Grieving ‘widow’ used ‘guile’ to pull off drowning con

THE wife of the back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin used “guile, convincing pretence, persistence and guts” to trick people her husband had drowned and pull off a £250,000 (€313,335) con, a court heard yesterday.

Anne Darwin, aged 56, convinced insurance companies, a coroner and, “more poignantly”, her sons he had died in a canoe accident.

The former doctor’s receptionist put on a “great act” for 5½ years to persuade everyone her husband had drowned at sea on March 21, 2002, by their home near Hartlepool, and she was a grieving widow.

She denies six counts of deception and nine of money laundering and has put forward an unusual defence of “marital coercion”, claiming her husband forced her to go along with his plan.

Andrew Robertson QC, prosecuting, said mounting debts of £64,000 and escalating mortgage repayments had forced the couple into forming the plan.

“They were at risk of being made bankrupt — the shame and embarrassment of which neither of them wished to face,” he told the trial.

“Out of this dire financial situation, seeds of this fraud were born. The initial idea may well have been John Darwin’s rather than Anne’s but, in the Crown’s submission, 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.”

Robertson said the plan to stage John Darwin’s death, then claim insurance and pension money was simple.

“It was obviously going to require a considerable amount of guile, convincing pretence, persistence and guts on the part of Anne Darwin to see it through,” the barrister said. “Her role was a positive one. John Darwin, after supposedly disappearing, had simply to keep his head down so the falsity of his disappearance would not be rumbled by anybody. She had to take all the positive steps. But, if she kept her nerve, which she coolly did, the rewards were going to be considerable, which they were — sufficient not only to discharge the debts, but to finance a potentially idyllic life abroad and together.”

Mrs Darwin picked up her husband from the beach and took him to Durham railway station to lie low for a while. She then reported him missing to the police and a search was launched.

“You will immediately note, when considering Anne Darwin’s defence of ‘marital coercion’, that he was not even with her when he asked her to pick him up, that she could easily have refused to pick him up, or simply not turned up. And later explained that her nerve had failed her,” Robertson told the jury.

“But her nerve did not fail her, and it is clear in our submission that at no stage in the ensuing 5½years before this fraud came to light did Anne Darwin’s nerve ever fail her.”

The trial continues today.