Shortly after midnight on September 7, a few hours before flying to Sicily to attend a gathering of New Age gay hippies, Benjamin Braithwaite expressed his excitement in text exchanges with his partner, whom he had left behind in Wales.
Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness – a religion which sees homosexuality as sinful – Braithwaite had suffered such a troubled upbringing that he was estranged from his mother and had changed his first name to River.
However, in recent months the university-educated artist had found the acceptance he craved by joining the Radical Faeries, a controversial cult founded at the dawn of the Gay Liberation movement in the 1970s, whose members explore their sexuality and spirituality at anything-goes camps in remote rural settings.
Indeed, Braithwaite felt so happy at these freewheeling confabs, where gay men and women sit in ‘heart circles’ to reveal their innermost feelings, dine communally, entertain one another by performing music and drag shows – and pair off for sex whenever the mood takes them – that earlier this year he had left his caravan home in Powys to go ‘faerie hopping’ around Europe.
‘You’re 35 now! Finally figuring your life out,’ Braithwaite’s partner, Jon Winston, messaged him as he prepared to attend his latest gathering at the ruins of a disused farmhouse in the hills of Contrada Piano Milo, south-east Sicily.
‘Haha, well I’m off to a good start anyway. Feeling happy and optimistic,’ came the jaunty reply, accompanied by a smiling emoji. ‘I’m so happy things turned out the way they did.’
Those were the last words that Winston, who is in his mid-20s, would ever hear from the man he fell in love with after they met online two years ago.
Sometime around 3am on September 13, seven days after arriving in Sicily, Braithwaite’s naked and injured body was found inside the white tent he had pitched at the Radical Faeries’ gathering.
A satyr had been painted above a shrine of animal bones at the derelict and remote farm
River Braithwaite was found dead in his tipi-style tent
When I visited the remote farmstead last week, everything remained exactly – and eerily – just as it had looked that night when, alerted by Braithwaite’s fellow revellers, Carabinieri detectives swooped on the camp.
Following a winding track through the dense olive groves, I passed beneath a crumbling archway decorated with a stone unicorn and entered the yard of a ruined farmhouse, which seemed to have been turned into a makeshift theatre. If so, it was a theatre of the macabre.
One wall had been painted with the sinister image of a smiling satyr, a symbol of hedonistic pleasure, and beneath it stood a shrine of strange ornaments, animal bones, horns and candles.
Another wall was draped with a stage curtain, and an alcove had served as a dressing room, with racks full of exotic costumes, boxes of flashy shoes and colourful wigs, and dubious-looking props such as chains, leather straps, rubberwear and wartime gas masks.
The tables and floor were strewn with half-empty beer, wine and gin bottles, and the stubbed-out butts of whatever the audience had been smoking before the discovery of Braithwaite’s body brought their merriment to an abrupt halt.
Venturing inside his tipi-style tent, the detectives had found a chilling and squalid scene. Early reports suggested Braithwaite was found hanging and had various injuries to his neck and body.
But it now appears he was lying on a grubby mattress with a length of rope beside him, along with his belongings and a personal diary, which contained no indication that he intended to take his own life.
The police are also said to have found a sharp knife beside the tent and various illegal drugs elsewhere in the camp.
However, they are yet to discover how and why this freewheeling Yorkshireman, who had dropped out of mainstream society and was living in a Welsh caravan commune, died – and, crucially, whether anyone had been with him in the tent.
Meanwhile, with the post-mortem examination progressing at a snail’s pace – because, Sicilian police sources tell me, it is an ‘unusual’ case requiring rigorous forensic tests – there is all manner of lurid local speculation over the cause of death.
While many in Canicattini Bagni, the nearest town to the abandoned farm, believe Braithwaite either committed suicide or died in a sex game that went disastrously wrong, it is also rumoured that he might have been murdered.
Whatever the truth, however, his strange death has cast a shadow over an island striving to restore its reputation as a peaceable tourist destination after decades under the yoke of the Mafia.
And it has thrown an unwelcome spotlight on the secretive Radical Faeries, who meet in isolated rural encampments and now have many offshoots around the world.
Sometimes described as a ‘cult’, a term to which many members object, the Faeries’ founders included the celebrated, Sussex-born gay liberation pioneer Harry Hay, who died in 2002. Their philosophy has been explained in so many differing ways that there will be inevitable objections, however one characterises it.
Announcing their forthcoming gathering at Featherstone Castle in Northumberland, a British branch called Radical Faeries of Albion presents itself as an ‘ever-expanding collective network of lesbians, gay men, trans, bisexuals, queer hetero people and anyone else in between, who come together to create vibrant, energetic and safe spaces to celebrate’ spirituality and sexuality.
But this group freely admits some people join ‘just to get laid’.
And in an interview with a newspaper last week, a disillusioned former member of another branch painted a deeply troubling picture of their activities. Having attended gatherings for several years, he claimed it was a ‘paganistic cult’ whose druid-like rituals were actually a ‘front for drugs and sexual and spiritual grooming’.
‘When I heard about his [Braithwaite’s] death, I wasn’t surprised,’ said the source. ‘I always knew that one day something like this would happen. There are some characters who are dark, manipulative. I have seen this scenario before. Someone who is attractive joins the Faeries and certain people take advantage of them, sexually and spiritually.
‘People often join the Faeries when they are at a low ebb and vulnerable. There is a lot of drug-taking… some people are pushed into it. It could have been rape under the influence of drugs. It could have been a choking sex game. I have heard of people being drugged and made to have sex without their consent.’
Among the LGBTQ+ community, the former member’s claims have caused outrage. While a few online commentators support his assertions, many more dismiss them as uninformed and sensationalist, insisting the Faeries are a force for good.
Indeed, last week, when a Daily Mail reporter visited a Faerie gathering that Braithwaite had previously attended in the Vosges mountains of eastern France, he found an uplifting pastoral scene where some 20 people sat in their morning ‘heart circle’, sharing their feelings and dividing up the day’s chores.
The mayor of Canicattini Bagni, Paolo Amenta, also sees them in a favourable light. Since the surrounding countryside was so empty and beautiful, he said, it had become a magnet for people such as the Faeries who sought an alternative lifestyle.
During the summer, they staged popular musical performances and shows in the town and were ‘warmly welcomed’ by residents.
Nonetheless, if the Faeries do have a rogue element that attracts ‘vulnerable’ people, then it seems that River Braithwaite would have been easy prey.
Speaking exclusively to me last week, in the hope of correcting some of the inaccuracies and hysteria swirling around this case, Jon Winston described the tortured path that led to his partner’s demise.
As Raised Braithwaite was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness – a religion which sees homosexuality as sinful – he had a troubled upbringing
While many in Canicattini Bagni, the nearest town to the abandoned farm, believe Braithwaite either committed suicide or died in a sex game
One room had dubious-looking props such as chains, leather straps, rubberwear and wartime gas masks
It began when he was growing up in Leeds, he says, and by the time Braithwaite left for university, his relationship with his now remarried mother, Angelique Wildbore, had broken down. She declined to comment. Though Braithwaite was ‘kind, amusing, multi-talented and industrious’, and could turn his hand to everything from art and sculpture to stand-up drag artistry, Winston explains he struggled with his mental health problems, sometimes feeling suicidal.
It is also undeniable, and perhaps significant, that when they were not together Braithwaite indulged in extreme and sometimes dangerous sexual activities, which he exhibited on social media using a pseudonym.
He and Winston lived half an hour’s drive from one another, in Powys, and formed a close relationship. So when Braithwaite suddenly embarked on his ‘faerie hopping’ jaunt seven months ago, Winston – who says he is more introverted and felt unable to join him – was heartbroken. By the same token, Winston was happy for his partner because, from his upbeat messages, he seemed to be turning a corner.
‘He said he could be himself there. It was somewhere that people could share their feelings and have good food and music.
‘The people there made him feel loved. River identified as a radical anarchist, so he very much didn’t follow a political agenda.
‘He was a free-spirited hippy sort of person, and it was just people who felt the same way about society.’
Braithwaite paid his way across the continent by doing odd jobs and selling his artwork, which he exhibited on a separate social media page using the handle ‘rivertriestomakestuff’.
Fatefully, it may have been his dexterity that first led him to Sicily. The owner of the run-down farm where he died, 48-year-old Sicilian performance artist Vincenzo Carta, had advertised online for like-minded gay hippies to join him in creating a community there, and was particularly keen to recruit people with building skills.
And from Braithwaite’s messages to Winston, it was clear he had journeyed to Sicily at least once this year, before attending the gathering where he died.
As I saw last week, the event – which Braithwaite had helped to set up – was exceptionally well organised.
Above the performance area, a dining area, bar and kitchen had been created, complete with gas stove, labelled drawers containing cutlery and crockery, and a fridge – still stocked with food and bottles of Sicilian alcohol.
According to the Carabinieri, only about ten people were present on the night Braithwaite died, all of whom were questioned ‘as witnesses rather than suspects’ before being allowed to leave the island.
But, of course, it took the police some time to reach the farm, so they can’t be sure that someone harbouring vital information didn’t make off across the fields before they arrived. The police are certainly not ready to rule out foul play. However, they dismiss one of the more outlandish rumours being spread.
In bygone years, and perhaps still today, the Piano Milo mountains were a stronghold of the Mafia, who made their lairs in inaccessible hilltop farms.
These machismo godfathers were so notoriously homophobic that in 1992 they ordered the shooting of a New Jersey mobster whose secret gay life had been exposed.
Therefore, the gossips say, they are hardly likely to have welcomed gay hippies to their turf.
So, as I put it to an investigating officer, is there a chance that a bigoted local mafioso somehow infiltrated the Faerie gathering with malintent?
The gathering’s organiser, landowner Carta, was alert to the dangers of having a gay commune in this culturally alien place.
‘Creating a queer space in Sicily, smack in the middle of the Mediterranean, is a big deal,’ he wrote in a post a couple of years ago.
‘Here, like other places, traditional values often clash with the LGBTQ+ community’s quest for acceptance and visibility.’
However, my police source dismissed the notion of a Mafia hit. While not exactly woke, I was assured that even the Cosa Nostra has moved with the times and become more accepting of diversity. And Mayor Amenta said the town – which is eager to diversify into tourism like neighbouring Noto with its baroque architecture – welcomed everyone unreservedly.
How then did River die? It is a question that torments his grieving partner, who doesn’t follow the news and only learned of the tragedy a few days ago after his messages were not returned.
‘At first I thought it could have been suicide, but [from the information the police have given] it seems that it’s not, and that is just awful,’ he told me, his voice breaking with emotion.
The question is, with whom was Braithwaite last seen?
‘I would like to see someone brought to account for this, absolutely, because if another person was involved – which I do strongly believe – they have tried to cover it up, and they need to be made responsible before this happens to someone else,’ Winston says.
They do indeed. Carabinieri officers promise no stone will be left unturned and that if anyone was implicated in Braithwaite’s death, they will be hunted down.
Whatever became of this questing man, to honour him and protect their good name, the Faeries would be well advised to set aside their anarchic values and do their utmost to ensure justice is done.
- Additional reporting by Cristina Cennamo.