Author of bestselling memoir The Salt Path accused of ‘lies, deceit, theft’
Raynor Winn’s memoir of homelessness and terminal illness sold millions and inspired a major film, but a new investigation reveals a very different backstory that has cast doubt on the truth of it all.
Raynor Winn, the author of the bestselling memoir The Salt Path, is facing questions about the honesty of her life story after an investigation that uncovered allegations of embezzlement and significant omissions in her account of the events that led to her and her husband becoming homeless.
Winn’s memoir traces how she and her husband, Moth, lost their 17th-century home in rural Wales after a failed investment with a friend, which inspired them to embark on a 1000km trek along Britain’s South West Coast Path while coping with Moth’s terminal diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD).
The Salt Path, which was billed as “unflinchingly honest” by publisher Penguin, sold more than two million copies and was this year adapted into a hit film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, with Winn credited as co-producer.
But a wide-ranging investigation by The Observer newspaper has exposed several discrepancies in Winn’s origin story, including the cause of their financial collapse and the severity of her husband’s illness.
A widow named Ros Hemmings claims Winn – whom she knew by her legal name, Sally Walker, had embezzled £64,000 ($133,500) from the business of her late husband, Martin.
According to Ms Hemmings, Winn worked as a bookkeeper for her husband in the early 2000s at their family-run estate agency. She says her husband, the firm’s owner, noticed that Winn had failed to deposit a large sum of money in 2008, prompting him to conduct an audit and find that “there was around £9000 missing over the previous few months”.
Winn is alleged to have pleaded with Mr Hemmings for an opportunity to pay the money back. “She was sobbing in the yard and said, ‘I’ve even had to sell my mother’s wedding dress to do this,’ ” Ms Hemmings said, adding that the family had accepted her offer.
But after further investigation, the Hemmingses found Winn had allegedly stolen much more than initially suspected. “In the end, I think it was around £64,000 she’d nicked over the previous few years,” Ms Hemmings told The Observer.
Police were called and Winn was allegedly arrested but released after questioning, with the instruction to appear at the police station the next day. She allegedly disappeared before further action could be taken.
Eventually, a deal was struck when a distant relative of Winn’s husband, Tim Walker (who appears in the book as Moth), agreed to lend them money to repay the sum that was allegedly stolen – reportedly £100,000. In return, the Hemmingses agreed to drop the matter and sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The loan was used to settle a criminal allegation made against Winn. However, the Winns allegedly defaulted on the loan, and in 2012 their farmhouse property was repossessed after a court judgment.
The Salt Path frames the loss of the house as a result of a bad business investment with a family friend, a version of events Ms Hemmings describes as misleading.
“Her claims that it was all just a business deal that went wrong really upset me,” she told The Observer. “When really she had embezzled the money from my husband. It made me feel sick.”
Ms Hemmings remembers how profoundly her husband, who died in 2012, was affected by the chapter. “It absolutely destroyed him because he was a very trusting, kind person,” she said.
The investigation also found that the couple allegedly owned property in France at the time they were supposedly homeless, which was not mentioned in The Salt Path.
French government documents revealed that in 2007 the Walkers bought a house in the southwest of France, and continued to receive tax notices for the property for several years after their home in Wales was lost.
Questions were also raised about the central premise of the memoir: Moth’s battle with corticobasal degeneration, a rare and degenerative brain disease similar to Parkinson’s.
The life expectancy of those suffering the disease – which is irreversible and for which there is no treatment – is about six to eight years. Moth has been living with the condition, with no obvious side-effects, for 18 years.
Medical experts interviewed by The Observer expressed scepticism about the timeline and apparent improvement in his condition, which in the book appears to have been reversed as a result of outdoor exercise.
Professor Michele Hum, a consultant neurologist at Oxford University, said Moth’s story “does not pass the sniff test”.
Despite this, Penguin continues to market the book as a “life-affirming true story” about “the healing power of the natural world”.
In a brief statement issued through lawyers, Winn maintained the truthfulness of her memoir, writing: “The Salt Path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true story of our journey.”
