The Real Carrie Jade – what happens when a Podcaster is conned?

The RTÉ Documentary On One team is known for their groundbreaking, award-winning podcasts like Runaway Joe and The Nobody Zone.

Podcasts that not only scored millions of downloads but with listeners’ tips, helped the FBI and Metropolitan Police crack open seemingly-unsolvable cold cases.

So, when they received an email in April 2021 from a terminally-ill woman who not only wanted to expose the Irish health system for their treatment of adoptees but also wanted the team to track her journey through an experimental procedure for Huntington’s disease, their interest was immediately piqued.

The woman, Carrie Jade Williams, was an award-winning writer born in Bessborough Mother and Baby home in Cork.

To add another layer to her tale, the psychiatrist who misdiagnosed her was later put in prison.

It was a story with all the elements that every podcaster dreams of: a first-hand account from an articulate source; a relevant, captivating narrative and the possibility to improve the lives of others.

But there was a hitch…one important hitch: her whole story was fake.

‘Carrie Jade Williams’ was just one of many false identities adopted by a woman named Samantha Cookes.

Also false, the facts that she was adopted or that she was dying. Ms Cookes had a more ordinary start to life: she grew up in a suburb in Gloucester and, aside from a penchant for pathological lying was relatively healthy.

However, stories like this are not uncommon. In 2007, The New York Times decided to include the survival story of Tania Head in their anniversary coverage of 9/11.

Her ‘inspiring tale’ had been accepted by friends, reporters, and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, but it also the NYT discovered was a complete fabrication.

However, what’s different here is that RTÉ Documentary On One was part of Carrie Jade’s con. She wanted to use them as part of her fake story until she became part of their very real one.

Introducing: The Real Carrie Jade, a podcast about uncovering the truth, getting justice for victims and the chaos left in the wake of a serial scammer. In other words, it is a podcast within a podcast, a modern audio meta-drama.

On the week of the podcast’s launch, I decided to ask producer Ronan Kelly a few questions. After all, he was both the reporter and a victim in a true crime podcast.

Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get into journalism?

I was always obsessed with news, and when I left college, I got an internship with CNN in Atlanta. It was 1986, the height of the Iran-Contra crisis – a great time to be there.

When I got back to Ireland, I spent a couple of years freelancing for RTÉ TV and applied for a ‘Journalist’ job, thinking it was in the RTÉ Newsroom. As it happened, it was in Radio, as a reporter. I loved it – tearing around Dublin on my bike with a portable cassette recorder.

Then, within a few months, RTÉ Radio advertised for a radio producer, and I got it. I was 25 – right place; right time.

At the interview, I said my dream was to work in documentaries.

For the following 21 years, I produced on all the main shows (except, sadly, the Gerry Ryan Show). Finally, in 2011, I was given the chance to work with RTÉ Documentary On One, which is where I’ve been since.

What was your first reaction to ‘Carrie Jade Williams’ and her documentary pitch?

I was intrigued.

Audio documentaries and series are different in that we do not do the kinds of research interviews that are done for live radio programmes. We do not need to – we do not have to get a conversation down to a certain duration in one go.

Also, the person is not live on-air, so we do not need to be concerned about how they will sound or what they might say. We can do all that in the edit suite before publication or broadcast.

So, our interview process is very different. We go along and visit the interviewee, spend a few hours with them and see what emerges. We do not have a list of questions in front of us. It’s a conversation, and often, the interviewee surprises themselves with what they say.

When I saw the pitch from Carrie Jade, I thought she and I would have a pretty good conversation, and I was right, we did. Although, at the time, I didn’t realise how big a deal that conversation would become when we’d eventually discover her true identity as Samantha Cookes.

What was your first interaction like? Can you give us a brief timeline of your relationship with Samantha and how it fell apart?

We exchanged emails. I googled her (as ‘Carrie Jade Williams’) and saw that she was an award-winning writer. I first travelled to meet her in Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry in October 2021. It was during a lull in the Covid lockdown. I was concerned about contaminating her, but she said, “The only thing in my body that’s actually working are my lungs”. So, she said, we didn’t need masks.

We spoke for about four hours, walked around Cahersiveen and had lunch. She told me that she was getting tremors during lunch, that wouldn’t be obvious to me. She also told me that, despite her terminal diagnosis, she was undertaking some pioneering brain surgery in Los Angeles to help her live whatever life she’d left, to the full.

I left a small, portable audio recorder with her to record her progress and her surgical trip to Los Angeles.

I really admired her – her energy and drive. I was also profoundly sad at the fact that such a wonderful person was going to die soon of an awful illness.

We communicated on and off for the next nine months. She was often difficult to pin down. There were many missed appointments for, either online or in-person meetings. I travelled to Cahersiveen again, and we spoke for an hour at a physical distance – Covid was surging again.

Again, we made more arrangements, which she failed to keep.

After my first visit, I reported back to the DocOnOne team that I thought we should go with this project. But, at subsequent meetings, I had to tell them that I was failing to maintain contact with Samantha.

I was full of sympathy for her; I felt she was missing appointments because the disease was affecting her concentration and ability to plan. And, while I wanted to continue recording, I also didn’t want to exacerbate her condition by stressing her with demands.

At some point though, in January 2022, things changed for me. I felt we were being played, but I didn’t know if it was malice or she was over-promising and not accepting that her illness was impacting on her so much.

What bit of evidence or incident made you seriously question her? Can you describe the moment you found out she was lying?

One WhatsApp message – from my colleague, Liam O’Brien. “Is this your Carrie?” and a photo from 2011.

It came in one evening in October 2022. We had paused the project, and a Google Alert came up on his phone.

He had worked on one of our previous podcasts, “Finding Samantha,” and had the name ‘Samantha’ tagged.

It was following a flurry of TikTok posts revealing that ‘Carrie Jade Williams’ was really Samantha Cookes. The photo was from a trial at which she had been convicted of surrogacy fraud.

How did you personally feel once you knew she was lying to you? Do you consider yourself a victim of her crimes?

I was hurt and angry, professionally-speaking. Not because of the work I’d invested in the project but because, when we make documentaries, we put so much of ourselves into the process. That doesn’t always come out in the content we publish, but when you are with someone for many, many hours recording, you are forming a relationship, albeit short-lived.

So, yes, I felt foolish and betrayed.

But not a “victim” like the other people she had conned. She didn’t loom over my life the way she did with others. I hadn’t invested as much in our relationship as others had. Neither had I been betrayed on a personal level. And, I had not involved children, the way others did – much to their distress.

How did her behaviour change when she realized you knew the truth? Did she try to justify or defend her actions?

No, she just did what she does with everyone – she ghosted me. What she didn’t do was something she has done with other people, and that is come back and attack me. She’s done this to others, either with cruel letters or by taking cases to the Residential Tenancies Board as she did with two of her landlords we spoke to.

Why did you decide to change the direction of the podcast as opposed to just giving up?

One important reason was her voice. We had hours and hours of her voice lying to me, straight to my face, and of course all that was recorded on tape. When I spoke to her other victims, they all said that her sweet, upper-class English accent was significant in them believing her.

The other was that I could empathise with her victims. I had some sense of the betrayal they felt – and so we wanted to share their experiences to a much wider audience.

Also, her deception is a form of abuse that can sometimes be disregarded because it involves a betrayal of trust. That’s not a crime; but can be as damaging to victims as any criminal offence.

Lastly, there is the question of how a society manages someone like Samantha.

When did you last hear from Samantha? Did you ever confront her about scamming you?

Our last email contact was in July 2022. No, I did not get the chance, and I wonder if there would be any point, given the fact that she is a known and proven liar.

How do you feel about Samantha now? And how do her victims feel about her?

I would not like to have her mind. It must be a very lonely existence. Her victim’s reactions range from anger to sympathy and, often, a mixture of those emotions.

How many aliases did she have? Does she ever hold multiple identities and or run multiple scams at the same time?

We have no way of knowing. We know of eight or nine. Yes, I have seen letters she left behind in one of her rental properties with the same address but different names.

Did she ever present you with “evidence” to back up her claims? For example, medical documentation or adoption records.

No – that was something I constantly asked for throughout the nine months we had ongoing contact. Because she wanted me to tell her story to the world, I needed further testimony from people like the doctors and surgeons involved in her supposed brain surgery so I could talk to them directly about their pioneering efforts. She promised she’s put me in contact with everyone in her story, but none of those contacts ever came through – because of course, her connection with those people never existed.

What was it like retracing Samantha’s steps throughout the podcast? For instance, visiting her childhood home of Gloucester?

When we tell stories like this, we have to do a deep, deep dive into the story. Both for ourselves, and ultimately, for our listeners. So it was really useful to get a picture of Samantha from the beginning of her life, that part of her personality. For example, she went to a wealthy school and lived in a modest estate. Many people manage that, but perhaps, that caused a bit of tension for her.

Did making the podcast and getting to know Samantha’s victims help you in the experiences you had with her?

It definitely helped me understand the experience better. I bought into her story completely. I invested in it, and in a way, in her. So when you realise all of that is untrue, and you’ve been fooled, it does of course cause you to question yourself. And that experience allowed me to better understand all of Samantha’s other victims – even though what they experienced was on a different level.

The Real Carrie Jade – Episodes 1 & 2 coming on June 7th 2024.
Listen on RTÉ Radio Player on iOS and Android, or on all major podcast apps.