She has posed as an award-winning writer, an Autism Guru, surrogate mother, Nanny, terminal-illness sufferer and victim of cruel discrimination as a disabled person.
‘Carrie Jade Williams’, an identity used by an English woman who has spent much of her recent life in Ireland, has been all of these things and none. Because ‘Carrie Jade’ is one of the most notorious scammers of our times, spending a decade or more selling a whole library full of stories about herself, many portraying her as the innocent victim of cruelty and injustice. Carrie Jade – as the hit podcast about her bizarre life says – does not exist.
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In 2022, she became an overnight sensation on social media when she posted a video, saying she had been diagnosed with the terminal illness Huntington’s Disease and was being sued for €450,000 by guests who stayed with her at her Airbnb property in Kenmare, Co Kerry.
CorkBeo reports how she provoked outrage and sympathy from people all over the world when she claimed on TikTok that her heartless guests were suing her because – as they had told her – ‘being around her as a disabled person’ had caused them ‘trauma’.
It was a sensational story, almost tailor-made to win this poor, terminally ill woman sympathy – except that none of it was true. An investigation by a journalist from the Vice news site found that Airbnb had no record of this happening, had no record of a complaint and that ‘Carrie Jade’ was actually Samantha Cookes, an English woman who had a history of compulsive lying alongside a tragic backstory of mental health issues and child loss.
Now Cookes, who has recently lived in Cork and Kerry and who was the subject of the hit podcast “Carrie Jade Does Not Exist” is believed to be back in Ireland, with one Facebook group of people dedicated to tracking her claiming that she has been seen in the Carrigaline area.
Cookes or ‘Carrie Jade’ may be looking for employment as a Nanny – in Cork or Kerry – and those who have become fascinated with her story are urging people to be on the lookout for her and to be aware of her backstory.
The true-crime podcast, Carrie Jade Does Not Exist, is hosted by comedian and presenter Sue Perkins and VICE journalist Katherine Denkinson and it documents the bizarre life and stories spun by its subject.
It tells of how – in an investigation that first took her to Kenmare – Katernine Dickenson discovered the true story behind the viral video.
Soon after it was reported, Cookes disappeared from her home in Kenmare and hasn’t been heard of since.
The journalist found that Samantha had adopted a pattern of finding small, close-knit communities – such as Kenmare and Fermoy/Rathcormac in North Cork (where she lived in 2017 and called herself ‘Rebecca Fitzgerald’).
Once living in a small community, she would start to reach out to people, sometimes through community groups working with the disabled, or with mother’s groups or book clubs.
She would claim to have various qualifications, to be an expert in helping children with autism, or to be a qualified Nanny or award-winning writer. Once she had worked her way into people’s lives, she would often attempt to scam people out of money. There were cases in the where Samantha Cookes received suspended prison sentences for fraud, including one where she had convinced a childless English couple that she could be a surrogate mother for them.
Every time her story began to unravel, or some local started to grow suspicious of the kidly English woman who only wanted to help, she would pack everything up and quickly disappear, often, appearing in a town not so far away and starting her games under a new name.
In North Cork in 2017, she was autism therapist Rebecca Fitzgerald. In Kerry, Airbnb operator and disability activist Carrie Jade. She has also been domestic violence refuge owner Lucy Fitzwilliam, au pair Lucy Hart and a surrogate mother called Claudia.
Bizarrely, ‘Carrie’ has also shown real talent as a writer, first making headlines when she won the very prestigious Bodley Head Financial Times literary award in 2020.
This led to a career hosting online writing workshops during the pandemic.
However, as was revealed later, she was living in Co Kerry at the time, having arrived in Cahersiveen in 2019, quickly befriending a woman whose daughter had recently died. Carrie was selling ‘creative writing’ lessons online, and claimed that for a fee, she could show budding novelists how to win a €10,000 grant to pursue their dreams.
And the essay that won the prize was supposed to be about her real life. It was called: “My Brain is in a Battle it will Lose’ and told the story of her heart-breaking diagnosis with Huntington’s and how she could no longer write or hold a pen. The essay was said to have been written using speech-to-text software as she was to weak to use a pen or keyboard.
Her big prize – and her compelling story as a chemist who had contracted a terminal disease – saw her become something of a minor celebrity and she started up a YouTube channel, to chart the progression of her terminal disease.
However, in 2022, while living in Kerry, Carrie told a lie too far, posting a video to TikTok in which she slammed 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 an emotional, teary video.
Carrie claimed her guests 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.
The video went viral as huge numbers of TikTok users expressed outrage and smypathy and Carrie soon posted a follow-up video – in which she claimed the guests were now suing her for €450,000. She also made a series of bizarre claims about what her guests where demanding to ‘deal with their trauma’.
She said they had told her she had to pay for an ’emotional support animal’ to travel with them and also wanted ’25 adult colouring books every year for the rest of their lives’. It was then that links to stories about court cases and past instances of people being conned in the UK started popping up on social media sites.
Carrie’s response? These stories were actually about her sister – and she would sue anybody who posted or shared them.
VICE journalist Kat Denikson traveled to Co Kerry and started asking questions – soon after, Carrie Jade disappeared but Denkinson kept digging.
When her real backstory emerged, it was as tragic as any ‘Carrie’ had made up about herself.
Born in the UK in 1988, Samantha Cookes grew up in Gloucestershire, before moving to Shropshire with her mother and her new husband after her parents divorced.
As a schoolkid, Samantha had a reputation for being a liar, including telling teavhers and classmates that her mother had cancer and, when she was a teenager, that she had been pregnant but lost the baby.
When she turned 18, she began dating a boy called Liam and set up a website to plan their ‘wedding’. In the end, there was no wedding but shortly after they split up, and when she had started a degree in Occupational Therapy at York University, Samantha discovered she was pregnant and left university.
She returned i home to Shropshire. She gave birth to a daughter called Martha in 2008. Tragically, just four months later, Martha died.
A five-month inquest found Martha had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) – a result which appeared to vindicate Samantha, who felt she had been accused of having played some part in the death of her child.
Two years later in 2010, Samantha started a relationship with a man and they had a child. A year later, she gave birth to a second child. But due to mental health problems, the father was given sole custody. In 2013 she became pregnant with her third child with the same man and determined not to lose custody of this unborn child, Samantha fled to a town in the midlands in Ireland in the winter of 2013.
She gave birth in January 2014, but after neighbors became concerned for her welfare, social services stepped in and an Irish family court ruled that the third child should join its siblings with the father back in the UK.
She worked for a while as an Au Pair or Nanny, moved to Co Kerry and became Lucy Fitzwilliam. In 2017, ‘Rebecca Fitzgerald’ arrived in North Cork before Carrie Jade Williams moved back to Kerry in 2019.
There have been no definitive sightings of her since the Podcast made her very famous again. But there are persistent reports that she is back in Ireland, possibly in the southwest, possibly in or having passed through Carrigaline.
Carrie or Rebecca or Samantha may be looking to find a new community.
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This story first appeared on Radio Today