Moment my father claimed Salt Path author Raynor Win was 'nicking money' - and it added up to £64,000

Daily Mail​

4 hours ago

The daughter of a man who claimed The Salt Path author Raynor Winn stole thousands of pounds from his business has broken down recalling the moment her late father realised he wouldn't be able to pay his employees after vast sums of his had money disappeared.
In a new interview with BBC News Waleshttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80p2pzgpmgo, Debbie Adams, 46, is seen putting her head in her hands and wiping away tears as she recounts how her father, an estate agent and property surveyor who died in 2012, told her Raynor Winn had 'been nicking money'.
Adams has been speaking out about the impact Winn, who became an overnight millionaire thanks to the success of her 2018 book - and just-released film starring Gillian Anderson - about tracing the South West Coastal Path, had on her late father Martin Hemmings.
She said he was 'absolutely shot' when he realised he wouldn't be able to pay the women who worked for him.
An investigation by The Observer earlier this month suggested Winn's story about her life in The Salt Path was misleading.
The publication claimed that Raynor and her husband Moth Winn, real names Sally and Tim Walker, lost their money after failing to pay money they had been accused of stealing from Hemmings.
In the emotional BBC News interview, Adams told the broadcaster she had been left with a 'feeling of sickness to the pit of your stomach' when her father revealed his hard-earned money was nowhere to be seen.
She explained: 'I had a phone call from Dad saying that he was worried about the business.
He told her: 'I just don't know what's gone wrong, I'm working every hour God gives me and there's no money.'
Adams, who was 29 at the time and about to get married, continued: 'About five days after that first call he rings up and goes, she [Winn] has been nicking money.
'I was like, "Dad, come on now, no. Surely there's something gone wrong?" He said "no, we've had a look and there's money missing"'.
The couple had become friends with the husband of Winn, Moth Winn, otherwise known as Tim Walker, when the pair worked together in the 1990s.
In 2001, Moth mentioned his wife had lost her job as a bookkeeper at a hotel and Martin Hemmings' wife Ros suggested to her husband they hire Raynor for their business.
However, a year later the couple noticed that they were no longer 'making any money'.
Hemming initially believed that between £6,000 and £9,000 had been taken and decided to contact both the police and a solicitor about the sums.
Adams says that when The Salt Path author realised an investigation might happen, she turned up 'crying' at the family home with a cheque for £9,000, claiming it was 'all the money I have' and saying she'd had to sell family possessions to raise it.
After accepting the cheque on police advice, Hemmings went back through his accounts more thoroughly and to his horror estimated his business was actually £64,000 down.
BBC News also interviewed Hemming's wife Ros, who said she was speaking out to give a voice to her late husband.
She revealed the couple recieved a letter from a solicitor in London offering to pay back the money and legal fees totalling around £90,000.
The offer included an agreement not to press criminal charges against Raynor Winn.
Mrs Hemmings said her husband signed the agreement, not wanting to put a mother through a criminal trial.
Mrs Hemmings said: 'The mistake was that we ever employed her, and the biggest mistake my husband made, because obviously I'd recommended her in a way, was that he trusted her.'
'I did not think there was any reason for this aside from the fact that Martin was rubbish at sending out bills.'
She added: 'I can't forgive her for sort of destroying my husband's confidence in people, because it did.
The Hemmings claim they agreed not to press charges against Raynor Winn, after agreeing she would pay back the money. The new film adaptation of Winn's book follows the story of a couple who lose their home and later discover the husband has been diagnosed with a terminal illness as they embark on a year long coastal trek
In a statement following The Observer investigation, Raynor Winn said: 'The dispute with Martin Hemmings, referred to in the Observer by his wife, is not the court case in The Salt Path.
'Nor did it result in us losing our home. Mr Hemmings is not Cooper. Mrs Hemmings is not in the book, nor is she a relative of someone who is.
'I worked for Martin Hemmings in the years before the economic crash of 2008. For me it was a pressured time.
'It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.'
Mrs Hemmings said she had not read The Salt Path, which sold more than two million copies, because she felt it would not reflect her view on why the couple embarked on their walk.
Speaking to the MailOnline from her remote Welsh cottage last week, Debbie Adams said: 'He felt he was ripped off by her, which he was.
'My mum is still angry and frustrated by it as my dad was upset about it. He felt really let down by it all.
'But I don't feel angry any more as I have parked it. But I'm not sure my mum has.'
A close friend of her mother Ros Hemmings told MailOnline that she and her late husband were 'saddened and very frustrated' that Winn had escaped any punishment for her alleged theft.
On the other hand, at least they got the money back, said the friend.
'If things had gone differently, and Walker had not been able to come up with the money then she may have been prosecuted, probably would not have gone to jail and ended up doing community service.
'Then she'd have been repaying their money at some paltry rate such as £5 a week for the rest of her life.
'So although it wasn't a perfect solution, it was probably better than the alternative.'
Following The Observer investigation, angry readers began demanding refunds for The Salt Path after Winn was accused of lying about the 'true story'.
The writer has been accused of omitting key elements of her story in her account of losing her home before embarking on a mammoth trek of the 630-mile South West Coast Path.
More than two million people have read her popular 2018 memoir but the author is now facing claims the story may not be as 'unflinchingly honest' as initially billed.
Readers are now flooding the Amazon book page with one-star reviews, saying they are returning their books for refunds following a newspaper's investigation.
One said they felt 'completely conned' and 'seriously disappointed'. Another wrote: 'I want a refund of this and the two sequels... I don't want to read them anymore.'
And a third said: 'After reading the investigation in The Observer newspaper and learning the truth I am glad I was able to return it for a refund.'
Following an investigation into their backgrounds, the publication said that The Salt Path's protagonists, Winn and her husband, Moth, previously went by their less flamboyant legal names, Sally and Tim Walker.
And rather than being forced out of their home in rural Wales when an investment in a childhood friend's business went awry, as the book suggested, it is alleged that the property was repossessed after Winn stole tens of thousands of pounds from a former employer and was arrested.
Questions have also been raised about Moth's debilitating illness, corticobasal degeneration [CBD], a rare neurological condition in the same family as Parkinson's disease, which is central to the book.
Life expectancy after diagnosis is around six to eight years, according to the NHS – however Moth has been living with the condition for 18 years with no apparent visible symptoms.
As part of The Observer's investigation, a number of neurologists specialising in CBD were contacted, with one telling the newspaper that his history with the illness 'does not pass the sniff test'.
Released in 2018, The Salt Path details the Winns' decision to embark on the South West Coast Path when they lose their home after investing a 'substantial sum' into a friend's business which ultimately failed. In the book, Winn writes: 'We lost. Lost the case. Lost the house.'
The memoir then describes their subsequent 630-mile walk to salvation, wild camping en route and living on around £40 per week, and is described as a 'life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world'.
It prompted two sequels and the film adaptation, which was released in May, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, who was recently in HBO's The White Lotus.
The Winns posed for photographs alongside the actors on the red carpet in London at the film's premiere.