The wild and picturesque Salt Path, a hiking trail around the coast of Devon and Cornwall, has many stunning twists – but none so jaw-dropping as those that emerge in tonight’s engrossing TV exposé of a bestselling author and her husband.
In a dramatic family meeting, relatives of writer Raynor Winn claim she has stolen tens of thousands of pounds from both her own parents and her husband’s, and forged bank statements to cover up the crimes.
‘Raynor Winn’, the pseudonym of 63-year-old Sally Ann Walker, has sold millions of copies of her memoir The Salt Path. In this year’s hit film of the book, she was played by Gillian Anderson, with Jason Isaacs as her husband ‘Moth’ – real name Timothy.
But as investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou reveals in the new Sky documentary The Salt Path Scandal, with one damning denunciation after another, the Walkers are a couple of callous con artists who have defrauded friends and family of huge sums.
Despite the success of the book, the film and a lucrative publishing deal with Penguin, the couple have failed to return almost any of the money they allegedly stole. Sally Ann used manipulation and brazen defiance to avoid being prosecuted.
‘She left my grandmother [ie, Sally’s own mother] with no money,’ says one niece, who asked not to be named. ‘She forged my grandmother’s bank statements. It broke her to the very core. The daughter who she idolised and put on a pedestal broke her.’
Their family also pours scorn on the claim that ‘Moth’ is battling a terminal neurological disease, corticobasal degeneration. They dismiss him as a fantasist who has made spurious claims of serious illness since his youth.
This scepticism is backed up by Dr James Gratwicke, a neurology specialist who has been working with sufferers of corticobasal degeneration for 20 years.
‘Raynor Winn’, the pseudonym of 63-year-old Sally Ann Walker (pictured), sold millions of copies of her memoir The Salt Path, which told the story of losing her home before embarking on a mammoth trek of the South West Coast Path with her seriously ill husband
The book was even adapted into a Hollywood film starring Gillian Anderson (left) and Jason Isaacs (right)
However, an investigation by The Observer has claimed that Winn (right) admitted in letters to her sister to stealing money from her mother and elderly in-laws
He tells Hadjimatheou that Tim Walker displays no obvious symptoms of the disease, and that maximum life expectancy after diagnosis is nine years – yet Walker claims to have had it for 18 years.
Such a medical miracle, if it existed, would be the subject of intense discussion in neurology journals, points out Dr Gratwicke. But it has gone entirely unreported by Walker’s doctors. The only conceivable explanation, he suggests, is that the diagnosis is fake.
The 90-minute documentary adds up to an utterly damning indictment of the Walkers, who became the darlings of the TV chat show circuit after The Salt Path was published to huge acclaim.
Critics and readers called it ‘inspirational’, ‘uplifting’ and ‘life-affirming’. In particular, many people with corticobasal degeneration – similar to Parkinson’s disease, with a debilitating onset – took hope from the story, in which ‘Moth’ experienced an incredible remission from symptoms during the long walk along the Salt Path, otherwise known as the South-West Coast Path.
The programme charts Hadjimatheou’s investigation as, with dogged persistence and an undisguised disgust for the Walkers’ lies, she tracks down one witness after another to dismantle their story.
According to Sally Ann Walker’s memoir, they lost their home after investing unwisely in a friend’s business.
Actor Jason Isaacs certainly believed their tale: on BBC1’s The One Show, he told her indignantly: ‘You got conned out of everything … you can’t say it but I will.’
But the truth, the programme claims, was she stole £67,000 over several years from her employer, an estate agent in Pwllheli, north Wales.
The couple’s family also pours scorn on the claim that ‘Moth’ (right) is battling a terminal neurological disease, corticobasal degeneration. They dismiss him as a fantasist who has made spurious claims of serious illness since his youth
Then the Walkers borrowed £100,000 from a distant relative of Tim’s. When a debt collection agency stepped in and the bank foreclosed on their mortgage, they lost their house.
In order to stay afloat, the documentary states, Sally kept stealing, from her own mother.
When that theft was discovered, she wrote a letter of confession to her family, pleading for mercy: ‘Please don’t look any further for the money. I’ve taken it, all of it.
‘The figures the bank are giving you are correct. Any statements she [her mother] has had over the last 18 months are fake. I forged them.
‘I have to ask you not to take things any further with the bank, but to tell them it was a mistake. I have to ask this as I have a police record. And should this go any further, I will go to prison this time.’ She also admitted: ‘In a mad panic, I transferred £25,000 from Tim’s mum and dad’s account to Tim’s.’
The Walkers refused to take part in the documentary.
Publisher Penguin has put Raynor Winn’s latest title on hold, though when the scandal first started to break, The Salt Path leapt straight back to the top of the bestseller charts.
Jason Isaacs previously said how much he enjoyed playing ‘Moth Winn’, because, ‘I never get to portray nice people’. But as their family point out bitterly, the Walkers are not ‘nice people’ at all.
However, Winn has maintained the account in The Salt Path is accurate and described the allegations against her as ‘grotesquely unfair’ and ‘misleading’.
‘Tortoise Media’s Observer and documentary makers continue to spread a false narrative about my life, despite me having addressed them in my earlier statement,’ she wrote in a statement on her website.
‘As with most people’s lives, there will always be someone willing to criticise you, that’s part of life.
‘However, it is a great source of sadness that Tortoise Media’s Observer and documentary makers are now seeking to drive a wedge between our family members. The family have always been able to share their concerns privately, and they still can.
‘I did not steal from family, as others can confirm. Nor have I confessed to doing so and I did not write the letter suggesting I did.
‘Moth was diagnosed with CBD, now known as CBS, which is an Atypical Parkinsonism – this is a fact.
‘We were homeless and we lost our house because of a financial dispute with a lifelong friend, as described in the book.
‘To everyone who has read and loved my books, thank you. Nothing has changed. The Salt Path remains my honest recollection of the time when we lost our house and found hope on the Coast Path.
‘Except in limited cases, where names of people or details of places and events were changed to protect privacy, as explained at the front of every copy.
‘Thank you to the thousands who have written offering love and support, it has meant so much to us.’