In the words of Winston Churchill: "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
In their latest podcast, The Real Carrie Jade the multi-award winning team from RTÉ Documentary On One learnt this lesson the hard way.
After receiving an email in 2022 from a terminally-ill woman who wanted to expose the Irish health system for its treatment of adoptees and allow the producers to follow her through experimental treatment for Huntington's disease, they thought they had found their next big project.
In a manner of speaking they did… but the story was about to take an unexpected turn because practically everything the woman, Carrie Jade Williams, had told them was fake.
Her real name was Samantha Cookes. She was not adopted, and she did not have an incurable illness.
What she did have was a criminal record, multiple aliases and 'pseudologia fantastica’ (translation: a major problem with pathological lying.)
In this week’s episode, the podcast creators go about untangling Samantha’s lies, getting to grips with the gravity of her scams and determining whether her actions are due to psychological trauma or are driven by something more sinister.
If you’re not convinced, read on for a full overview of Episode Two, but buckle up because this is no ordinary scammer tale…
Introducing: Samantha Cookes:
If Carrie Jade Williams is not Carrie Jade Williams then who is she? Her name is Samantha Cookes.
When the documentary team took on the story in 2021 they had no clue that 10 years prior to that, their ‘inspirational’ subject had been on trial for fraud in the north of England for a scam that was far more calculated than misleading a group of journalists.
In 2011, she offered to act as a surrogate mother for a couple who wanted to have a baby after failed IVF treatment. Samantha told the couple she was a former surrogate and a social worker with an honours degree. She gave them a reference from her previous client ‘Claudia Bronwyn’, who praised Samantha for giving her the gift of her daughter.
All of these documents were completely phoney. But that did not stop Samantha from accepting expenses and fees from the couple. In fact, she kept asking for more money for everything from a health insurance upgrade to an insemination kit.
Eventually, the couple grew suspicious and called the police.
In court, Samantha pleaded guilty, but her lawyer said she only misled the couple because she was traumatised after a great personal tragedy - the death of her baby girl from cot death. This episode features testimony from the court case including a letter from Samantha and the judge's summing-up.
The wife of the couple suffered severe psychological consequences as a result of Samantha’s actions. Samantha was ordered to pay £1,800 to the childless couple and received a 9-month suspended sentence from the Judge because her lies were due to - "psychological trauma". While Samantha mentioned the death of her daughter to the podcast team, they assumed, like everything else, it was a fabrication, but in this instance, it was true, well most of it at least…
Your victims were particularly vulnerable because their natural and unfulfilled desire was to have children. You were clearly carrying out a deception. There was a great deal of sophistication and deliberation about that deception - Surrogacy Case Judge.
Homecoming:
If Samantha did not lie for money, influence or attention, then what was her motivation? Producer Ronan Kelly wanted answers about the real Carrie Jade (AKA Samantha), so he went to her (actual) homeplace in Gloucester, England.
A former classmate told him they were shocked by the surrogacy case, but not surprised Samantha had persuaded the couple with her lies. She was known as a charming child. She was also known for her outlandish lies, which throws out the theory that her mistruths were a byproduct of grief.
Needless to say, she was not born in a Cork Mother-and-Baby Home. She was born in 1988 to an ordinary married couple (not millionaires) in a housing estate.
Samantha’s cousin Natalie Cookes gave an interview to the podcast. Natalie described her cousin as "shy" growing up. She also told the podcast makers that she didn’t recognise Samantha when she popped up in the media because of her "posh" accent.
Samantha did not attend a prestigious Steiner School, as she claimed; her secondary school was based in a wealthy suburb, which might explain where she picked up her accent.
The classmate told Ronan that on one occasion, Samantha promised to bring a sewing-machine to class the next day. However, she arrived without the machine and told her peers, dramatically, that she didn’t have it because she had been carrying it down the stairs at home, had tripped and the machine flew out through the window.
The classmate also said that Samantha would keep notebooks and write down things people told her, perhaps trying to keep track of her lies.
She used to carry around notebooks and write down things that people told her, and they wondered if she was doing this in order to keep track of lies that she told... - Producer Ronan Kelly
The Girlfriend Experience:
Samantha’s lies went far beyond the schoolyard walls. Her former boyfriends spoke with the podcast to relay their experiences dating a pathological liar and a future con woman. One boyfriend said she was initially sweet, but then things devolved into "a bit of a horror story." His words were voiced-up in the episode because, although 20 years have passed, he still does not want to be publicly identified.
He had little experience with women and initially took her lies as endearing, like she wanted to impress him. He felt she was just young and naive, and he could help her. He said her lies were never criminal, and while the relationship was brief, it had a long-lasting impact on him. He told the podcast the experience made him cynical, and he blames Samantha entirely for this.
Interestingly, Samantha’s mother did not indulge in her fantasies. Instead, she actively warned her daughter's adolescent loves that she was a notorious liar. Her former boyfriend would often fact-check things she told him with her mother.
She became an absolute compulsive pathological liar. Things like oh, at the weekends, I work with disadvantaged children. And then you find out four or five, six weeks later that she didn't. She’d tell me that her Mum was seriously ill with cancer and that she'd lost all her hair, and then the week after, I'd meet her Mum, and she'd be fine - Former Boyfriend of Samantha Cookes
Baby Martha:
During her interviews with the DocOnOne team, Samantha mentioned a boyfriend or rather a former husband she met "in church". She said he was called "Philip". She said that after they were married, she had a baby who died after a severe allergic reaction right before her first birthday.
Later, during her surrogacy scam trial Samantha claimed her first child died of cot death. Side note: She did have a baby and the baby did die – everything else is false. Here is the real story as told to the podcast team by another former boyfriend and the father of Samantha’s daughter, Martha.
After a brief relationship, he said the couple parted ways before Samantha went to University in York.
Again he said, her chronic lying put a strain on the courtship and skewed his view of the world. He said he used to feel that a large proportion of women must tell irrational lies until he realised that Samantha was a big exception.
So, when she told him she was pregnant with his child he struggled to believe her and decided to cut her off. He was just 18 at the time. In 2008, Samantha (20) gave birth to a daughter named Martha Isobel. Samantha stayed in a mother-and-baby home in England, called Magnolia House while she waited for her daughter to be adopted.
What happened next is a tragedy that no young mother deserves… Martha was four months old when she died. I will spare my readers the tragic details and instead, encourage you to listen to the podcast, with caution.
The episode contains the court transcript of the inquest that followed Martha’s death.
Martha’s father never got to meet his daughter. He never went to her funeral or attended the inquest, which ultimately ruled her death a blameless accident. This is according to a recording of the inquest which the podcast production team obtained from the coroner’s office in the UK.
Martha’s father did, however, have one final meeting with Samantha in a hotel car park. He still does not know how to feel about what happened.
QI now feel that this was a tragic accident, and Sam Cookes will forever blame herself for the death of her daughter - Police Detective Sergeant at the Inquest
Pseudologia fantastica:
It was in the aftermath of her daughter’s death that Samantha scammed the childless couple. Her father was so disgusted he never spoke to her again, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer but still did not see Samantha before he died.
Yet, her lies persisted… After being convicted for surrogacy fraud in 2011 she met another man. At 24, she gave birth to her second child, he also spoke with Ronan.
Social services in the UK decided Samantha was unfit to mind her child and applied to have it removed from her care. The child’s father told the podcast that he was unhappy about the events that unfolded.
An expert witness was brought in by social services to examine Samantha. They determined that she suffered from ‘pseudologia fantastica’, aka pathological lying.
Committed RTÉ Documentary on One listeners might remember that term from an earlier production about another fraudster also named Samantha. And, not to flog my own work but if you want to learn more about the pathological lying click here.
The relevant authorities argued in court that her pathological lying posed a developmental risk to her child. The court agreed, and the child’s father was given sole custody.
He believed the family needed support and not to have Samantha cut out of her child’s life. He acknowledged there were mental health issues at play but said the reaction was an "overreach" by social services.
Quote: Social services brought in an expert witness who examined Sam and said she suffered from ‘pseudologia fantastica' the formal term for pathological lying - Producer Ronan Kelly
Missing Person:
After Samantha’s child was removed from her care she kept a mammoth secret - something nobody knew, not even her partner…
Samantha was pregnant again, for a third time. She had already lost two children, so this time, she decided to take drastic action…
She was reported missing to the West Mercia police on the 28th of September, 2013. The investigators soon tracked Samantha to Ireland; they believed she had moved between Dublin and Clane in Kildare. And they were right.
She fled to Ireland to have her third baby, but shortly after the birth Irish social services were contacted over concerns for the child’s welfare. An Irish Family Law court directed that the child be removed from Samantha’s care and returned to its father in the UK.
By 2014, Samantha had given birth three times (that we know of), and yet she was alone.
After this, she moved around Ireland, finding ways to take care of other people’s children while omitting the fact that she had a criminal conviction and had been found unfit to take care of her own offspring.
Quote: Sam has moved around this country positioning herself to take care of other peoples’ children. All the time hiding from them the fact that twice, she’d been found unfit to care for her own children - Justine Stafford
The Aftermath:
After the surrogacy scam the plight of the childless couple was picked up by a wealthy businessman who heard about the court case.
He paid for another round of IVF, and they gave birth to a baby girl.
Please hold onto this pocket of good news as we move forward with the podcast…
New episodes of the Real Carrie Jade are available weekly - catch up here, or via your preferred podcast source.
