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Irish Times
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bad Nanny review: Incredible story of fraudster Samantha Cookes skilfully told in excellent documentary
Gaslighting, fake illnesses, real pregnancies – and a trail of deception leading from Yorkshire to Kenmare . The first episode of the excellent two-part documentary Bad Nanny (RTÉ One, Monday) takes off like a true crime podcast on rocket boots as it tells the incredible story of Carrie Jade Williams, aka Samantha Cookes – a serial fraudster who posed as a terminally ill author when she moved to Kenmare, Co Kerry. Seemingly sweet and harmless, the chirpy Englishwoman was in her element in small-town Ireland. 'If I met her today, I'd still like her. She has that personality,' says one former acquaintance. 'She's very likable. She's a people person. You would go, 'she's lovely'.' Those qualities allowed her to deceive her neighbours, her landlord – even RTÉ's Documentary On One, which greenlit a radio doc about her trip to Los Angeles for experimental surgery for her terminal Huntington's disease, her regular updates about her health having made her a minor star on TikTok. But Carrie Jade Williams was not terminally ill – and her backstory was a tissue of fraud extended to university and earlier. In Shrewsbury in England, an old college friend recalled how bubbly and friendly his pal 'Sam' had been. Until, that is, he asked for his money back after she claimed to have booked tickets for a weekend away. Confronted by her friend, the mask fell away. 'She went from the bubbly girl to being really horrible.' When a tutor advised the friend to dig deeper, he discovered she had been convicted of defrauding a couple by posing as their surrogate parent. READ MORE One twist follows another. Cookes's first child had been removed from her by social services in the UK and entrusted to the care of the father. Then she became pregnant again. She turned up pregnant in Edenderry, Co Offaly, where she ran a camp for kids and hoodwinked locals into paying for a non-existent weekend in Disneyland. [ Serial fraudster Samantha Cookes's funding applications considered by Arts Council on 'artistic merit' Opens in new window ] However, the most disturbing aspect of the documentary concerns her work as a nanny in Tullamore, Co Offaly, where she bonded with Layla and her daughter, Charlie. 'I was 10 turning 11,' says Charlie. 'She was genuinely a big ball of fun, everything up my alley.' Once again, lie followed lie, and after 'Lucy', as the family knew her, faked a fainting fit in Tesco in Maynooth, Co Kildare, Layla's mother went through the nanny's belongings. 'There was a little index card notebook and I just started to read,' Layla recalls. I just went, 'Who have we had looking after our children?'' This horribly gripping case has also been the subject of an RTÉ podcast. But the unsettling story translates readily to the screen and Bad Nanny skilfully weaves together Cookes's many deceptions to tell the hard-to-believe tale of a woman whose forked tongue allows her to move freely around Ireland and Britain and whose ultimate superpower was her ability to be nice to strangers.
Daily Mail
12-05-2025
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Mother reveals chilling note she found exposing the fraudster who had been posing as a nanny to her three children - and the dark secret she'd been hiding
A mother-of-three has recalled the chilling moment she discovered a note revealing the dark secret of the scammer she'd hired as a nanny after she'd fled the family home. Layla, from Tullamore in County Offaly, Ireland, hired a woman called Lucy Hart to look after her children in 2015 - at the time believing her to be a 'Mary Poppins-style' au pair. However, Lucy Hart was just an alias masking the nanny's chequered past - her real name was Samantha Cookes. Under different guises, Samantha, originally from Gloucestershire claimed to be an award-winning writer, expert in autism and also said she was suffering from a terminal illness - and was eventually exposed to have had six different false identities including Carrie Jade Williams. Cookes was jailed for three years in March after pleading guilty to two counts of deception and 16 sample theft charges, having snagged government welfare payments. Now for the first time, some of Cookes' victims are speaking out about their traumatic experiences in a two-part documentary made by BBC Northern Ireland and RTÉ, Bad Nanny. One such victim is Layla, who got on well with Cookes when she first hired her as a nanny for her three children. However, before long, cracks began to show in the scammer's squeaky-clean image. When she and her family began to ask questions about 'Lucy's' background, the scammer disappeared - telling them she was going on a 'writers' retreat'. However, while vanished into thin air, Cookes left behind an ominous note which Layla discovered - and it left her fearing for her children's safety. Samantha's note read: 'I stand shoulder to shoulder with the coroner that I did not murder my daughter.' Speaking on the documentary through tears, Layla said: 'Who have we had looking after our children?' After finding Samantha on a nanny website, Layla, who is originally from the UK, revealed they got on 'like a house on fire'. She claimed they bonded because they were both English women living in Ireland, which also led to a false sense of security with 'Lucy'. The mother claimed she didn't do any background checks on the woman she hired to look after her children because she 'took her at face value'. The children appeared to love their new nanny and the family got on well for a number of months until a few red flags started to appear. With rising rent prices, the family were struggling and 'Lucy', who claimed to be a Jehovah's Witness, said a church elder had offered to let them move into a more affordable home in the area. After packing up their home and handing in their notice with the landlord the family prepared for a move to the new property. Under different guises, Samantha, originally from Gloucestershire claimed to be an award-winning writer, expert in autism and also said she was suffering from a terminal illness - and was eventually exposed to have had six different false identities including Carrie Jade Williams However there was always an excuse as to why they couldn't view the inside of the home. Layla said: 'Each time we asked if there was any way we could go and view the place, there was always an excuse. 'One particular day when we were driving past the house there was a gentleman standing in the garden, so we were like great! But all of a sudden she started to feel ill. 'She was like I really need to use the bathroom is there anyway I could use the restrooms. We were parked in the car park and she went upstairs, the two girls went with her. 'Then my two children came running downstairs telling me that she collapsed in Tesco.' This was a 'lightbulb moment' for Layla who realised that 'Lucy' was lying about the new property. She said: 'Why didn't I pick up on this sooner? There is no house.' 'Lucy' disappeared pretty quickly after this incident, telling the family she was going on a 'writers retreat'. Layla said: 'I had to clear up her room, I started pulling things out of her wardrobe and found a notebook.' A line in the notebook read: 'I stand shoulder to shoulder with the coroner that I did not murder my daughter.' She continued: 'She never mentioned any children to me, that she has ever had any children, that's strange, very strange. 'As a parent leaving my children in her care, if I had known for one second that she had children things would have been a whole lot different. 'I would warn anyone about her, don't let her in your home, don't let her in.' One of Cookes' former boyfriends, who remained anonymous for the documentary, opened up about his toxic relationship with Samantha in 2007. They were both 18 years old when they started dating, but he claimed he ended the relationship when he began to spot her pattern of lying. However, Samantha revealed she was pregnant with his child and she bombarded him with messages and calls. He said: 'Was it real, was it a tactic? That whole 'being in a family' thing was a real wish for her, it was something she would have referred to. 'The whole period is not something I look on with much pride. My involvement in pregnancy was next to zero really. There was going to be an adoption.' In July 2008, Samantha gave birth to her first child, Martha Isabel Cookes, however the child died on the day she was due to be given up for adoption. The father said: 'I found out that baby Martha had died from a local newspaper report. There had been this death on the day that Martha was going to be taken. Those details do raise questions for me.' An inquest into the baby's death in 2009 revealed that Martha died due to 'accidental' suffocation when a V-shaped pillow wrapped around the baby's neck while her mother was sleeping. Four years later in 2013, the circumstances into baby Martha's death were to be re examined by the high court due to concerns over her death - however by this point, Samantha Cookes had been reported as a missing person to UK police. The case was closed and Martha's 2009 accidental cause of death still stands today. Meanwhile in 2012, Samantha's second child was taken away from her due to welfare concerns. Social services requested a psychological assessment of Samantha and she was diagnosed with Pseudologia Fantastica. PF, also known as pathological lying or mythomania, is a mental disorder characterised by persistent, pervasive, and often compulsive lying. In 2016, Hillery Geelan, from Dublin, was struggling with her autistic son Rhys and was 'desperate' for help. Her friend Lorraine recommended Samantha, who at the time posed as a therapist for children with additional needs under the alias Lucy Fitzwilliams. 'Lucy' earned their trust by saying she was setting up a women's refuge and she collected items of clothing, food and money from them. She would call to Hillery's house once a week to help with her son's behaviour. Hillery said: 'I didn't know enough about occupational therapy to know this is wrong.' Soon 'Lucy' started collecting money for a bogus trip to Lapland, and a few women gave her a deposit of €400. However the friends started to question 'Lucy' when her lies started to become more bizarre and extreme. They couldn't find any evidence of her women's refuge- nor could they find any social media pages for Lucy Fitzwilliams. Lynn McDonald, from Dublin, also hired Samantha, who was still under the alias of Lucy Fitzwilliams, to help with her daughter Ellie. But in 2022, high on her success as an online disability activist, Carrie told a lie that would eventually unravel her web of deception She was introduced to the scammer by a friend when she was experiencing a difficult time and needed more support. Lynn's younger daughter, Daisy, was born in 2013 with Rett syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that affects brain development, resulting in severe mental and physical disability. In her guise as a child therapist, Samantha visited twice a week to give Ellie, Lynn's older daughter, one-on-one time. 'There was definitely a bond of trust. Ellie was trusting her with her secrets and her worries,' Lynn said. 'I don't think anybody, when they met her, knew what's really underneath that skin.' Ahead of the fake Lapland trip, Samantha was pushing Lynn to sign paperwork that would allow her to take Ellie out of the country as a guardian. 'My massive concern with that is, if a woman has consent from me to take my child out of the country, then my child is at risk of being abducted.' The bond soon unravelled after Lynn and others discovered she was a scam artist. Samantha fled, leaving Lynn worried 'she would come back in the middle of the night and take my child'. She added: 'I slept with a hatchet beside my bed.' Hillery added: 'We never heard from Lucy again, no more phone calls, no more Lapland, we had just been scammed. We lived in fear for a very log time.' In 2021, it appeared that Samantha changed her identity yet again, this time under the alias Carrie Jade Williams, a terminally-ill award-winning author. She said she had been diagnosed with the terminal illness Huntington's Disease and was living in Kenmare, County Kerry. But in 2022, high on her success as an online disability activist, Carrie told a lie that would eventually unravel her web of deception. She posted a TikTok calling out Airbnb for allegedly siding with guests who had complained about having to use her accessible doorbell. 'I know able-ism exists, and I've experienced it,' she said in a teary video. Carrie claimed the guests, who had stayed at her home, were so 'traumatised by being around her as a disabled person' they had complained to Airbnb - and that Airbnb had instructed her to refund them as a result. The video went viral as people were horrified by the overt display of able-ism and Carrie soon posted a follow-up video - where she claimed the guests were now suing her for 450,000 euros for the trauma caused. They also allegedly slapped her with a list of 13 bizarre demands to cope with the trauma, including an emotional support animal and 25 adult colouring books a year for the remainder of their lives. However on October 5, 2022, an anonymous Reddit user posted links to articles about a convicted fraudster - whom they claimed was Carrie. Carrie issued a statement saying this was in fact her sister who had struggled with mental health problems and that it was defamatory for anyone to link the pair. This led VICE journalist Kat Denkinson and comedian Sue Perkins to investigate the story in podcast Carrie Jade Does Not Exist and over the course of two months, they uncovered the truth. Carrie Jade did not exist. As people began to clock on to Samantha's lies, she disappeared from her home in Kenmare in 2023. However, four months after she was exposed in Kenmare, the podcast received an email from a woman claiming Samantha was 'exposed as a fake person' in her town of Kildare, she was hiding behind the new alias of Sadie Harris. The email read: 'Hi, I just came across your podcast and this woman has been living in our community and going to the same church as me. She has been exposed as a fake person yesterday. 'As far as we can tell she hasn't committed any crimes but understandably this has shaken many people, she has been going by the name Sadie Harris, living in Ireland, working as an au pair.' Samantha joined a local church and was posing as a 'deeply conservative Christian woman' who didn't believe that woman should wear trousers and she claimed to have baptised 150 sex workers in a Dublin hotel. A woman Samantha befriended while in Kildare wrote into the podcast to say she thought she was 'generous and kind' but, after listening to the podcast, felt guilty for letting the fraudster around her children. She added: 'My kids new her and they were comfortable with her. Something that is hitting me now in hindsight is that everything had a story to it, even her Birthday which was on Day. 'She had this story that when he was a kid she thought St. Patrick's Day was about her. She said she was going to buy a building space and run toddler classes and asked of I would help her with it. 'Even now knowing everything was a lie, I still genuinely miss the friendship I thought we had, I miss the person I thought she was. It's strange to process losing someone who never existed.' Earlier this year the fraudster was sentenced to three-years in prison for scamming the state of €60,000. Samantha had been jailed in Ireland for deception and theft charges after she claimed thousands in welfare benefits for a terminal illness that turned out not to exist. In March the sentencing judge on the case, Judge Ronan Munro, accused her 'cynically exploiting' the 'natural goodness' in people and for deliberately lying about having the degenerative disease. Samantha pleaded guilty to two counts of deception and 16 sample theft charges, having snagged government welfare payments. She later also cashed in for disability allowance between February 28th, 2020 and June 12th last year. While at Tralee Circuit Criminal Court in Ireland, Judge Munro claimed her plan had been 'carefully orchestrated' to grift cash, having amassed a €60,334 over almost four years through 238 different payments. A number of aggravating factors made her case yet more heinous, with the judge describing her 'determined and sophisticated effort to perpetuate the fraud'. In 2020, she claimed to the Department of Social Protection that she was suffering with both Huntington's disease and epilepsy, insisting that her prognosis was life-limiting and would prove terminal. But Samantha claimed that she was unable to provide evidence of her illness to the department because of Covid, a factor which the court said essentially allowed her to continue abusing the system while going undetected. In a letter to the department said she was being discriminated against because she was unable to hold or use a pen as a result of her illness. She even went as far as to approach a GP to ask them to help fill out her forms so she get her hands on the government payouts, claiming she was struggling to have a grip of things, use the stairs or shower. Believing her symptoms true, the GP was led to fill out a form saying Samantha had previously been diagnosed with the disease - despite this being far from the case. The gardaí finally cottoned onto the deception after being alerted by department officer to her medical records, which revealed that Samantha had failed to turn up to appointments and scans ordered by the GP - and had no genetic testing for the condition. Judge Munro said the GP was 'blameless', having only done her best to do her job by sending the fraudster to appointments and scans. The judge also revealed that in the run up to the trial, Samantha had written to him trying to claim that she had been suffering with psychosis, even saying she would rather be euthanised than live with the mental illness - despite there being no medical evidence to point this being true. The judge said the self-diagnosis would bear no weight, adding that plenty of those suffering from mental health issues 'don't engage in this type of behaviour'. Samantha was initially sentenced to four years in prison but this was cut by 12-months so she could seek treatment, as she had implied she would. She was also given an additional two-year sentence for a second deception charge and concurrent sentences for theft charges. The judge said it was a serious offence to abuse the public system, but took into account some extenuating factors including her experiences with child loss. The sentences have been backdated to July last year, when she first went into custody after being arrested outside Tralee Post Office. At the time Cookes has been living under a false name for the prior 18-months. Bad Nanny will be available on BBC iPlayer from Monday 12 May, 9pm.
Irish Independent
12-05-2025
- Irish Independent
‘I felt sick someone could do this' – Victims of fraudster Samantha Cookes feature in RTÉ documentary
Many believed she was being discriminated against because of disabilities she had following a Huntington's disease diagnosis. However, it emerged that none of this was true. Carrie Jade was just one of the aliases used by Samantha Cookes and the full extent of her lies emerged in podcasts and media articles about a fraudster from the UK. Now the full story of Samantha Cookes' lies is being laid bare in a RTÉ documentary –featuring many of those from Kerry – who were duped into believing the tales told by 'Carrie Jade' and who went out of their way to help her. This included her landlord Tim Hourigan. Like others Tim went out of his way to help Carrie Jade when he found out she had a terminal illness. "It was the neighbours that told me she had Huntington's.. Sure you would do anything to help someone with that,' he told The Kerryman, and he did. However, his kindness was not repaid. Using her false identity, Ms Cookes claimed that Mr Hourigan had wrongly terminated the tenancy of Carrie Jade Williams in Kenmare in late 2022. Mr Hourigan was forced to spend resources fighting Cookes' complaint against him at the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). He made counterclaims that Cookes had stolen furniture from his property, left a huge mess behind and was €4,500 in rent arrears when she disappeared. The RTB ultimately dismissed the claim for compensation and Samantha Cookes was convicted of theft from his house. But he says he never got justice for what happened to him and believes the RTB did nothing to help him. Mr Hourigan took part in the documentary to ensure that her everyone knew what she did. "It was like something out of a film, like that film 'Catch me if you Can'. It was a nightmare when I finally got into my house,' he said. Tim said he found false documentation in the house when he finally entered. This included fake identities, licences, Covid certs and other documentation. When he found all that she had done he said he 'felt sick'. "I feel sick that someone can come into this country and pull the wool over the eyes of charities, organisations and people.' She also pulled the wool over the eyes of those in St John's Theatre in Listowel where she told her stories of being ill too. She spent a week there on a residency programme and stayed in touch. "It was all very simple. She got a residency in January 2023 have applied via email and saying she had won an award for writing for The Financial Times. It was all normal and she told all these 'fantastical' tales. We believed the stories. We felt silly and stupid when we found out but nobody got hurt in our scenario,' said Maire Logue. Chloe McEwan lived next door to Samantha Cookes when she posed as Carrie Jade Williams in Kenmare. Chloe remembers her as being soft, gentle, kind and good natured. Chloe was invited to Samantha's fake wedding. But Chloe became suspicious that Carrie Jade's tall tales were not adding up before being shocked to her core when the story broke that this whole time her neighbour was a convicted fraudster. The jaw-dropping new two-part documentary shares the astonishing true story of Samantha Cookes – serial scammer, master manipulator, and at one point, a trusted nanny. It is aired on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player this week. 'Bad Nanny' tells the story of Samantha Cookes who, for over a decade across Ireland and the UK, used a revolving door of aliases including Carrie Jade Williams and Sadie Harris to weave an intricate web of lies, deceiving everyone from vulnerable families to online communities. Her story was the subject of RTÉ podcast series The Real Carrie Jade. With gripping first-hand accounts, chilling insight into psychological manipulation, shocking revelations, and raw emotion, the TV documentary series is a must-watch exposé on one woman's decade-long con and the strength of those who brought her down. It features exclusive interviews with victims of Samantha's scams who have never spoken publicly and includes unseen archive footage. Earlier this year in Kerry, Samantha Cookes was sentenced to three years in jail for deception and theft charges for stealing over €60,000 from the State by pretending to have Huntington's. Sentencing her at Tralee Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Ronan Munro said that she exploited the 'natural goodness' in people by 'deliberately' choosing to pretend she has a degenerative neurological disease. And this too is evident in the new documentary as those that believed her tell their stories. This two-part film, Bad Nanny, is a co-production between RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland from Alleycats TV, directed by Alan Bradley. It debuts on Monday, May 12 at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
RTÉ News
12-05-2025
- RTÉ News
Making Bad Nanny: how we uncovered the truth behind 'Carrie Jade'
Bad Nanny is a jaw-dropping two-part RTÉ documentary that unravels the astonishing true story of Samantha Cookes - serial scammer, master manipulator, and at one point, a trusted nanny. Below, Bad Nanny director Alan Bradley introduces a wild true tale you really couldn't make up... I first came across Samantha Cooke's story in a small article in the Irish Independent. The headline alone stopped me in my tracks - a woman accused of faking a terminal illness to defraud people. It felt too outrageous to be true. But the more I read, the more astonishing the story became. This wasn't a one-off con; it was a sprawling, years-long web of deception stretching across Ireland and the UK. The scale of it was staggering. It read like a thriller - except it was all real. What struck me early on was how many people had been affected. Through some online digging, I found Lynn, one of Samantha's victims based in Dublin. She introduced me to an extraordinary group - a loose collective of Samantha's victims, many of them mothers, who had connected online and become a kind of informal investigation unit. Through WhatsApp chats and TikTok threads, they had spent years piecing together Samantha's movements, aliases, and scams. They had quietly become the keepers of the truth, determined to stop others from falling into the same trap. Beyond the twists and turns of the story, what stayed with me most was what it revealed about us as a society. Despite their efforts, they felt largely ignored and dismissed, by authorities, and by the media. I knew instantly this was a story that deserved more attention. Not because it was lurid, but because of what it revealed about the cracks in our systems, and the resilience of ordinary people who refused to be silenced. At the time we began filming, Samantha had vanished. Given the coverage her story had already received, I assumed she had left Ireland. But then, in February 2024, we discovered she had in fact been living under a new identity as a nanny in Celbridge. With that came another wave of revelations, more victims, more lies, more lives upended. With every layer we uncovered, another seemed to emerge. Structuring the documentary was one of the biggest creative challenges. Samantha operated under multiple aliases over a decade, spinning a different persona each time -a nanny/ au pair, a psychologist, a terminally ill author, a play therapist. Her backstories often contradicted one another and determining the actual truth required some real focus! We had to find a clear, coherent way through the chaos so that viewers could follow along. Central to this was giving the narrative back to those she deceived. I wanted them to tell the story in their own words, not just as victims, but as the people who ultimately exposed her. Many contributors were understandably nervous. Some still feared Samantha, others were deeply affected by their experiences. Creating a space where they felt safe and supported to share their story was paramount. It was a long process, but one I felt was essential to doing justice to their voices. As we were filming, RTÉ's The Real Carrie Jade podcast began releasing episodes weekly, sparking a new wave of public interest in the case. It was surreal to watch people react in real-time to a story we were still actively investigating. I'm hugely grateful to producers of the podcast Liam O'Brien and Ronan Kelly, who generously shared new tips and leads as they came in from listeners. In many ways, making the documentary evolved into a live investigation, one that kept unfolding until the very end. But beyond the twists and turns of the story, what stayed with me most was what it revealed about us as a society. Samantha found her opportunities by targeting the gaps, families of children with additional needs struggling to access support, parents desperate for childcare, the disabled community. She presented herself as a psychologist, a role not protected by law in Ireland. In doing so, she exploited the very people already navigating the most difficult circumstances. Ireland is, at its best, a place built on trust and community. But that very trust can leave us exposed when someone with bad intentions gains a foothold. Samantha's story is not just one of deceit, it's a lens on the vulnerabilities within our systems, and how easily someone can exploit them. And yet, this project didn't leave me cynical. Far from it. The people affected by Samantha, those who appear in the series, are some of the most resilient, thoughtful, and generous individuals I've met. They didn't come forward out of revenge. They simply wanted others to be protected. As Lorraine says in Episode 2, "I still trust people. You'll only ever meet one Samantha Cookes." Making this series reminded me that even in the face of deception, kindness and solidarity endure. And that sometimes, the most powerful stories aren't just about what happened, but about the people who refused to stay silent.
ITV News
12-05-2025
- ITV News
'Bad Nanny': How victims turned the tables on 'one of Britain's worst con artists'
For over a decade, Samantha Cookes used a revolving door of aliases to weave an intricate web of lies, deceiving everyone from vulnerable families to online communities. Hillery Geelan and Lorraine Bolger were just two of her victims; Hillery a desperate Mum in need of support for her autistic and non-verbal son was tricked into handing over £85 a time for bogus occupational therapy sessions - together they were conned over a non-existent trip to Lapland, having already handed over their money. Ahead of the release of 'Bad Nanny', a documentary highlighting the serial fraudsters' crimes, Hillery and Lorraine join us to explain how they helped to catch the serial con artist.
