baby Martha was to be examined by a judge at Birmingham High Court at the request of Shropshire Council due to concerns about her death.
Shortly before the hearing Cookes was reported missing and was in Ireland, living as Sophia Williamson. The accidental death verdict stands.
By 2016 Cookes was in Dublin, now Lucy Fitzwilliams, a child therapist who was welcomed into the home of Lynn McDonald, and her two female friends, one of whom had an autistic son.
Lynn's daughter Daisy had the rare genetic disorder Rett syndrome and while Cookes was never allowed to be part of her care she did bond over art therapy with older daughter Ellie.
Samantha Cookes is now serving a prison sentence
News in 90 seconds - 11th May 2025
'She would come twice a week. She gave Ellie the one-on-one that she didn't get with me. That was definitely a bond of trust. Ellie was trusting her with her secrets and her worries.
'I don't think anyone when they meet her know what's underneath that skin,' says Lynn.
This time Cookes was an heiress set to inherit €3m. She was opening a women's refuge and Lynn and pals Lorraine and Hillery generously handed over everything from food hampers to baby supplies.
But the scammer overreached herself with a Christmas trip to Lapland, when the three friends worked out the cash they'd handed over to her from the tickets they'd sold for the trip would have filled five aircraft, and she also refused to hand over her charity number.
When the deception was uncovered, Lynn was most troubled by Cookes' plan to take Ellie to Lapland if Daisy and her mum were unable to travel.
'I was scared that she would come back in the middle of the night and take my child. I slept with a hatchet beside my bed,' says Lynn.
A search of the house revealed all the donations the three friends had given Cookes, 15 burner phones, and papers scrawled with Cookes' dark thoughts about children and babies.
In 2021 she reappeared in Kenmare as Carrie-Jade Williams, a terminally ill author. But within a year she had over-reached with her Airbnb story, claiming disability discrimination, and the façade fell apart. When she fled in 2023 she left behind another cache of burner phones, fake driving licences, and putrid rubbish in her rented home.
But Cookes still didn't give up, reappearing as nanny Sadie Harris in Celbridge, Kildare last year, before the law caught up with her.
Mum Layla issues a stark warning to the public about Cookes, who will be out of jail in 2028.
'I would warn anybody about her. Don't let her in your home. Don't let her in,' she says.