"Dead" Canoeist Appears In British Court
Ordered To Remain In Jail On Charges of Bilking Insurance And Using False Passport
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John Darwin leaves Hartlepool Magistrates court. Today he was charged with insurance fraud and lying to obtain a false passport. (AP/PA Wire, Owen Humphreys)
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A picture of "John & Anne" (purportedly the believed-dead John Darwin and his wife), dated July 2006, appeared on the Web site of a Panamanian relocation firm and was discovered after Darwin turned himself in to police. Links to the page have been taken down, but a thumbnail is still live. (movetopanama.com)
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Anne Darwin, wife of the man who turned up very much alive after being presumed dead for five years, leaves the police station at Manchester Airport, Manchester, England, Dec. 9, 2007, after being arrested on her return to the country from Panama. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
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Cleveland Police Detective Superintendent Tony Hutchinson holds the photograph used by John Darwin on his fake passport, during a press conference in Middlesbrough, England, Monday Dec. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)
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Two adjoining homes in Seaton Carew, recently sold, in which John Darwin lived in secret after disappearing on a canoeing trip. He was declared dead. Darwin would pass through a secret door into the adjoining property when guests came to avoid detection. (AP/PA Wire, Owen Humphreys)
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Faked Death Uncovered
John Darwin faked his death to escape debt, but his plan backfired when he was spotted online looking at real estate with his wife in Panama. Elizabeth Palmer reports.
John Darwin, 57, was ordered by Hartlepool Magistrates' Court to be held in jail until Friday, when he is to appear again via video link.
Dressed in a maroon sweat shirt and red track trousers, Darwin, a former prison officer, appeared disheveled and confused. He spoke twice during the four-minute hearing, responding "That's correct" when the court read him his full name and saying his date of birth.
Darwin did not enter a plea on the two charges he faces: dishonestly obtaining an insurance claim of 25,000 pounds - now worth about $50,000 - in May 2003 by falsely claiming he had been killed, and obtaining a passport under a false name in October 2003.
His wife, Anne, 55, was arrested on suspicion of fraud after her flight from Atlanta, Georgia, touched down at Manchester's airport Sunday. She had been living in Panama in recent months, but left the Central American country Wednesday after her husband turned up in Britain on Dec. 1.
On Sunday, Mrs. Darwin was transferred to Cleveland, a region 250 miles north of London, where the Hartlepool court is located.
For a few hours Monday, the Darwins were in same compound. Mrs. Darwin was being questioned by detectives about how her husband allegedly hid himself for five years, whether the couple maintained contact after his reported death, and how they apparently came to be photographed together in Panama.
John said there was only one way out of the situation, and that was to fake his death.
Anne Darwin"John said there was only one way out of the situation, and that was to fake his death. I pleaded with him not to do it. I said it was the wrong thing to do," British newspapers quoted her as saying.
Mrs. Darwin said she had not expected her husband to go through with the plan, and genuinely thought he was dead when he disappeared, according to the papers. But a year later, he came knocking at her door, she reportedly said.
She said her husband pressured her to keep his reappearance a secret so he could have himself declared dead, according to the papers. That would allow her to collect $50,000 in life insurance and lift the burden of her mortgage.
But he showed up at the family home a year after he disappeared and moved back in. The couple then bought the house next door so he could build a hideout, which he reached through a hidden tunnel, reports Palmer.
Then this year, using Darwin's life insurance money, the couple tried to start a new life in Panama.
But apparently he grew tired of hiding, and returned to the UK, hoping to see his two sons.
Last week, the Web site for the company Move to Panama posted a photograph of the couple, apparently taken with a real estate agent in the Central American country.
A sharp-eyed British newspaper reader spotted the photo.
Police said they were in contact with the couple's two sons, who said they had no idea their father was still alive.
There is "nothing to suggest that the sons of John and Anne were anything other than victims in this case," Detective Supt. Tony Hutchinson of the Cleveland Police told reporters Monday.
Palmer reports the two boys, shocked by revelations in the British tabloids of their parents' elaborate scam, are in hiding.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
It is so sad to think that is the way life is going no a days it is just so sad!!!
That is quite a feat, someone should build a religion around this guy.
I bet this caused a stench.