If you’re looking for a true crime book to read this summer, check out this extract from Alan Bradley’s Unmasking Samantha Cookes.
You may be familiar with the story of Samantha Cookes, the serial fraudster who reinvented herself across the UK and Ireland with multiple fake identities. Her carefully crafted personas include au pair and nanny to therapist, psychologist, terminally ill author and online ‘sickfluencer’ – all created with the goal to manipulate.
Author Alan Bradley has compiled exclusive evidence and firsthand accounts in a bid to pull back the curtain on a mastermind of deception. He also reveals how easily trust can be weaponised, with an unsettling question at its core: how well do we really know the people we trust with our children?
This extract follows Samantha Cookes posing as experienced nanny “Samantha Black” after answering an urgent childcare plea from an overwhelmed Galway mother of four. Charming, capable and instantly adored by both the family and their wider community, Samantha quickly embeds herself in their lives, spinning emotional stories about adoption, lost relatives and a mysterious fiancé. As months pass, however, strange incidents and inconsistencies begin to unsettle Claire, who starts doubting both Samantha and her own memory.
Samantha left Cork behind and moved west, stepping neatly into the busy, tangled life of Claire, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of four in Galway who was perpetually balancing a cup of lukewarm coffee on the edge of a countertop and was, at that moment in time, in a quite a fix. The school WhatsApp groups were already clogging her phone with messages about summer-term projects, while her youngest daughter had developed a habit of climbing onto the kitchen island during moments of chaos.
With Claire due to return to work as a Health and Safety Officer, after being off for some time, the Spanish au pair imminently due to arrive had seemed like salvation in her online communications: cheerful, qualified and perfectly timed. But on the morning of her flight, a text in broken English arrived, an injury, an apology, no flight after all. The au pair would not be travelling to Ireland as she took time to recover. Claire had stared at her phone for a long time, as the toast burned behind her and two of the children argued about socks. Monday loomed. Work loomed. Life loomed.
By mid-afternoon, she was online, trawling discussion boards, Facebook groups and dubious listings for childcare. Her posts took on a pleading tone: Urgent, need live-in help ASAP. The responses were either automated or apathetic until, just after eight o’clock that evening, her phone buzzed. ‘Hello Claire,’ the message read. ‘My name is Samantha Black. I’m in Ireland at the moment and can start right away. I have a decade of experience with children and references if you’d like to see them.’ The name felt reassuringly ordinary, so Claire didn’t question it. She simply exhaled, her shoulders dropping in brief, exhausted relief. She would later remember that moment, the quiet click of trust forming, as if it were the first domino to fall.
After a brief phone call, Claire was delighted. The woman’s voice on the other end was warm, confident, precisely what she needed. Samantha spoke of years in America working as a nanny for wealthy families in Boston and New York. Trained, discreet, professional. She even offered to do a free trial for a week, to ‘make sure it was the right fit’. ‘I can be with you on Sunday,’ she said. The calm assurance in her tone felt like a rescue line. Claire clung to it.
That Sunday morning, Claire collected Samantha from the bus stop in Galway. As the composed woman approached, a small rucksack slung over one shoulder, Claire thought it odd that someone would travel so light. Samantha explained that all her belongings from America were locked away in a storage container in Cork. She’d lost the access code, she said, but she’d sort it soon. ‘And it’s only a trial week,’ she added with a smile. ‘No sense dragging everything with me just yet.’ It sounded reasonable and Claire was eager to see reason wherever she could find it. When she asked for the references, Samantha apologised – their details, too, were inconveniently trapped in the storage unit. But they’d be sent on, of course, once she regained access. Claire nodded, reassured by the promise.
That Sunday afternoon, Claire brought Samantha straight to the family dinner at her husband’s mother’s house. Within an hour, Samantha Black was a sensation. She was on the lawn, running after children and cousins, laughing breathlessly, hair coming loose in the wind. ‘What do you think of my new Mary Poppins?’ Claire joked to her mother-in-law, pride lighting her face.
Samantha was charming, effortlessly so. She told the children stories that seemed to spill from nowhere, about pirates and lost treasures, glittering cities, enchanted woods. She had the table covered in coloured paper and glue before dessert was served. The house rang with laughter. By evening, there wasn’t a soul who hadn’t fallen a little in love with Samantha Black.
However, the stories Samantha told the children weren’t the only ones she spun. Her ‘trial week’ soon became a permanent role, but, as the bright weeks of summer settled in, the tales she shared over evening dinners grew stranger, just enough to skirt the edge of believability. She told Claire that she’d been adopted from a mother-and-baby home in Bessborough, and that she was now searching for her birth family. The story carried just the right balance of sadness and mystery. Claire listened, moved, pouring another glass of wine, assuring her that she was brave to look.
Then, one evening, Samantha announced she had found her birth sister in Ireland, but her birth mother had died years before. Claire’s heart broke for her kind, steady nanny. What an awful twist, to come so far only to find the door closed. The mysterious sister never appeared, but Claire, polite and compassionate, didn’t pry.
It seemed Samantha was finding her place in the community too. She joined a local church, and every Sunday morning Claire dropped her off at the gates with a cheerful wave. Soon there was a new friend named Theresa (not her real name), warm, devout, full of kind words about Samantha. The two women became inseparable, often disappearing for coffee or meetings at the parish hall. Claire was glad, truly glad, that her nanny had found companionship.
But somewhere along the way, odd things began to happen. Keys went missing only to reappear in the wrong place. The remote control turned up in the fridge. Claire’s phone, a sleek, pink-cased lifeline, was found in the kitchen when she could swear she’d left it on the sofa. Once, she laughed it off, then twice, then three times. Eventually the laughter tightened into unease. Was she really becoming that forgetful? Was this normal? One bleary August morning, after yet another frantic search for her car keys, Samantha gave Claire a look of quiet concern. ‘Maybe you should get that checked out with a doctor?’ It was said softly, helpfully, but the words landed heavily. Claire brushed it off with a laugh, but later, driving to work, she caught herself wondering. Was she really forgetting things?
Then came another announcement: Samantha was engaged, to a man named Paul, a man from a neighbouring town she’d met through church. Claire smiled at first, but the oddness of it pricked at her mind. She’d never seen this mysterious Paul, never once dropped Samantha off or seen a text flash across her phone. Whenever Claire gently asked about him, there was always a story – he worked odd hours, he travelled for business, he preferred privacy.
In September, for her daughter’s birthday, Claire decided to test her doubts. ‘Tell Paul to come,’ she said brightly. Samantha agreed immediately. But when the day arrived, with its cakes, bunting and laughter, there was no Paul and no message, no explanation beyond a vague excuse about family issues. ‘Something’s not right,’ Claire whispered to her husband that night. Yet even as she said it, uncertainty crept in. Samantha was good with the children, brilliant even. The house ran smoother with her there. And, truthfully, Claire was exhausted. Between long hours at work and the chaos of four children, she was forever chasing her own tail, losing things, doubting herself. She felt something was off with her nanny but hoped she was just imagining it.
Unmasking Samantha Cookes by Alan Bradley is available to buy from bookstores now.
