THE wife of back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin was this afternoon convicted of a £250,000 fraud by helping him stage his drowning and claim pay-outs from insurance and pension companies.

Anne Darwin tricked everyone, including the couple's two sons Mark and Anthony, with "superb aplomb", Teesside Crown Court heard during her seven-day trial.

The 56-year-old denied six counts of deception and nine money laundering charges, claiming her "domineering" husband forced her to go through with the plan.

But the mother-of-two was convicted of every count this afternoon by a jury of nine women and three men after they spent four hours deliberating over two days.

She will be sentenced at 2pm - along with her former prison officer husband, John - by trial judge, Mr Justice Wilkie.

The couple hatched the plot to stage the death then claim insurance and pension funds as they were on the brink of bankruptcy and its embarrassing consequences.

The elaborate plan in March 2002 involved Mr Darwin paddling out into the North Sea in his home-made canoe, within sight of their home in Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, then going into hiding while his wife claimed he was missing at sea.

She raised the alarm after driving him in secret to Durham railway station.

A huge air sea rescue operation was mounted - without success.

Mrs Darwin turned on the tears when she broke the news of their father's disappearance to her sons.

Mark Darwin, 32, told the court: "It crushed my world."

It was only five-and-a-half years later that they learned the truth.

With her husband living rough in Cumbria, the grey-haired former doctor's receptionist began the process of declaring him dead, and conning the insurers and pension funds out of £250,000.

He came home after repeatedly phoning her in tears, and lived in secret in a room in the bedsit the couple owned next door.

Under the assumed identity John Jones, taken from a local child who died in infancy, Mr Darwin continued to run the couple's affairs and travelled around the world planning a new life for the pair.

In October last year Mrs Darwin settled her affairs in the UK, having sold off the family's property portfolio, and emigrated to Panama, where she joined her husband.

Cash was transferred via the Channel Islands, and the houses which the couple were in danger of losing as they crept close to bankruptcy in 2002 were turned into assets worth £500,000.

They bought a flat and land in the countryside which they hoped to transform into a canoeing centre focusing on eco-tourism.

But suddenly, Mr Darwin flew back to the UK and handed himself into a central London police station, claiming he suffered amnesia and could remember nothing since 2000.

He was reunited with his sons in December, who told the court they could not believe he was alive.

Mrs Darwin, still in Panama, was tracked down by a journalist, and pretended to him to be shocked at the back-from-the-dead miracle.

But her story collapsed when a photograph was found on the internet showing the smiling couple posing in a Panama estate agency in 2006.

Anthony Darwin, 29, said he felt "betrayed" when he realised the snap was genuine.

His older brother told the court he was angry at his mother's deception, saying: "I couldn't believe the fact she knew he was alive all this time and I had been lied to for God knows how long."

The couple were charged with fraud and money laundering, and Mr Darwin faced a separate charge relating to his fake passport in the name John Jones.

Andrew Robertson QC, prosecuting, told the jury the plan might not have been Mrs Darwin's, but "it was a scheme in which Anne Darwin not only played an equal and vital role but it was a role which she played with superb aplomb".

At first Mrs Darwin told police she only discovered her husband was alive a year after he went missing.

But she later changed her story when she was shown a library card which Mr Darwin took out in the name of Jones only weeks after he supposedly drowned, and confessed she knew about the plot months before it was carried out.

She denied the charges, saying went along with the deception because she was scared her husband would leave her.

But the unusual defence of marital coercion - which required Mr Darwin to be present with her each time an offence was committed and for her to be forced to break the law - failed.

Her claims of an unhappy 35-year marriage to a bullying partner were countered by the prosecution which showed the jury loving, and sometimes flirtatious emails the two send each other.

Mr Darwin admitted seven counts of fraud and one charge of dishonestly obtaining a passport. He denied nine counts of money laundering, which will remain on file.

1:18pm Wednesday 23rd July 2008

Print   Email this