- 4 months ago
Bad Nanny S01E01 (13 May 2025)
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CreativityTranscript
00:00I was so glad she arrived.
00:02This girl was going to help us.
00:04She was Mary Poppins.
00:09She's bubbly, she's lively, she's full of ideas, she's bright.
00:13The girls thought she was amazing, the girls thought she was full of fun.
00:19Her stories were fantastical.
00:21We were fascinated by them.
00:23Her stories were so far-fetched that you couldn't make it up.
00:26The minute her mouth was moving, she was lying.
00:32Well, from Claudia Bronwyn, Lucy Fitzwilliams to Carrie Jade Williams,
00:36these are just some of the different identities taken by just one person, Samantha Cooks.
00:41Serial fraudster, Samantha Cooks.
00:43These are the names that she's been using around the country.
00:46Sadie Harris.
00:47Carrie Jade Williams.
00:49Lucy Fitzwilliams.
00:50Lucy Hart.
00:51Lucy Williamson.
00:52Ellen Harris.
00:53Everything was a lie.
00:55It was one of the biggest scams that has ever happened on TikTok.
00:59Where is the real Carrie Jade?
01:01Who is she?
01:02She's gone from tone to tone.
01:04A pure con artist.
01:06I was really scared for my friends and their children.
01:11I slept with a hatchet beside my bed.
01:14We're wrapped up in some serious thing, and I don't know how far this has gone.
01:19Who have we had looking after our children?
01:21A by-
01:22I've never cried forfeities.
01:23And RIght
01:39Elvato Huff
01:48Over a year ago now, I got diagnosed with a terminal degenerative neurological illness
01:56called Huntington's. Huntington's is basically Parkinson's meets ALS meets Alzheimer's.
02:02It had destroyed a large portion of my brain at that point, and I was very, very poorly. I was
02:07very poorly girl and kind of ended up in intensive care. And part of going through that, I had a
02:15great neurologist. And he said to me, do you know what? Write a bucket list and see, you know, use
02:21your time as well as you want to use it. It's your decision. That's kind of the blessing that
02:25Huntington's has given me is that I'm limited for time and I've gone, I'm going to live life on my
02:31terms and have a lot of fun.
02:45With Carrie Jade Williams, I still stand by the fact that she looks so sweet and innocent. She
03:08doesn't look like she's done the things that she's done. She's at face value. She looks like a really
03:15trustworthy person. I didn't know the severity of what was going to happen or how deep this
03:21story goes. A lot of my friends were starting on TikTok and they would send me videos saying
03:27you really need to do TikTok. I was like, right, okay, so I'll just see what it's about.
03:34I quickly got quite addicted to the quick scrolling. So when I went on there, I was making videos
03:42talking about the current events of that day. I did the Johnny Depp trial.
03:47Everyone has their own reasons for believing what they want to believe, whether they believe
03:52Amber or whether they believe Johnny. I would predict what Amber Heard was going to wear to
03:56court every day. I was predicting that she would wear a yellow top because it's a friendly colour.
04:01Yeah, I did say she was wearing yellow. And when I first did the video, I didn't realise it was
04:06yellow. I thought it was like a pale cream. I got it right again. I got it right every day and how I
04:13did it, I don't know. And yeah, people really seemed to like it. And my page took off. Any video I did
04:18would have hundreds of thousands of views within like five, ten minutes. I've always said TikTok fame
04:23isn't real fame. Only the people on that app know who you are. So when the trial finished, I decided
04:29what am I going to do with my page? I had a large following and I wanted to use it for good.
04:33So I thought, well, why don't I try and like build other people's pages up, help them out,
04:39people who really need it. I was tagged in Carrie Jade Williams' videos by a lot of different people.
04:44There are some perks to dying young. Like number one, you can do wild things. And if people say,
04:50oh, jeez, why did she do that? You can say, well, it's the Huntington's. The first thing I know,
04:55I was told I had Huntington's disease. The first thing I was told is do not Google
04:59Huntington's disease because it will, like you, you'll need picking up off the floor.
05:04The first thing I read about my own illness was horrific. Now it is a horrific illness,
05:09but I hope that in the future when, you know, when some young woman gets the diagnosis of Huntington's
05:16that the first thing they might see is someone like me that's living life.
05:20To me, she was vulnerable at that time.
05:22Now I am, I do a huge amount of advocacy around Huntington's disease.
05:26I'm a big believer in the gift economy and that the world provides you what you need.
05:31Her story was, is that she was being sued by, I believe, an American couple for having
05:37disabled AIDS in her house. Apparently she said that she didn't declare it when she was
05:41renting out the place. So that they were so traumatized by it that they were suing her.
05:46Um, I know, yeah, these guests are suing for, um, well, it's a life changing sum of money.
05:51They are so emotionally traumatized and triggered by being a force to be around me. They are seeking
05:56a huge amount of compensation.
05:58I was disgusted at what was happening to her.
06:00And as I'm terminally ill, I self-fund all my medication and my experimental treatments.
06:05So, for me, um, I don't have the luxury of just being able to pay them off to get them
06:10out of my life. So we have to, um, we have to sort of stand firm in this.
06:14I've done care for quite a lot of my life. I've worked in lots of different care settings.
06:17I've worked in, um, schools for autistic children. So, yeah, I really wanted to help her.
06:23I really wanted to stick up for her as part of a disabled community. I wanted to
06:28get her voice be heard, do you know?
06:31You couldn't imagine her lying. But the fact that she's so well-spoken and the fact that she looks
06:35sweet and innocent, it clouded my brain straight away to go, oh, well, let's just make some videos
06:40for her. Let's help her out. I did feel sorry for her and I felt very compelled to help her.
06:47I made my video.
06:48This lovely lady has Huntington's disease and she opened her home up to Airbnb.
06:55And some guests came into her house and they are now suing her for £450,000
07:04for trauma of having to be around her.
07:10Anyway, this lady's got a petition. Run to this lady's page. She absolutely needs it.
07:15Go to her page, interact with all of her videos. Please, please, please. We need to get this as far
07:19as we can. It really needs a collective community support here, um, for everybody to try and spread
07:26as much awareness around this as possible.
07:29Overnight, it just expanded. My video went up to like 1.2 million and then all of a sudden she's got
07:35all of these followers and that video just went super viral.
07:41The lady in the video has terminal Huntington disease, which is, is a debilitating illness.
07:47This is just outrageous. Even if the judge threw the whole thing out and
07:51warded her millions and millions, they'd just wait her out because she's going to die.
07:56Please, go and sign it to offer support and show that the disabled community
08:00stick together and that this is not acceptable. Airbnb need to be ashamed of themselves.
08:05She had a link on her page where she was printing 3D sensory items for disabled children.
08:12I'm a single mom. Both of the children are on the autistic spectrum. I enjoy scrolling through
08:40TikTok. It's kind of my escape from real life. On an evening, I would just have a little scroll on
08:47there just as a break. I remember the first videos I saw of Carrie. She had one of those faces where
08:54it just drew you in naturally. And I remember I would, every day, I would wake up and want to check
09:00if she'd posted any videos. Well, feed me to an alligator with a tinfoil hat. But yeah,
09:04thank you for joining me. It's lovely to see some of you. And I will reach out again later. Um,
09:09okay. Thank you. It kind of took a turn. She started showing us the sensory items that she's made.
09:15She claimed that she could print anything on a 3D printer. She then went on to say that she wanted
09:22to help so many families before she died. So this is the space that Carrie-Jade had promised we were
09:29going to have the sensory room in. So the plan was to have like fiber optics coming from like a waterfall.
09:35There was going to be like bubble tubes on the wall. So you can have like a flat bubble tube.
09:40They're worth so much money. I could never buy it. For my children, they have pretty big meltdowns.
09:48It can be quite extreme sometimes. There can be pretty violent behavior. To just kind of have a
09:55sensory space where they can touch base, come back down to earth, regulate their emotions a little
10:00bit can be really helpful. I went on to Carrie's website. She claimed that she had a factory and she
10:10was saying that she had like employees. So at the moment in our main business, we have 18, um,
10:17like work from home positions that are vacant. I think we're all really awesome. I love my team.
10:22Because she claimed she could 3D print this sensory room, it was going to be a lot cheaper and it was
10:28her dying wish. She wanted to help people because she was dying. I purchased her 250 pound bundle.
10:38That 250 pound was my children's Christmas money. She then, after speaking to me, told me she liked me so
10:46much. She was going to make this a thousand pound worth of stuff. It would have been life changing.
10:52I thought, wow, I believed she was the real deal.
10:58I got an email.
11:02When I was at football with my son, it was completely anonymous. I was genuinely shaking.
11:10It was just a link. It was a link to her surrogacy scam in the UK.
11:15Samantha Cooks. Who is this? Is this the same person?
11:22I just couldn't believe that she could have been capable.
11:27Who is Samantha? This has to be a mistake. It cannot be the same person.
11:45Samantha Cooks. I just think that she's just a very dangerous person.
11:55I actually thought we were possibly a one-off.
11:58Samantha Cooks. I didn't expect her to then keep doing the things that she has done to other people,
12:07other victims, and get away with it. It's sick. It really is.
12:12Samantha Cooks. We were going through a hardship having a family. We tried different avenues.
12:20We'd gone down adoption. We'd gone down fostering. We'd gone through a series of IVF treatments.
12:28We'd kept on failing and failing. You see everybody around you having kids.
12:38You'd think that it's something that would possibly come naturally to you.
12:45You don't realise how...
12:49How... Oh, God.
12:51Something so natural that should happen literally doesn't.
13:12So, at that point, we were desperate for having a family.
13:16I'd put a sort of failure out.
13:20I had a reply from Samantha and saying that she would be willing to help us.
13:27It was fantastic. It was almost like being on cloud nine. You've won the lottery.
13:32You were finally going to get that family that you really, really wanted.
13:36She came to the house. She was very kind, warm-hearted, delicate.
13:46She said she'd been a surrogate beforehand to another lady and her husband
13:51and produced a little girl.
13:54She was asking for money regarding insurance for the surrogacy policy.
14:00There was other bits and pieces that she needed during pregnancy.
14:07She started to slip up.
14:09We asked about contracts.
14:12She wasn't willing to part with that.
14:15She kept on messaging saying that the contract needed amending and amending.
14:22When I asked her if she could produce the contract to then either email it,
14:26if it was easier, I would come down to hers.
14:29She then started threatening, saying that we were not allowed to go down to her area.
14:35I was thinking, no, no, this is just wrong.
14:38My husband had then rang the police.
14:40It just literally all came crashing down.
14:44There was no baby.
14:48And then next thing we know is she's been arrested.
14:58The court had put down for 2,000.
15:00I personally don't think it's that.
15:03It's anywhere between the region of £2,000 to £5,000.
15:10For us, she got off scot-free, really, a slap on the wrist.
15:14Nine months of spending sessions paying us back £20 a month,
15:17which we very rarely saw.
15:21She put it in a statement, didn't she, that she was extremely sorry for the trauma
15:26that she put us through and that she...
15:29It was never an intention.
15:32Yada, yada, yada.
15:33But then she'd learned from her mistakes and she'd never do it again.
15:36She's found other avenues and different channels to go down to defraud people, basically,
15:43and get money.
15:45She's quite happily doing it.
15:46And until somebody stops her completely, she's going to carry on.
15:51I was determined to find out what was actually going on.
16:04I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.
16:06I didn't believe that link in the first place.
16:09Frauding people like this.
16:12No, this has to be a mistake.
16:13It cannot be the same person.
16:17My heart was pounding.
16:18My heart because at this point I'd made like two or three videos
16:21and there was millions of views on them.
16:23This lovely lady has Huntington's disease and she opened her home up to Airbnb.
16:28Run to this lady's page.
16:30She can't be lying about this.
16:31Who lies about things like that?
16:33I've sent all of these people over to her page, supporting her.
16:37What if I've got this wrong?
16:39I had to have factual evidence or as much as that I could get hold of
16:44before I went back to TikTok and said,
16:46look, I don't think that this lady's right.
16:48I didn't really know what to do.
16:50It was a very stressful few days of me trying to find information, evidence,
16:56photos to try and match up to make sure it was definitely her.
17:00You can never get rid of your digital footprint.
17:03So I went back and I found photos.
17:05She changes her appearance so much it was quite hard to say,
17:10well, is this the same person?
17:13But because she'd had moles on her neck,
17:15I was able to identify that that was definitely her.
17:21I know this is Samantha.
17:22Oh my God, what have I done?
17:24I've sent all of these people over to her page.
17:30I did comment on one of her videos and I said,
17:32Samantha, can you contact me please? I need to speak to you.
17:35And within seconds, my comment was gone.
17:40Other comments had popped up saying,
17:41oh, I thought your name was Carrie Jade.
17:43Oh, I thought your name was this.
17:44I thought your name was that.
17:45And I was watching it unfold in front of me.
17:48The next thing I know, the comments were turned off.
17:52Why did she put herself on social media?
17:55I'm not quite sure if she just had a moment of stupidness where she was like,
18:01well, nobody's going to recognize me. I'll be fine.
18:04The dying lady is what I knew her as.
18:07I thought she was amazing.
18:09She was almost like a celebrity.
18:11She was getting hundreds of thousands of views.
18:14Up until this point, I had absolutely zero suspicion.
18:18I knew what I knew at this point.
18:22I had to tell people.
18:26So I did it. I broke the story.
18:29So this here is Samantha Cooks.
18:34This is the lady from the disability videos with the Airbnb.
18:38OK, there's more stuff.
18:41So this is other stuff that comes up on the internet.
18:45Samantha Cooks.
18:46I don't know if she's got Huntington's disease.
18:48And I don't know if this happened to her.
18:50But what I do know is that I've had a lot of people messaging me,
18:54telling me that they've known her by different names.
18:56I've seen it on her post.
18:58She's turned her comments off because there was an argument in her post
19:02about her pretending to be other people.
19:04I honestly do not know what's going on.
19:07I don't know what I'm saying, to be honest.
19:09All I know is...
19:10I find it really hard to watch this one.
19:12It was a very stressful time.
19:15I was very upset.
19:16I didn't want to have to be the person to do that.
19:19Do you know what I mean?
19:20But it was important.
19:23I woke up to a video by Maz, which was exposing Carriage Aid.
19:31There was a statement on Samantha's website.
19:33She releases a statement on her website saying,
19:36Samantha Cooks is actually her sister.
19:41It was her sister she said that I am Carrie Jade Williams.
19:46Samantha Cooks, a scammer, is my mentally unwell sister.
19:51An evil sister.
19:56But obviously we knew quite quickly that that wasn't true.
19:58Carrie Jade Williams is Samantha Cooks.
20:02It was so crazy.
20:04I paid the money to Samantha Cooks.
20:06But I never received a single sensory item from Samantha.
20:10And I am yet to find another person who did.
20:15I was gutted that we weren't getting a sensory room.
20:18We're the kind of people that can't afford to be losing money.
20:22Once I was scammed, I went on TikTok.
20:26A fair few of us have purchased items on there,
20:30but we've never found anyone who's received a thing.
20:34People were making videos after videos.
20:35It's TikTok drama and TikTok loves drama.
20:39The whole situation with Samantha Cooks is really, really disturbing.
20:42She's been doing this for so long.
20:44It is definitely pathological.
20:46That was bullshit. And I believed it.
20:48And the reason I believed it is because I am disabled.
20:53And because I have experienced stuff like this first hand.
20:56She has also fraudulently taken money from charities.
21:01Thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds.
21:03From established charities who also fell for her con.
21:08She's a very dangerous woman and we need to keep spreading the word.
21:10We need to keep talking about her so she's got nowhere to hide.
21:13I kind of went into a little detective mode.
21:16I was posting my own videos on TikTok.
21:19She's just a long term scammer.
21:21There was a surrogacy scam.
21:23She is Sam Cooks.
21:24She is Sam Cooks.
21:26I was digging and trying to find out information.
21:29People were commenting from years and years ago.
21:32My name is Jamie Bunting.
21:53And I met Samantha Cooks in September 2011.
21:57While we were studying for HND in business at Shrewsbury College.
22:02When I first met Sam, she was very bubbly, smiling, very well dressed.
22:13She was 23 and I was 24.
22:15The sorts of person you just, you fell in love with really at first.
22:18She got to know me and realised I wasn't in the best place.
22:21And she just sort of offered me that support.
22:24Made me believe that I could do things.
22:26She was very intelligent.
22:28She used to help me after classes.
22:30I thought, oh my god, I've made such a wonderful friend really.
22:33My friend started a relationship on the course with Samantha.
22:40She told us in class that she was carrying a child.
22:43We were all really excited.
22:45Two of our friends on the course were having a child together.
22:47And it was just a great feeling at the time.
22:49And I remember we were walking through ASDA the one day.
22:53Me and my friends were like, oh, should we have a look at the baby clothes.
22:56And see if we can get something for them too.
22:58It was, you know, usually we're walking into Sainsbury's going to create a being, you know.
23:06I started picking up on certain things with Sam.
23:09I think she'd just be changing what she was saying a lot.
23:14She said she had a bad back.
23:16We were all being supportive, you know, helping her get up, taking her bags,
23:20giving her lift to her station and seeing if she wanted any help up the stairs.
23:23She picked a box up for the teacher one day and I said, oh, Sam, is it your bad?
23:28You know, bad. You said it was really severe.
23:30And she was like, oh, no, I just put some lotion on it to help.
23:33And I thought, right, OK.
23:35And that's when I started thinking something not quite right here.
23:41She said that she'd sort a trip out to Amsterdam for us.
23:44A week before we were going to go away to Amsterdam, she said, oh,
23:47I'm not sure we're going to go away because I'm not going to be able to go.
23:51So can we just have the tickets?
23:53And then she goes, I've lost them.
23:54That's when I started noticing the lies were starting to pack up a bit.
23:58The tutor turned around to me and she said, you're not going higher?
24:01And I said, no, no.
24:02So she goes, have you got any suspicions?
24:04I said, I have, yeah.
24:05The tutor turned around and she goes, I shouldn't say this,
24:08but I think you need to do some deep research online.
24:1220 minutes later, I found out about the surrogate scam.
24:15I confronted her, I can't believe you've done this.
24:24Look, can I just have my money back?
24:26And it went from the bubbly girl to being quite verbally horrible.
24:30Give it us back and we'll say no more, you know.
24:35That's when I started getting a reaction out of Sam, who she is and what she was trying to do.
24:41Before the helping and hello and come and give me a hug and all this and let me look after you.
24:45That was just an act to reel me in.
24:49And that was the last time I saw her.
24:57Me and my friend, Samantha's child's father, met up for a drink and he was showing pictures of his child.
25:06After they had the baby, he said that the child had been removed from Sam and he's got full custody over it.
25:12And that's when I found out Samantha Cooks has had her child taken away from her.
25:28About a year after, he was in the Shropshire store in Shrewsbury.
25:42Samantha Cooks had gone missing.
25:53There was this investigation involving Samantha Cooks.
25:56She'd been reported missing by her partner.
26:00Straight off the bat, it was an odd case.
26:06The more you found out about her and the surrounding circumstances, the odder it got.
26:12She'd had a very colourful history.
26:17From an early age, I think, had been a bit of a Walter Mitty character.
26:20She was a pathological liar.
26:23Her mother even used to tell her boyfriends that she was a pathological liar.
26:31It is unusual for her mother publicly to say that her daughter lies, lies a lot to her boyfriends.
26:38You don't find out very often.
26:39That stood out.
26:41Previously, she'd been involved in a surrogacy case.
26:44She had previous visits to Ireland, so Ireland was a good place to go and look for her.
26:53I contacted the GardaÃ, sent them across our missing person report.
26:58We'd been told she was pregnant.
27:07Knowing that she was pregnant, as she was, that would have impacted her reasoning.
27:14I suspect she was clearly worried about, is the second child going to be taken off me?
27:20That clearly was the trigger for her going missing.
27:24Were there concerns that her being pregnant, she might harm the baby?
27:29Well, yes, there would have been.
27:31There was a question mark over it.
27:32I think that's the best I can put it.
27:34I thought we were going to be hearing more of her.
27:38That just shone out loud and clear.
27:44You just looked at the background and she just couldn't stop herself.
27:48Until she was found in Ireland.
28:04We happened to be, I'd say, the first one she hit when she came to Ireland.
28:21When we knew Samantha Cox, she was Sophia Williamson.
28:25It was in Edenderry.
28:26In 2013.
28:28If I met her today, I'd still like her.
28:31Do you know? She has that kind of personality.
28:33Yeah, just very likeable.
28:35Yeah.
28:36I don't know, she's just like a people person that she'd...
28:40And you would go, oh, she's lovely, isn't she?
28:42Yeah, yeah.
28:44She was running Honeysuckles Art School.
28:48They were dirt cheap, like three euro.
28:51For three hours?
28:52Yeah.
28:53So I said, oh, great, I'll bring my kids down.
28:56And then I told Karen.
28:57So it's her fault.
28:58Up above the world so high.
29:02Like a diamond in the sky.
29:06Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle.
29:09She was very heavily pregnant.
29:12I mean, you automatically just trust a pregnant woman when you see her, don't you?
29:18When had you met in Disneyland?
29:24So she had spare places that she could offer us really cheap.
29:29Really cheap. Basically you were just playing with the buzz.
29:37We had paid the deposit.
29:39Our husband said we were gullible.
29:42We weren't the only ones. No we weren't.
29:44Was Disneyland meant to be in February?
29:47Yeah.
29:48And this could have been January and there was no mention.
29:51There was nothing coming forward of any more details.
29:54We were starting to get a bit sus about this.
29:57There was just lots of things.
29:58I suppose it's a small enough community.
30:00We all got talking and you just know.
30:12So we called down to her one night.
30:14She had the baby wrapped up and all warm.
30:18We'd heard that she had like delivered to the baby at home by herself by all accounts.
30:22Like that she had, yeah, just had the baby at home and neighbours were concerned because there didn't seem to be any healthcare or anything like that.
30:31So they had reported it like, yeah.
30:38Following her being discovered, it was established that she had given birth.
30:43And that baby sadly was removed from her and taken back to the UK and given to a partner who had reported her missing, who was also looking after the other child that she'd had.
30:58She decided that she wanted to continue living in Ireland for whatever reason.
31:05It may seem a bit odd, but everyone's got a right to go missing.
31:10Our case was then closed.
31:13She disappeared.
31:15Yeah.
31:16Gone.
31:17Very quickly.
31:18We didn't know what happened to her.
31:19No.
31:20And I often did wonder down through the years that happened to her, yeah.
31:23Yeah.
31:30This woman is not just a dying sick woman scamming for attention on TikTok.
31:35There's so much more to it.
31:38We kind of got a bit of a picture together of her life.
31:43This is pretty insane.
31:48Her whole entire life has been one scam after another scam.
31:52A lot of people were looking for information about her life.
31:55Once we got her name, then you could kind of go on to like Ancestry.com and you could work out, actually, she's had children.
32:05I remember when I found out about her children, just feeling utterly gobsmacked.
32:12She just pathologically lies, like she can't help it.
32:16I don't even have kids, but like the thought of trying to teach a child anything scares me.
32:21As a mother myself, I can't imagine not seeing my children.
32:25I can't imagine going a couple of nights away from my children, never mind having absolutely no contact.
32:32And you've got to remember she was online as this lovely dying person.
32:37When you say, actually, she's got children she's not allowed to see.
32:42You would never put that with the Carrie Jade Williams that we got to know as a TikTok persona.
32:49Accessibility should be about making the world more improved and better for humans.
32:53We came across Leila, who had Samantha as a nanny.
32:59That's good.
33:00You want some?
33:01You're in a hallway.
33:02Come on.
33:03Come on.
33:05Come on.
33:06Come on, let's go.
33:09You're in a hallway.
33:11Come on.
33:12Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on,
33:33Lucy Hart, that's what we know now has.
33:38We moved here from the UK in 2005.
33:42My husband was working full-time and so was I.
33:45I don't have any family, my husband doesn't have any family here so it's just me and him.
33:50We did check out all the creches, we couldn't afford those, crazy amounts of money.
33:58I had one of my old friends from back home say, wow, an au pair, yeah, you must have money.
34:05No, don't have money, it's just it was more of a convenience and a cheaper option.
34:12We used a website and that's where we found Lucy.
34:19Obviously being an English person and she's English seemed to get on like a house on fire.
34:25I didn't check for any passports.
34:28I didn't do any, you know, call in any references of what she was like.
34:33I just took her as face value really.
34:35She was Mary Poppins.
34:38I was the age of 10 turning 11.
34:43She was genuinely a big ball of fun so it was everything up my alley.
34:50The minute she would get up we would be doing something fun.
34:54She genuinely did actually become a part of our family, like my parents made her feel so welcomed.
35:01I got really close to her, I really did get close to her.
35:07The tales that she used to tell, everything that we would mention, she's done it bigger and better.
35:14You know, so that you would get the wow factor from her.
35:17She said that her mother was the manufacturer for sandpaper for B&Q.
35:25You're sitting there and you're thinking, wow.
35:30That looks familiar, that one there.
35:36No, this is it.
35:38This was it.
35:40This was the house because I can remember we packed in here.
35:44At the time we were paying quite a bit for rent.
35:46We couldn't afford to keep paying that much money.
35:49Lucy was a Jova's witness.
35:51She mentioned that there was a new church that was going to be moving into Maynooth.
35:56There's a house going for cheaper than what we were paying.
35:59She had been in touch with the church elder.
36:01He won't mind a lovely family going into that house.
36:06Took us to the house, showed us the outside.
36:09Beautiful house.
36:11So we boxed everything up.
36:13We gave notice to my landlord.
36:15And each time we asked, is there any chance we can go and we can view the place?
36:19We just kept on getting, oh, such and such is out of town at the moment.
36:23There was always an excuse.
36:25There's something happening here.
36:27And then the one particular day that she was in the car with us, we happened to drive up past the house.
36:32There was a gentleman standing in the garden.
36:35So of course we were like, great.
36:37And all of a sudden she started to feel ill.
36:40So she was like, I really need to use the bathroom.
36:44Is there any chance that we could go to the restrooms?
36:48The nearest place we could think of was Tesco in Maynooth.
36:51We were parked in the car park and she went upstairs.
36:53The two girls went with her.
36:54My two children came running downstairs telling me that she'd collapsed in Tesco.
36:59I just remember like picking up my little sister and running downstairs with her to let my mum know that Lucy had fainted.
37:08She looked straight at my dad and was like, it was like the light bulb kind of moment.
37:12Why didn't I pick up on this sooner?
37:14There is no house.
37:15Lucy went on some writer's retreat, which she told us, and she never came back.
37:22We got the letter to say that she wasn't coming back.
37:26She knew it was catching up with her.
37:29It's all fabrications.
37:32She's being caught up on our lies.
37:34So we were like, right, we're going to have to clear her room.
37:37And we started pulling things out of the wardrobe and then there was a little index card notebook.
37:47And I just started to read.
37:51In one of her lines, she puts, I stand shoulder to shoulder with the coroner that I did not murder my daughter.
38:08And I just went, who have we had looking after our children?
38:13She never mentioned any children to me that she's ever had any children.
38:29That's strange.
38:30Very strange.
38:31So as I was digging and trying to find out information about Samantha, one of her ex-partners came forward from years and years ago.
38:47He confirmed that she was actually from Gloucester originally, and this is where her family was based also.
38:53He is the one that kind of filled in the picture of her very early life.
38:57That's when it became something so much more.
38:59This is a part of my life that I've kept very closed.
39:20We were both 18 when I knew her.
39:24I would have been incredibly shy.
39:27I was still very immature.
39:30And I saw her as being quite a confident, intelligent, attractive person who I almost had a bit lucky to have met.
39:36I suppose it was quite tense quite quickly.
39:40By the end of the summer, we were a couple.
39:44I did meet her family.
39:46You know, they were quite normal and welcoming.
39:49I seemed to settle in quite well with them.
39:52That misleading nature was already prominent in her personality at that point.
39:59From my experience, there was a lot of unnecessary lies and deception.
40:05She said that she had a problem with her hands at school, and she had to wear gloves a lot.
40:10Whether it's to make her seem more interesting at that point, I don't know.
40:14This mutual friend said, oh, you can't trust a word, she says.
40:19Those small little strange incidents started to slowly build up over that period.
40:25So I do remember thinking, I'm not sure this is really going to work.
40:30I've tried to end it.
40:33She'd done a test and she said that she was pregnant.
40:38After that, I would be inundated with messages and cause.
40:43Is it real?
40:44Is it just made up?
40:46Is it a tactic?
40:48I think that whole being a little family thing was a real wish for her.
40:54It was something that she would have referred to during that period.
40:57The whole period is not something I look back with much pride.
41:04My bump in the pregnancy was next to zero, really.
41:09It was going to be an adoption.
41:22I found out that baby Martha had died from a local newspaper report that there had been this death the day that Martha was going to be taken for adoption.
41:36Those details do raise questions for me.
41:40Sam Cooks woke up between 6.30 and 7.00 hours on the 18th of November 2008 and gave Martha the first feed of the day.
42:02Sam was aware that the adoption worker was arriving that morning and was looking forward to signing the adoption paperwork.
42:08The adoption paperwork was signed by Sam as between 1,200 hours and 1,400 hours Martha would normally have asleep.
42:17Sam placed Martha on her back and placed her into a V-shaped pillow.
42:21Sam lay on the bed next to Martha.
42:23Her intention was never to fall asleep.
42:25She wanted to lie next to Martha and watch her.
42:28When Sam woke up, she saw that the rectangular pillar was over Martha's face and that the V-shaped pillow was slightly wrapped around the neck of Martha.
42:37Sam pulled Martha from underneath the pillows.
42:39She was lifeless and she was blue.
42:43Sam then picked Martha up and went to run out of the bedroom.
42:46She went to open the door and found that it was locked from the inside.
42:51I'm satisfied that the appropriate verdict that I should record in relation to Martha is that she died an accidental death.
43:07She gave her a finding to be an artificial eye to analysis.
43:11She chose her to figure out the corruption site full of herons in the note.
43:14She showed her that the
43:32I just find it really really sad. Her baby passed away. That is enough to send you on
43:50a spiral anyway. That's a lot of emotions. Maybe she didn't know how to deal with that
43:55and that could have triggered something in her that then moved her on to doing the things
44:01that she's done.
44:08It's reported that she felt that society was looking at her and blaming her for murdering
44:15that child and no criminal action was pursued against her and it was deemed to be an accident.
44:23Clearly that would have had a psychological impact on her. But throughout all of this
44:30her defrauding people. That started long before Martha. That started at an early age.
44:38But there are lots of people sadly who have deaths of children who then don't go on to
44:46defraud people like she has.
44:51Oh my gosh, this has taken a huge other turn. It was like, hey, this is someone who actually
44:58could pose a bit of a danger to people rather than just being a lady online who was using
45:03TikTok as a platform.
45:05This one is the one that we found in the room.
45:11Whereas you can still see I stand shoulder to shoulder with the coroner that I did not murder
45:17my daughter.
45:19Me as a parent, leaving my children in her care, if I'd have known for one second that
45:26she had children, yeah, things would have been a whole lot different.
45:30I'm an open book. I have no secrets. I have no skeletons in my closet kind of thing.
45:35She obviously clearly does. I would warn anybody about her. Don't let her in your home. Don't
45:41let her in.
45:42After she was outed, she just vanished. From real life, from online, from everywhere, no
45:56one knew where she'd gone.
46:01We all wanted to know where Samantha Cooks was. What is she doing now?
46:07If I'm being absolutely honest, I don't think this is going to be the end to her. I do
46:11think that she will carry on. Sadly, I don't think that she's going to stop.
46:18She had won the Financial Times essay competition. She's just created fascinating stories that
46:23are mad. We were gobsmacked.
46:25She had us all fooled.
46:27I was all of a sudden dealing with somebody that I didn't have a clue what she was capable
46:32of.
46:33She came in like an angel, swooping in. I thought, she's a real life Mary Poppers.
46:38She knew exactly what she was doing when she came to our house.
46:43A mask dropped and this voice came from nowhere. I will have them.
46:51We just didn't know what she was going to do with our children. I didn't see any of this
46:56coming. None of us did.
46:57None of us did.
46:58None of us did.
47:03None of us thought, yeah.
47:05None of us did.
47:09They stopped and did not do.
47:12Nobody's been try and��.
47:15None of us didn'tbi Stop.
47:21Anyone?
47:23None of us did.
47:24None of you believe nobody?
47:26whatsoever?
47:26None of us think...