Canoeist's wife in court on deception charges
The wife of the back-from-the-dead canoeist will appear before magistrates in the UK today charged with two deception offences.
Anne Darwin, whose husband John was remanded in custody yesterday by Hartlepool magistrates, will go before the same court this morning.
The 55-year-old faces two charges of dishonestly obtaining £25,000 and £137,000 in 2003. The first figure relates to a life insurance pay-out while the second covers a policy to settle her mortgage in the event of her husband’s “death”.
John Darwin’s solicitor, John Nixon, told reporters the former teacher hoped he could be with his wife for their wedding anniversary.
“He is desperate to see his wife, to be reunited with her,” Mr Nixon said.
“He is anxious to know about her wellbeing. It is their wedding anniversary in 10 days. They are going to spend their wedding day apart.
“He is anxious for everything to be resolved. He is in good shape, bearing up.”
Darwin disappeared in 2002 in an apparent canoeing accident, only to hand himself in at a London police station on December 1 to declare: “I think I’m a missing person.”
He was declared legally dead following an inquest in 2003.
Darwin was later charged with making an untrue statement to procure a passport and obtaining a money transfer by deception in relation to a £25,000 life insurance policy.
He was remanded in custody by the magistrates during a brief hearing yesterday.
A Cleveland Police spokeswoman said the force would also apply for Mrs Darwin to be remanded in custody.
A source inside Hartlepool police station said Mrs Darwin had been “very co-operative” with the inquiry team.
The officer said: “This has been a very surreal investigation.”
Police have released a fake passport photograph allegedly used by Darwin.
The picture – taken from a bogus travel document he had allegedly used in the name of “John Jones” – shows a man with long hair, balding on top, and sporting a lengthy, greying beard.
Detectives have been trying to piece together his movements since his “death” in March 2002.
Reports have suggested that Darwin was living in a bedsit next door to his wife’s home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool.
Detectives appealed directly to members of the public and asked whether they had seen a bearded Darwin in the last five years.
“We need to know if anyone has seen John Darwin in the UK after his apparent death,” Detective Superintendent Tony Hutchinson said.
Holding up the picture of a bearded Darwin, Mr Hutchinson added: “People may have seen him when he looked like this. They may have known him as John Jones.
“We need to know where both Mr and Mrs Darwin have been both in Europe and North and South America.
“We need to know what they have been saying.
“We need to know who they have been with and we need to know what they have been doing.”
Mrs Darwin was arrested on Sunday at Manchester Airport when her plane from Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, landed.
Seven weeks ago she moved to Panama after selling the couple’s seven-bedroom seafront home.
Police said Mrs Darwin did not speak during the course of the journey from Manchester to Hartlepool.
“The weather in the UK was cold and wet and a far cry from what she has been used to over the past few months,” Mr Hutchinson said.
“During the journey back to Cleveland, Mrs Darwin was pale, drawn and very quiet – which is understandable.
“She had been told prior to leaving Manchester that the investigation would not be discussed during the journey. Mrs Darwin did not speak at all in the car.”
The couple’s sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, released a statement last week saying they wanted no more contact with their parents.
They asked: “How could our mam continue to let us believe our dad had died when he was very much alive?”
Mr Hutchinson said the sons were not suspects in the case.
“We are speaking to the sons and we are in regular contact with the sons,” he told reporters gathered at a press conference.
“Certainly as we sit here now there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that the sons of John and Anne are anything other than victims.
“Of course if that is the case they have been duped in what can only be described as a really disgraceful fashion.
“They have been led to believe for the last five years that their father is dead. He then walks back into their lives with apparent amnesia.
“Certainly if they were to be nothing other than victims then our hearts do go out to them.”
