Thread 26 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL

Please see the OP of Thread 25 for all the links to The Observer's reporting and podcast series, our threads one to 24 and so on.

After 25,000 posts there are still new things to discuss:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
If you are posting about a podcast, please start your post with the episode number you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so.

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer exposé items before posting. The Observer's excellent podcast series The Walkers (link in Thread 25) covers most things.
To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea: please do not engage with drive-by scolders who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. For over 8 months we have done amazingly well together for 25 very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

As ever, as we embark on our 26th thread riding the community charabanc, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5485730-thread-25-to-feel-disappointed-and-disgusted-and-vindicated-now-too-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

News from Waterstones. The big piles of books have gone from the show table, and instead there's one copy of TSP, one of TWS, and maybe five of Landlines on a shelf. Landlines was facing outwards so I covered it with a copy of Mark Wallington's book. It seemed apt.

I doubt anyone has bought the other books, they've been there for a long time taking up space, so I expect they've sent them back to wherever.

I've just been watching the true crime podcast with OC (sorry if it's already been discussed) with and two things jumped out ... RW writes a suicide note before she flits to London to get the loan and that OC says she "hasn't got away with it" as RW and Moth are now vertual hermits. So, quite a sympathetic interview and does suggest there are deep rooted issues...

Curious - what do you mean by deeply rooted issues?

That would be my question, too.
I've tried to follow all the links on this thread - and there have been many - so thanks to all for setting them up. This particular interview was new to me and I have to say that each time OC appears "on screen" my admiration of her, both as a professional IJ and also as a human being, is reinforced enormously.
After viewing this podcast I didn't feel so bad that I had been taken in, on first reading of TSP, i.e. that it was a true and accurate account of the couple's journey from Minehead (my birthplace, remember!) to Lands End.
It was only after viewing the film that doubts were sown.

Even more likely - publishers pay for their books positions in bookshops like this. It could be that PRH have decided to cut their losses on these ones and leave them to sink or swim now, rather than continually shelling out to keep sales numbers up.

More good news then!

Thanks for the info.

I’m interested in why she did it. I guess all of it really.

Her niece was of the opinion that she did it for the love of her husband, that she felt under pressure to provide for him while he sat back & polished his fancy shoes. He was certainly spending the money if he was buying fancy cars.

My own view is that possibly she stole the money simply to have a better quality of life, she used to complain to people that she couldn’t afford certain things. As TW was by accounts a very knowledgable gardener it seems strange to me that he didn’t do private work but maybe there wasn’t much of it where they lived in Wales.

The lost investment does seem to be real, I had assumed that was made up.

The book is interesting as one publisher said she never could have foreseen its success, writing a false memoir is not likely to be a profitable scam. Of course keeping up the lie after its success & writing more books is.

Thanks for your interesting take on all this. We were pleased to be able to address our questions to Chloe directly. Here is the link to our AMA with her:

Page 4 | MNHQ here: AMA with award winning investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou, Weds 28th Jan, 7-9pm | Mumsnet

I think she stole because she wanted lots of money and neither of them was prepared to work for it. Tim seems to only rarely have had actual paid work and Sal has only done intermittent jobs (although when her children were small she can be forgiven for that). But they both seem to like the high life, with new cars and designer clothes that other people have to have two full time jobs to cover the costs for.

As for why she did it - she'd already written one book which was a thinly veiled account of her life, so far. Maybe she just fancied writing another one which was just a slightly thicker veiled version of life. It's slightly amusing to imagine her 'Oh Shit' moment after she so gleefully watched her book starting to hit the bestseller lists, when she realised that she'd blown her cover and retribution would likely be coming her way...

I would guess that the best seller moments were triumphant and anxiety-free: SW didn't seem at all shy of the public eye. Any "oh sh*t" moment probably only happened many years after best-seller status and out of the blue. It would never have happened at all were it not for the very unlikely combination of someone with key knowledge tipping off a journalist, the journalist happening to have the curiosity, inclination and time to pursue it tenaciously, her newspaper recognising the public interest, and the journalist finding other people who had additional knowledge and were willing to share it. Grrr, if it weren't for those pesky meanies...

I think she'd got away with so much over such a long period that she must have thought she was safe -- she'd stolen enormous sums of money from vulnerable people, repeatedly, and had bought Martin Hemmings' silence, avoided prosecution, managed to persuade both families not to go to the police about her thefts from TW's parents and her own mother by feigning madness, stonewalling, saying she'd stolen to save TW from depression and despair, and self-lacerating 'confessions' pretending remorse, and still managed to get family to house her afterwards for long periods.

I imagine that she thought that losing their house when the loan from 'James' was called in was (a) terribly unfair, because it's the only negative thing that actually happened to them as a result of years of large scale theft but (b) that as those particular chickens had come home to roost, that was the end of that and no one was going to talk about it, or link it to the appearance of a walking memoir by a 'Raynor Winn'.

And the slightly scary thing is that she was nearly right.

People from her family and the surviving Hemmings did recognise 'Raynor Winn' as Sally Walker, but no one did anything effective about it.

One family member phoned the general reception at PRH, but didn't make contact with anyone who wanted to listen or knew what she was talking about.

One phoned a couple of police stations, but without proof of a crime, and with the people who were her victims unwilling to go to the police or dead, no one was interested in pursuing it.

The Hemmings thought they might still be covered by the NDA.

Individually, Maxine Faramond was getting suspicious at the stream of bailiffs' letters and fines still arriving at Pen y Maes years after the Walkers' left.

Bill Cole, the Walkers' biggest fan, was beginning to smell a rat as his tenants repeatedly refused to make cider, and as TW told him he hadn't long left to live, SW published a book about his miracle cure.

But it wasn't until someone suspicious of TW's evident wellness and who knew their real names (still not identified?) got in touch with an investigative journalist with a nose for a story that any of this cohered, or that most of these people learned of one another's existence, and that the criminal past was put together with the fake illness, the fictional, self-exonerating 'origin story', and the largely fictional walk.

And I still think that if SW hadn't been greedy they might have got away with it all.

If she had been content with the success of the original book which made no firm claims about CBD, and/or had dialled back from the CBD diagnosis in TWS, saying it was clearly a misdiagnosis, and put a note in subsequent editions of TSP saying that the narrative reflected the belief they'd held at the time, and not continually told the media TW was dying, got involved in fake fundraising etc, then I think it's possible they might have got away with it and been able to live in comfortable obscurity on the proceeds, foreign rights, the film option and her various gigs with Gigspanner and teaching writing and a 'wellness' industry thing.

If they said TW was now not dying, hurrah, no one would have been suspicious of this healthy-looking man, and got in touch with a journalist. If they'd obeyed the terms of their lease and made cider, Bill Cole would have continued to be a big fan and defender. If they'd been cleverer about paying old debts, no one would have come after them. If SW had said 'I did stupid things that led to us losing our house' at the start of TSP, there would be much less of a story

So I suppose we should actually be grateful that they were greedy and stupid. That the health claims became more and more exaggerated, that the books kept coming, that they did things like unnecessarily alienating Bill Cole. Otherwise no one would have contacted CH. I'd still have not been able to get beyond a sense that there was something weird about TSP, and discovered when I googled 'Raynor Winn courtcase', nothing emerged at all, and that there was in fact no reference online to Raynor Winn before the publication of TSP.

Hello everyone. I hope you are well and keeping out of mischief. The trusty charabanc has been having a well-deserved rest but remains ready to rev up again whenever the need arises.

I'm not sure whether or not this has been mentioned before on the threads. It's hard to remember all 25,686 posts! I've just watched the BBC documentary 3 part series The Mother of All Cons, available on iPlayer. It's about Jean O'Brien/Bhari/other names and her daughter Megan Bhari who founded and operated the Believe in Magic charity. In some aspects it made me think of our Garden Path duo. There's even a blue Aga mentioned.

The Mother of All Cons - BBC iPlayer

This is a subject we’ve tentatively raised before or joked about, because it seems so outlandish:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_another

However… A lot of us have thought of Sally as the one in control and at times I’ve been genuine concerned for Tim in case the relationship follows that pattern which is explained in the Wikipedia link above.
Scary stuff.

This is the Private Eye award that @PrettyDamnCosmic told us about. Here is OC's entry ...👏:

Bing Videos

SW has dropped another pointless post on Instagram. I’m unclear about her motives for doing this but I suppose while people keep
massaging her ego by liking her posts she’ll continue.

What does she say this time @AgitatedGoose ?
I was chatting about factitious disorder imposed on another, with my Dp yesterday but he very strongly believes that the pair of them knew exactly what they were doing and one hasn’t influenced the other. I’m not sure. They’re doing really well to keep themselves so hidden!

@HatStickBoots
raynor.winn Standing for a moment watching the colours change across the glass as the day slowly gave way to evening. One of those quiet transitions you almost miss if you're busy doing something else. The sky softening from blue to amber and then into that gentle half light that seems to belong only to the end of a day.

Well, the picture she has posted today is of the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik (the glass design is very distinctive). So unless they are in Iceland again, it's an old photo.

Oh, well done @TheBookShelf - so yes same old ... again. I was feeling that two of the last few posts showed the feeling of looking out longingly but trapped behind bars - I wondered if that was significant?

Well spotted @TheBookShelf. It’s probably an old photo as it’s unlikely she has any new content.

Are there any comments/questions?

Oh, I was wondering where it was and vaguely speculating about a church (possibly being melodramatic and thinking about medieval people seeking sanctuary in cathedrals) — well, spotted!

@Peladon, comments are off. I assume that a couple of posts ago, where it was briefly possible to comment, was either a mistake or a taking of the public temperature, and she’s decided not to risk it again, after someone asked if she was going to account for her ‘skulduggery’ in OWH.

@NervesofSteel someone asked if she was going to account for her ‘skulduggery’ in OWH.

How clever of that person to use that word, ‘skulduggery’, of this tricksy pair.

Yes, and it was perfectly civilly phrased, also, which I liked — SW won’t be able to claim it was a ‘hater’ or anyone subjecting her to online abuse. (Which is not to say she may not have had any elsewhere, obviously, but all the other comments on that Instagram post were adulatory, apart from one civil question.)

But I imagine that would be what she would say, if asked, as to why she had closed down comments since The Observer story — that she was subjected to vileness and trolling.

I hope those on Instagram can have a suitable comment, on the ready, for the occasional 'window' she may leave open to post! I love the tone of 'perfectly civilly phrased' - that's the way to do it.

I have to say that I find Our Chloe very generous and civil in the way she speaks of the investigation (see my post above re: the Private Eye award entry). If I had met with those who have been very affected, by the Walkers' complete selfishness, I think I would show that in my tone! OC is a true professional.