Raynor Winn may have fabricated details in her 2018 memoir The Salt Path, but she’s on a genuine salty path now! Raynor and her husband Moth have been mum on responding to The Observer’s damning weekend reporting that exposed many of the unsavory (salt pun!) truths of the circumstances that led the Winns, aka Sally and Tim Walker, to hit the 630-mile South West Coast Path while homeless. They said they were waiting on “legal advice,” which apparently came in, because Sally Raynor Winn Walker (in my head I’m calling her Martha Marcy May Marlene) just posted a long ass rebuttal, in which she addresses each allegation, and caps the whole thing off with redacted pictures of some of Moth’s medical records. Funny, then, how her statement only left me with more questions. The whole thing is too long to excerpt (you can read it here), but Deadline dug into some of the salient points:
The author of the bestselling memoir that was adapted for Toronto festival hit The Salt Path issued a long statement Wednesday answering allegations about her book that were raised in a UK newspaper article. Raynor Winn says the report in The Observer this week “is grotesquely unfair, highly misleading and seeks to systematically pick apart my life.”
The film, starring Gillian Anderson as Winn and Jason Isaacs as her ailing husband Moth Winn, is an adaptation of a supposedly true-to-life book about the couple’s journey along the South of England coast after they lose their home and the husband is diagnosed with corticobasal syndrome, a rare progressive neurological disease.
The Observer published a story on Saturday headlined “The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation.” Written by investigative reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou, it alleges that Ros Hemmings, a widow in her 60s living in rural North Wales, “knew something about Winn that almost everyone — her publishers, her agents, the film producers — had missed. She knew that Raynor Winn wasn’t her real name and that several aspects of her story were untrue. She also believed she was a thief.”
In her statement, Winn adds: “Over the past few days, I have had vitriol poured on me from all quarters, along with threats directed at me, my family, and our children. It has been incredibly hard to remain silent, something I’ve had to do while waiting to receive legal advice. That legal advice is ongoing, but I can now speak up.”
She adds: “It’s important to say, the Observer were offered the opportunity, by my lawyers, to discuss in detail the allegations made against me to correct their inaccurate account and to be guided on the truth, on the basis that the discussion would not be made public. However, they chose not to take it, preferring to pursue their highly misleading narrative.”
I can only surmise that the “legal advice” Raynor was waiting for, was the sign off from her lawyers that her language was appropriately vague enough to sound affronted at the accusations, while not definitively refuting them. Calling the Observer article “grotesquely unfair, highly misleading and seeks to systematically pick apart my life,” is not saying that the reporting is untrue! And the wording of this section was also curious: “The Observer were offered the opportunity, by my lawyers, to discuss in detail the allegations made against me to correct their inaccurate account and to be guided on the truth, on the basis that the discussion would not be made public.” Like The Observer’s approach to investigating Raynor’s life, there is so much to pick apart in that one sentence. For starters, the wishy-washy comment that her lawyers would guide the reporter to the truth. What, like the lawyers were leading a treasure hunt? Or meditation class? But I think the really consequential item is the bit about only speaking with The Observer off the record. To paraphrase a truly rotten excuse of a president, why do people plead the fifth if they have nothing to hide?
Anyway, please read the whole screed for yourselves and report back!
Photos credit: Nikita Kolinz/Future Image/Cover Images, Nikita Kolinz/Future Image/Cover Images, IMAGO/Dave Bedrosian/Avalon
Long ass statement full of obsfucation and dubious explanations eg when stressed at work as book keeper I made a few mistakes and when the boss accused me of stealing I had, butter fingers , lost the paper work to prove my innocence. So naturally I am such a sweet heart that I insisted on paying thousands to my former boss with an NDA attached for peace of mind for both of us?
And her lawyers OKd that? Huh. Where’d she find these lawyers?
Well, this whole story is just weird and makes me sad. We can’t even have an “inspirational” book any more without people being awful scammers and ruining it. I would never believe that a long hike cured a disease, don’t get me wrong. But it’s nice to think it could have some mentally therapeutic or restorative impact. And maybe bring a couple closer.
I had never heard of this book or movie. Now I might watch it out of morbid curiosity. And for Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson.
It raises more questions than it answers IMO, and the medical letters don’t back up the terminal diagnosis, unless I’m missing something. Plus what diagnosis there is appears to be dated after the events of the first book – so it’s all very confusing.
If this is the best and could do after conferring with her lawyers for days, it’s not great.
Neither seems financially astute as she claims that they lost their “forever” home- how emotive- on a bad investment with Cooper. Cooper was a long-term friend of Timothy or just Moth , husband of Sally or Raynor, talented and creative book keeper as you prefer. When our two orphans of the storm needed to cash in their investment to fund a nature sanctuary in Widnes or keep Sally/ Raynor out of prison, the villain of the piece, Cooper lied to them that the investment had failed. Still he offered them instead a 100k loan secured against their not so forever home at 18% PA interest!! They took it despite being jobless as Moth is too ill to work and Sally/Raynor couldn’t get a good reference from her former boss!!! Many, many vissisitudes assailed this trusting couple as Cooper’s company collapsed and their LOAN passed to grasping creditors which led to a court case and the loss of their home. Raynor ‘s emotive statement is full of melodrama : I expect The Observer to dissect it in response in their Sunday edition!
It makes absolutely no sense to offer an investigative REPORTER the truth, provided she doesn’t disclose it. I mean, wtf?
Also, why does grifter lady keep calling him Moth? We all know that isn’t his name. So weird.
Moth is supposedly short for Timothy? I am a Brit aged 61 and have heard of Betty short for Elizabeth but never Moth short for Timothy?
Sally and Tim Walker are SUCH classically white British names they clearly wanted to make themselves sound a whole lot edgier and/or be less likely to be clocked by people who had less than favourable recollections of them!
This all sounds like industrial grade bull hockey, and that statement about how The Observer declined the oh-so-tempting opportunity to be “guided to the truth” off record? Eye rolls for days. I wonder if they have terrible lawyers, or if this is the best the lawyers could do with what they have.
Okay, I just read her statement.
I find this kind of thing infuriating — this type of lying — probably because we have to endure it on a daily basis from the White House. She begins by grabbing the victim role with both hands, “vitriol,” “trauma,” etc. “The journey held within is one of salt and weather” — wtf?
I didn’t embezzle — “mistakes were being made.” (£64,000 worth)
I didn’t embezzle — but Hemmings called the police.
I didn’t embezzle — but I settled with Hemmings anyway.
I needed money — to pay for the embezzlement settlement even though I didn’t embezzle.
I didn’t cheat my friend — we invested and lost, but expected to get our money back anyway.
I didn’t cheat my friend — but for 15+ years I didn’t monitor my own big investment.
I didn’t cheat my friend — he cheated us actually, but we took his offer of an 18% loan to make up for it.
I didn’t cheat my friend — I blame him for this whole mess, even though I could’ve gone to any bank, anywhere to get a loan to pay my settlement (though I did NOT embezzle, and which has nothing to do with our financial failure).
I didn’t cheat my friend — I raffled off my house, because that seemed better than hiring a lawyer, accountant, or realtor.
The judge was mean — because he wouldn’t accept a random, last-second piece of paper as documentation of our claims.
We ARE homeless — because no one will buy our property in southwest France.
We ARE homeless — because even though we were foreclosed on, we still had to be forcibly evicted.
God, I could go on. This is really gross. Their life is their own punishment, I guess.
Agreed @FYI her long and problematic statement casts her as the forlorn victim beset and taken advantage of from all sides. Misunderstood by her boss ? Betrayed by a long term friend and then duped by the same man into an iniquitous loan that cost her the house? Pressurised by heart less creditors and made homeless by the judge who allowed their home to be repossessed? Everything but wolves yapping at their rears? None of it is believable as an alternative explanation to being fearful of being sent to jail for embezzlement and taking out a risky secured loan because you are desperate to repay
what you stole back.
When she first pushed back I thought maybe there is something in it, you never know, maybe they did miss something important (hmm, I wonder why my confidence in journalistic integrity has dwindled). Now the more she talks the more convinced I am that the Observer did indeed dig deeply enough to uncover what actually happened.
Oh, goodness! Thank you for the synopsis, though; I’m gonna pass on reading her actual words. Think I might blow a gasket.
Ok, came back to say I had to read the medical docs. I was interested because I, too, have a progressive neurological disease–also untreatable & incurable, but not fatal. First off, I’m not impressed with the writing skills of the consultant. Yikes! Almost as bad as trump. Second, one is a letter following a teledoc appointment earlier this year & one a quickie referral to a neurologist ten years ago. Per that second letter–really the first, in 2015–all his tests were negative–MRIs, blood tests, etc. The doc was saying best guess it may be this, but…not sure. We can say what it’s not but not what it is. He suggested genetic testing but there’s no indication that that was done. I think they took the suggestion of the possibility of this scary disease & ran with it.