by TOBIAS DIXON, staff writer
Earlier this year, I was walking along, minding my own business, when on the street I passed an apparition. I knew this would happen, because a local source let me know that if I hung about long enough, I might see her. The source in question contacted me in January; he said he'd seen something I might be interested in. Flattered that the man thought of me, I asked why.
Well, he said, you wrote those stories about the Fitzwilliam boy.
That's right. I did. Avery Fitzwilliam Driscoll, the suicide attempt who froze to death and yet lived. Who remembers that, really remembers it? Not many. A lot of people will recognize the name, as the nephew of Fitzwilliam Diamond Company's CEO Patrick Fitzwilliam, son of socialite Claire Camden, heir to the company in his own right. Fewer might still be able to recall that in 2006 Driscoll was the sole patient in the intensive care unit of London Bridge Hospital – an ICU that froze along with his body, then later lost power due to an unpredicted electrical storm. How did the boy survive? How did his parents, Camden and John Driscoll, manage to keep him alive when he was later released from hospital entirely, still considered unstable? Despite the family's PR statements, none of these questions have ever been answered. To those of us in media, that's nothing unexpected. The Fitzwilliams have been keeping secrets since before a significant part of the world's population was even born. Certainly every family is entitled to privacy, whether they're in the spotlight or not, but some of the happenings around this particular family are so absurd and outlandish it's remarkable no one has thought to question them for long before.
This takes me back to my apparition and my source. The man told me he was sure of her identity. He heard her give her name, he saw her face, the way she looked, sounded, moved. I was skeptical at first, but he proved to me he'd done the necessary work. This was the same woman. So two days later I lingered idly in the place specified, and right by me she walked. An apparition with blonde hair and blue eyes and an intensity about her that could bowl people over. An apparition who research and observation was saying was more than just an image of Iz Fitzwilliam.
The first record of Fitzwilliam in the news is before her name was Fitzwilliam, or before she even had her maiden name of Isabella Radcliffe. It's possible that the bizarre tendencies of the Fitzwilliam family truly began from this woman, because her entrance into news media was nothing less than incredibly odd. With a headline of
Girl Found To Have Wings, the 1924 clipping tells the story of a London carnival's acquisition of a ten-year-old girl with an authentic set of wings. Originally called Isabel, she seemed to come from nowhere and was enchanted with the simplest of things, yet was capable of doing things like write. She spoke no English, acted somewhat sad, and would occasionally do things like sing to the crowd, or perhaps to herself, in Irish. Later in 1924, scientific studies were done of the girl and of the wings, and they were as responsive as any other limb would be. The proof was in: the wings were real.
Yet as the fame of Isabella Radcliffe went on, she moved from show to show, from England to America, from circus sideshow to Vaudeville star, through a scandal in 1927 that captured the hearts of the American people and its media as much as Isabella herself. The mystery here isn't the Pretty Baby Scandal, though; that case has been settled. The real mystery still lies in the wings, which were phased out of her performances. If the wings were a hoax, one could easily say that she had gotten the attention she needed and, now a real star, the wings weren't required anymore. It would make perfect sense – and yet, it must be inaccurate, due to all of the scientific effort that went into proving th wings were real. Was that, too, just anothert part of the hoax? Were all the circusgoers who touched the wings, and experienced the girl react without any knowledge of where their hands were on her wings, fooled by a series of smoke and mirrors? How does one make two extra wings completely disappear?
If there were answers to these questions, perhaps this piece would not be appearing. I certainly am not the first person curious. In the mid-thirties the royal family did an investigation into Radcliffe, who had since become Fitzwilliam (she married CEO Randolf in 1933 after the death of her then-employer, Florenz Ziegfield) as she was frequently around them. Nothing was found about the wings, or any sort of oddity at all; Isabella Fitzwilliam was a normal 1930s woman with a great deal of wealth who was a good wife and a good mother. The only thing that ever stood out were drug use at the family's parties, and neither of the Fitzwilliams themselves ever used any. The wings, it seemed, were truly gone and so was everything else that might have been considered out of this world about this woman.
Or so they thought then. Certainly, in her twenties, it made sense that Fitzwilliam looked twenty. As time passed, though, her husband aged like a normal human being would – and she failed to. All over the news, in the clubs, on the streets, people wanted to know if the famous Iz Radcliffe Fitzwilliam would ever age. She didn't seem to be. In doing recent research I've found at least ten separate pieces speculating on her apparently eternal young looks. No one ever had an answer. The pressure was on. The pressure wasn't entirely fair, as the family had relocated to South Africa for the duration of the illness of their youngest child, Alice, but the pressure was on.
In 1956, Fitzwilliam sat for
Playboy, gave an interview, and almost immediately after began to age as anyone else would. Most people simply let that go as coincidence; they were glad to have her spread in the magazine and glad to have the mystery solved. Few – and I do mean few, as any speculation into it failed to be published at all – realized the closeness of the events for what it may have been: a planned bang to go out in. Certainly it seems ridiculous that a woman could choose when to age. But does it not also seem ridiculous that a girl can have wings proven real just to have them disappear again? Or that a forty-four year old woman still looks somewhere between sixteen and twenty in her
Playboy pictures? These are the things conspiracy theories are made of, and until recently, I have not been a theorist. Looking into the Fitzwilliam family and those close to them has changed my mind.
The story still only gets stranger. One would think now the aging issue was over, and it seemed to be, until the opening of Studio 54 in 1977. Often seen at the venue was a young girl who looked the spitting image of Iz Fitzwilliam before she aged – and a spitting image, I must point out, for the woman my source and I have seen around the greater London area. This girl was seen at Studio 54, and worse so was Randolf Fitzwilliam, though never indoors. There are pictures of him with the girl known as the Unknown Blonde Fitzwilliam, a girl who may well have been the fourth child of the Fitzwilliams – except that there never was a fourth child. I have examined every birth and death certificate for the Fitzwilliam family since 1910. (There is no birth certificate for Isabella Radcliffe, of course, as she never had any parents and that was not really her name. The question of what her birth name was has no accurate answer.) Randolf Fitzwilliam and this girl were seen together plenty, and while there is no photographic evidence of it, stories from the time say he was known to walk her to the clubs, kiss her goodbye. Who was this girl and where was Iz? Could she have been Iz herself, reversing the self-inflicted aging? Of course not, one would say. That's utter claptrap. In the wake of everything else though, is it?
Still, with the information presented, it seems nonsensical. Yet so does everything else around this woman. If she could do that then, who says she can't do it now, be the same woman we saw? A woman who actually gave her name as Isabella Fitzwilliam-call-me-Iz, a woman who looks the spitting image both of her and the Unknown Blonde from the club? The answer certainly isn't because she's dead. No one knows she's truly dead; no one ever saw a body. (Presumably, the coroner who pronounced her dead did, but what's to say that wasn't forged?) Her death was three days after Randolf's – he had an open casket and a true funeral, and for Isabella, nothing even similar. She has a grave, but who says there's anything in it if she's still walking around? Ninety-five years old, faking her death and faking her youth. Absurd? Absolutely. Impossible? I thought so too. But I thought aging practically on command was impossible, too. I thought humans having wings was impossible. I thought freezing to death and in the end surviving, with power on and off, no life support, was impossible. It seems as if this entire family should be impossible.
As the mystery of Iz Fitzwilliam, whose wings vanished, who never aged until she did, who died but seems to be present young again, is only the tip of the iceberg of it all. The bizarrities seem to have originated with her, but they've made their way into the rest of her family. Retired FDC CEO Charles Fitzwilliam, the eldest child of the famous Andy & Iz, aged normally, but his four children certainly haven't. Socialite Claire Camden (mother of Avery), tabloid star Louise Fitzwilliam, marine biologist Eleanor Fitzwilliam and current CEO Patrick Fitzwilliam all remain appearing in their mid-twenties. When asked, they – especially Claire, who may have started the trend – respond that the lack of aging is some kind of family secret. What kind? No one knows. They certainly haven't had any medical work done. Plastic surgeons are not known for their discretion, and with money offered for information, still, not a one has done a thing to a Fitzwilliam. They remain looking young. Strangely, so does John Camden, husband of Claire, who spent many years away from the family. Claire's highschool sweetheart, Camden went to jail in the mid-80s and the Fitzwilliams didn't see him again until 2006. Spending time around them seems to have affected him, though, as Camden too doesn't look much past twenty-three.
He's apparently also got quite a streak of good luck, as he seemed to have been shot up fairly badly in an altercation with escaped convict Michael Warren in 2007. When entering the hospital he was covered in blood; when exiting just hours later, he was without a single wound, carrying a shirt full of bullet holes. The crime scene and the story the Camdens gave didn't match up. Without a doubt John Camden is still not guilty of killing in cold blood – but is he guilty of hiding a secret far different? Shell casings that don't go with bullets. Ricochets that hit nothing. Blood that belonged to no one. The police couldn't explain it and the hospital can't say a word about Camden's condition, but the pieces don't add up any more than any of the story of Iz. They don't add up any more than Avery. And Camden is only the first non-relative to be mentioned. Some of the others are equally inexplicable.
Take the case of Alice Fitzwilliam, for example. As previously mentioned, for those unaware, she is the youngest child of Isabella and Randolf, the only daughter. In her twenties she moved in with Robert Capio, a man descended from a long line of Robert Capios, many of whom coincidentally had the same birthday. Capio and Fitzwilliam never married, though they had one son, Fabian, in 1984. Though they purported to age normally as well, people who looked like younger versions of the pair were often seen around their London home. Robert Capio passed away suddenly after an unexpected illness in 2002, but Alice Fitzwilliam has recently married – another man named Robert Capio, who claims to be the cousin of the first. The only hole in what is otherwise a simple scandalous preference on the part of Miss Fitzwilliam (now Mrs. Fitzwilliam-Capio) is the fact that her new husband Robert Capio is as identical to her previous lover Robert Capio as our unknown blonde is to Iz Fitzwilliam. The Fitzwilliam-Capio clan could not be reached for comment any more than anyone else could. I wasn't surprised.
Similar to the several Robert Capios with birthdays within a few days of each other, the old friend of the Fitzwilliams and former CEO in his own right, le Société's Pierre Rémi, has a son who has been spotted in Paris with the young Isabella lookalike. The son and current CEO of the company looks just about exactly like photographs of young Pierre, and the two have the same birthday. His name is Pierrick Rémi, and he and Pierre both match the appearances and birthdays of the two previous Pierrick Rémis, also CEOs. A bit odd? I think so. Unlike Isabella, all of these Rémis and Capio have proper proof of birth, but things have been more difficult to fake. Not that I say how I know they're doing it; I've got absolutely no idea at all.
Not getting into her own scandalous existence, I just want to point out that the solicitor of Claire and John Camden, Bianca Wernher (yes, th very same) suffered from cervical cancer a few years back and should, based on record obtained, never have been able to conceive. Yet after spending time in the Camdens' company, she and Claire had pregnancies staggered only by a couple of weeks. In the department of bizarre and related to friends of Claire's and cancer both, though, this one is nothing. Perhaps the cancer in Wernher's case wasn't as bad as it could have been. Yet let me go back to Avery for a moment and mention one of the young man's boyfriends, Jake Griffith, who was recently discovered to be the son of former AC Milan footballer Domani Reali.
Jake Griffith's mother, Sophie Griffith, died of ovarian cancer in 1999. Shortly after the discovery of the relationship between Reali and Griffith in 2005 (a time around when sightings of someone flying with 'real wings' were reported near the Fitzwilliam estate in South Africa), Domani Reali announced his engagement and expectation of another child – with a woman named Sophie who was often seen in Jake Griffth's company. Both Sophie Reali and Bianca Wernher were bridesmaids in the wedding of Claire and John Camden. Coincidence? Maybe, until one examines photographs of Sophie Griffth and Sophie Reali. They are, almost undoubtedly, identical. As identical as the Isabellas, as the Alices, the Roberts, the Pierricks and Pierre.
There are dozens of questions here. Who was that woman? Why did she look like Isabella Fitzwilliam? Why did she say she
was Isabella Fitzwilliam? Is she the same woman as the girl at Studio 54? Did Isabella Fitzwilliam ever really die? Where did she come from? What happened to her wings? Why have her children aged normally when she did not? Why are
their children not aging? What happened to Avery Driscoll? What happened to John Camden? Where did the winged man in Cape Town come from? Who is Alice Fitzwilliam's new husband? Why does he look exactly like her old one? Did Robert Capio ever die? How does he look so young now? What happened to Sophie Griffith? Who is Sophie Reali? What's going on with the Rémi Corporation? Why does something odd happen around just about everyone who touches the family Fitzwilliam?
Of course, there are no answers. There never have been. Since 1924, the people have been wanting to know. Call me crazy, go ahead – after looking at all of this, I'm starting to think I am too. What kind of an idiot would compose an editorial that sounds like this? The kind of idiot who is confident all his information is accurate. There is little speculation here; everything presented as fact is documented fact.
Fitzwilliam family, your luck in hoping no one will notice, no one will put all of this information in one spot and look at how absurd it is put together, how it makes you look, has run out.
[London Times]
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