'Dead' canoeist to be charged
Saturday, 8 December 2007
Police are to charge a 'dead' canoeist, a week after he resurfaced claiming to have forgotten everything since vanishing five years ago.
Cleveland Police in northeastern England, where the 57-year-old has been questioned since his arrest last week, made the decision hours before a deadline for them to either charge him or release him.
Meanwhile, his wife has said debts, love and spiralling lies made her go along with her husband's faked death and live with him in secret for years, in an extraordinary confession to British newspapers today.
'I know it seems too incredible to be true, but it is,' Anne Darwin said, revealing details about the bizarre case of John Darwin and how they fooled the authorities, friends, and even their two children.
'For three years, while virtually everyone close to us believed John was missing, presumed dead, he was actually at home with me.' she said.
She said he turned up 11 months after vanishing and then lived with her in secret, even hiding in the adjoining bedsit when their grieving sons visited.
Her husband, 57, was fed up after five years of living a lie and decided to turn up at a London police station one week ago pretending he had amnesia in order to see their sons again, she said.
Anne Darwin, 55, spoke out in an interview carried in the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror tabloids.
