In 2021, a 32-year-old English woman named Carrie Jade Williams contacted the RTÉ audio documentary unit with a heartbreaking story.
She had Huntington’s Disease and was terminally ill. She had been adopted, so had no prior awareness of her medical history. She thought she might have a lifeline through lifesaving brain surgery, and she wanted RTÉ to record her final hope.
What followed was an unravelling of the most unusual of stories. Carrie Jade Williams was not who she claimed to be. Carrie Jade Williams does not exist. Her real name is Samantha Cookes.
The documentary team were to discover over time that Carrie Jade Williams lived under a number of different identities, and she sought out the vulnerable, right across Ireland and the UK. And, despite several convictions and being unmasked many times, she has shown no sign of stopping.
You think you know the story, but the real story of Carrie Jade with first-hand accounts from those closest to her who got caught up in her web of lies, is about to be told.
With direct access to Samantha Cookes, The Real Carrie Jade is a brand-new podcast series from the multi award winning RTÉ Documentary on One team behind Runaway Joe, The Nobody Zone and Finding Samantha, launched this week for RTÉ.
Ahead of the series release producer Ronan Kelly says:
“She may have initially conned us into interviewing her for a podcast but that was nothing to what she did to her real victims: she stole their money, their property and, worst of all, their sense of trust.”
Narrator, Justine Stafford has said of the podcast:
“This is an incredible story. As in, the original meaning, just not credible. It’s impossible to believe anything Sam says.”