BLACKMAILING RANULPH FIENNES
The Guinnes Book of World Records describes Sir Ranulph Fiennes as the World's Greatest Living Explorer. Ran Fiennes is the modern-day equivalent of Sir Ernest Shackleton. That such a legendary figure should be reported as a missing person is astounding enough. Yet Ran is not just a living legend but also one of the kindest, gentlest and most lovable men to roam this planet. That his own wife should be behind the sinister plot of his disappearance is, then, presumably worthy of it's own Guinnes World Record: Most evil wife alive.
Certainly, Lady Fiennes has in the past described herself as "an evil, evil woman." After living with the couple in 2008 and witnessing first-hand the mistreatment Ran has suffered for most of the 20-odd years of their marriage, I must commend Louise Fiennes -who goes by her maiden name Louise Millington, as well as Louise Millington-Cotes and Louise Cotes, among other names- on her precise and accurate wording.
The search for Ranulph Fiennes is also a hunt for Louise Fiennes who has perfected the ability to throw off officials from the Office of the Public Guardian and various council's adult safeguarding teams by presenting a thin veneer of propriety. The fact, however, is that Louise Fiennes is the mastermind of a sinister plot to be in total, obsessive control of her husband.
This saga began as an affair between the then-married Ranulph Fiennes and Louise. The fact that Ran's wife, Ginny, was suffering from cancer at the time is an important contributing factor in how she managed to wrest control over his own life and destiny from her future husband, first by forcing him to marry her just over a year after Ginny died, and then to give her a child.
According to Ran, his new wife repeatedly threatened to publicly expose the couple's previous affair, thus causing what she proclaimed would be maximum reputational damage after Ran had spent decades giving lectures and writing books in which Ginny was given enormous credit for coming up with the idea behind his most esteemed success: The 1979-1982 Transglobe Expedition.
When I discovered this blackmail campaign in 2008, I spent many hours carefully explaining to Ran that he cannot continue living life in this way. Ran agreed. He deputized me with organizing the couple's divorce and entrusted me to assemble a crisis PR team to handle whatever fallout would emerge as a result of Louise Fiennes campaign to tarnish his reputation.
Ran was due to depart for Everest in a few weeks and our plan called to have the divorce papers served to Louise during Ran's absence. I would stay behind to ensure Louise didn't enter Greenland's, the charming property Ran and Ginny had purchased after Transglobe.
Nothing came of these plans, however, because Louise Fiennes showed up unannounced to a meeting between Ran and me during which he was due to sign the letters of engagement for his new legal and PR teams.
Lady Fiennes shrewdly demanded that I leave the room, slammed the door shut, administered a 10-minute "come to Jesus" meeting overhead by everyone in the building (Ran's staff two rooms away and me next door), to then emerge triumphantly and depart the scene silently. A much deflated Ran motioned me to come into his office and said "she just blackmailed me again. I can't go through with this. I'm very sorry, Mike."
In the days that followed, Ran informed his sisters, as well as Ginny's sister, Arabella Pepper, that he intended to kill himself on Everest because he saw no way out of his predicament. Contemporaenous emails I sent to myself at the time mention in detail how Ran issued me with a long set of instructions in case of his death. I didn't panic becasue I had developed a secret plan to foil Ran's suicide: To tip off the media ahead of his climb.
This plan turned out to be far easier to implement than I had envisioned. Originally, I was just going to meet with the crisis PR team after Ran's departure for Kathmandu, explain the situation to them and then ask them to discreetly brief a number of trusted journalists. "Never trust a journalist," I was advised by HBO's top PR person once. However, my mother was an editor of a newspaper in my native Frankfurt, Germany, and so I knew that there certainly are journalists who can be trusted to do the right thing.
Before I could execute this plan, however, Ran's sister, Gill, and Arabella rang me up separately to make a bold request: I should depart immediately for Nepal and trek to Everest Base Camp. My mission: To prevent Ran from committing suicide and ensure his safety.
I never had any climbing ambitions, nor did I envision trekking in Nepal as a fun activity. Yet less than two weeks after Ran's two relatives made this request, I found myself in Kathmandu where I met an ITN crew destined for Base Camp, where they were to provide coverage of Ran's climb. On the way to Base Camp, the three of us became fast friends and to this day I look back very fondly on our time together. Rob Turner, the proddigial camera operator, and his friend and colleague Phil Reay-Smith were highly entertaining with their incessant antics.
One night, a tiny fly had entered their room inside a lodge built from plywood so thin that it could well have served Lady Fiennes as veneer for her masquerade of a happy home life. The paper-mache building shook so violently as Rob Turner tried to exterminate the fly that our guide, Nuru Sherpa, hastily entered our lodge with a grave look of alarm on his face. "What happened, guys, are you okay," Nuru asked. "Oh it was just a fly," Rob responded. Looking supremely puzzled, Nuru said "A fly? I thought a yak had come into your room."
It was in this decidedly jovial atmosphere, which came as huge relief to me after enduring months of witnessing Louise's mistreatment of Ran, that I briefed my two new friends on my mission. To my delight, Phil Reay-Smith took it upon himself to brief Ran as soon as we arrived at Base Camp. "Mike, please come into my tent," Ran said sternly, after Phil had left. He asked me to confirm what Phil had just told him and I was happy to do so.
Ran's tent then shook almost as violently as Rob's and Phil's room had a couple of days ago, further down the mountain, as he angrily berated me for this perceived treachery. "Do you know who I am," Ran shouted. I stoicly confirmed who Ran is and explained that I was on a mission and that I would not be deterred. "I have never had a minder on any of my expeditions," Ran shouted angrily before demanding that I leave. I refused and told him he had no right to banish me from Base Camp.
This incident was the only time Ran admonished me throughout more than 25 years of friendship. Yet by evening, Ran had calmed down again and we enjoyed each other's company for the rest of the expedition. It was the only time I stood up to Ran - and to this day I regret that I did not take matters into my own hands again until now.
It is my opinion that had I not left the UK in September 2008, but instead remained at Greenlands, I would have succeeded in seeing through the divorce plans Louise Fiennes torpedoed in March of that year.
This feeling of guilt has hung over for the past two years, as I have tried various ways to help locate Ran and ensure he was properly sageguarded and received the care he deserves.
When I embarked on the mission to expose Louise earlier this month, I knew that the only way to successfully remove the sinister power she has held over Ran for more than two decades was to expose the secrets with which she tormented Ran. The affair she and Ran had before Ginny died is only one of three key secrets that Louise has exploited.
Sometime in 2008, Ran and I lay awake in a hotel room talking throughout the night like two little school girls when the man I have called "Uncle Ran" for decades opened up about his experiences at Eton. Ran had been hazed and abused in other ways by older boys. I was reminded of this conversation in 2024 when I exposed the mountaineering legend Nirmal Purja as a serial rapist who violated a young boy in his boarding school on a nightly basis.
I spent countless hours speaking to the victim, now in his early 40s and living in the U.S. and often remarked on how brave he was to open up about his experience. To go public with such embarrassingly personal details takes far more courage than climbing mountains, crossing Antarctica in winter, and circumnavigating the globe on its polar axis.
Louise Fiennes has used Ran's most well-kept secrets against him so successfully that she is now in total control of a man who is regarded as national teasure. Yet as if two secrets were not enough firing power, the enterprising Lady Fiennes came up with another clever way to silence and control her husband: She produced a number of sex tapes without Ran's knowledge only to then brag about their existence to me in 2007. Horrified, I confronted Ran about this revelation. "There's nothing to be done, Mike," Ran said at the time. When I told him that sex tapes were a "thing," Ran only said "not when you're had the operation." This conversation occurred a year or so after Ran had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
As a reminder, Louise Fiennes told a Daily Mail reporter in 2006: "I am an evil, evil woman."
Fast forward to the present time. Following the release of my article on Ran's disappearance, a media frenzy has ensued in the UK. The nation's favorite explorer is not just missing for two years. Worse: He is kept in strict and punishing isolation by his captor - Louise Fiennes.
As I expected, the media attention caused a number of witnesses to come forward who had cared for Ran and observed Louise's erratic, criminal behavior. One care home's staff members reported that Louise had issued specific instructions to them: "If he falls and injures himself, do not contact the hospital or call for an ambulance. Let him bleed out." Another care home staff member shared stories of the horse tranquilizer Ketamine being used as a way to calm Ran as he was being moved between care homes. Lady Fiennes had bragged to this staff member and her colleagues that she obtained the Ketaime from a veterinarian.
After my successful July 2025 effort to insert Ran's former sister-in-law, Arabella Pepper, into KYN Hurlingham, the exclusive London care home, Ran was isolated by the staff and management of KYN Hurlingham.
A few months later, in September, Louise removed Ran and entered him into a new care home. Only this time, she ensured her husband would be completely isolated by having a personal carer on staff who would be her eyes and ears inside the care home. This individual, Levi Mariano Bautista, a 37-year-old British citizen born in the Philippines, later confirmed to the staff of various care homes that Louise obtained Ketamine from a vet in order to control Ran. In course of 18 months, Ran has been moved between at least six care homes. An astonishing number, especially for an 82-year-old Parkinson's patient.
Levi Bautista was deputized to ensure Ran never entered the communal areas of any care home in which he resided. Breakfast, lunch and dinner would be had in his room. Levi Bautista also ensured that Ran wore a complete disguise on those occasions when Ran left his room: A pair of rimless Maui Jim sunglasses, a beanie hat and
gloves would have to be worn at all times, even inside.
The isolation itself is punishing enough. Yet it's the complete depravation of liberties that is most shocking to anyone who knows Ran. Louise Fiennes's detailed instructions to the staff at various care homes include a strict prohibition of Ran's favorite food: Chocolate. One of his caregivers told me in a 6-hour-long interview that when Ran was given a biscuit, his eyes sparkled with excitement. He very hastily ate the biscuit and remarked "that was the best biscuit in all my life."
The cargiver told me "she refused us to give him any chocolate or biscuits. We're talking about an 82-year old man with Parkinson's. If he wants to eat chocolate, let him eat chocolate. Who cares? I always gave him biscuits and chocolate."
Another caregiver gave a detailed account of how Ran often seemed withdrawn, sad and agitated, even aggressive, on the few occasions when Louise -his only visitor- paid him a visit. These visits usually only lasted 10-20 minutes and were unnanounced. "It was like she was trying to catch us doing something she didn't like. She's phone us up to say she was inbound but never came. Then she'd show up unannounced." The caregiver also remarked that the sparkle that was so typical for Ran's eyes always vanished when Louise Fiennes visited her husband.
Various staff members who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity also stated that Ran was often drowsy after Louise departed the care home. "It was as if she was giving him something he wasn't supposed to take." One time, shortly after another unannounced visit by Louise - his only visitor throughout the monthslong duration of his stay at this particlar care home - Ran threw up and fainted.
These revelations would not have come to light had the media coverage of Ranulph Fiennes' mysterious disappearance not been so broad. Meanwhile, the search for Ranulph Fiennes, and the hunt for Louise Fiennes and Levi Bautista, continues. Since last year, care homes across the nation are being contacted in order to locate Ran. One of the problems that our small team encountereswas that we had no up-to-date images of Ran to show the staff and management of these homes.
This, too changed as a result of the Daily Telegraph's and Daily Mail's extensive coverage of Ran's situation. This evening, another carer provided me with a recent picture of Sir Ranulph Fiennes. It depicts very little similarity to the titan of a man with whom the public has become familiar.
"She broke him," one of Ran's carers told me before getting emotional. "She took the world's strongest explorer and she broke him. When I first met him and realized who he was, I cried. It was just terrible to see him in such a state."
Much like cancer treatment requires the patient to undergo extreme measures in order to be healed of the cancer, the campaign to save Ranulph Fiennes from his abusive wife requires a strong dose of truth: Ranulph Fiennes' most well-kept secrets must be exposed. Only this way can Louise Fiennes' powerful spell over her ailing husband be broken once and for all. The moment she is unable to use these secrets against her husband is the moment she loses power. That moment is now.
The media campaign, meanwhile, is expanding to other outlets. With a little luck and the help of the public, we will soon find the long-lost explorer and, provided the hapless, myopic and tone-def officials at the Office of the Public Guardian wake up from their deep sleep and take the appropriate action, return some form of dignity to his life.
To that end, Louise Fienne's estranged son, Alexander Millington, has initiated a crowdfunding campaign to underwrite the costs of lawyers, court costs, as well as costs related to the search for his missing stepfather. Please follow this link to make a contribution to the effort: https://gofund.me/0465d583c
Media inquiries: koboldgermany@web.de
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