While it's her husband who will go down in history as the infamous 'canoe man,' Anne Darwin will see her shocking past brought back into the spotlight once again, thanks to the repeat of ITV drama The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe this week.
Twenty one years have now passed since John went out to sea in a kayak, kicking off one of the most controversial missing person inquiries in British history. His apparent disappearance sparked a huge search of the North East coastline, but the reality was that he was very much alive, hiding away in a bedsit in a property he owned.
His disappearance, which was eventually called off with John presumed dead, was in fact a wicked scheme cooked up to fraudulently claim insurance, benefits and pension, to help with Darwin's escalating debt, which was rumoured to be in excess of £700,000. John and Anne even deceived their own sons Anthony and Mark, with their scam stepping up a notch when John got himself a passport using someone else's name and went to Panama, where Anne later joined him, with John going onto claim that he'd also visited other countries, including America.
READ MORE: What happened to 'canoe man' John Darwin after prison stretch
The scam was finally rumbled when John walked into a London police station and told officers he didn't know where he'd been for the last five years. However, after an investigation was launched, the lie was exposed when a photo of John and Anne posing in a Panama real estate office surfaced. In 2008, John Darwin was jailed for six years and three months after admitting eight deception charges, wife Anne was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail for fraud and money-laundering.
What happened to Anne Darwin?
Whilst in prison, Anne told John she wanted to separate, a move he was apparently he was left furious over. When she left prison in 2011, after serving two years and eight months of her sentence, it's claimed John sent Anne a photograph of herself which had a copyright brand on it, seemingly implying she was his property. When they eventually divorced, John cited 'unreasonable behaviour,' as the reason.
Anne went onto write a book about what happened, called Out of My Depth, with proceeds going to the RSPCA. Anne maintains to this day that she was coerced into the 'fake death,' scam by John. Speaking to The Guardian in 2016, Anne explained: “John could also be persuasive. He told me, ‘I’ll only need to vanish for a couple of weeks and we’ll have the money.’ It got out of control.
“The deeper you get into these situations, the harder it is to get out. If I had any inkling it would have lasted more than few a weeks, there’s no way I could have gone along with it and put myself through years of torture. But once it was done, and he got me to lie that he’d disappeared, I couldn’t get out of it.”
According to a report in the Daily Mail, as of early 2022, Anne was living in a village not far from Middlesbrough. A documentary which aired last year claimed she has 'reconciled' with her sons.
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