Canoe man John Darwin almost killed himself as he faked his death at sea, his memoirs have revealed.
The fraudster wrote his story while in jail for the £500,000 life insurance fraud.
Ex-teacher and prison officer Darwin, now 71, sparked a huge search in 2002 after he “vanished” in his kayak.
He lived as a “dead man’” for five years with wife Anne, 69, first in a room hidden by a wardrobe.
In his unpublished memoir, seen by the Mirror, he tells of the day he put to sea near his home in Seaton Carew, Co Durham.
He writes: “I started to paddle again, heading towards the pier which I had spotted a few minutes earlier.
“It then struck me that I couldn’t see the South Gare [breakwater at the mouth of the River Tees].
“I’d actually paddled out much, much further than I intended. To my total horror, I realised I could have been swept away and died. I had nearly done it without meaning to.”
Darwin, who spent two-and-a-half years behind bars for fraud, still kayaks off the Philippines where he now lives with second wife Mercy May, 48.
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He loves to head out in the summer to escape the crowded streets of the capital Manila. Earlier this week we reported Mercy’s bizarre claim that her husband wants to fight in Ukraine, despite his age.
He and Anne divorced after 38 years while both were in jail.
She has since rebuilt her relationship with sons Mark and Anthony, who she lied to about their dad’s “death”.
The astonishing story is to be told next month in a four-part ITV dramatisation The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe starring Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan.
The series was inspired by a book by former Daily Mirror journalist David Leigh, who found Anne in Panama after John returned to the UK in 2007.
