LONDON (AFP) — The wife of a "back-from-the-dead" man who resurfaced five years after vanishing in an apparent canoe accident convinced everyone he was dead, including her own children, a court heard Monday.
Anne Darwin faces fraud charges involving nearly 250,000 pounds over the alleged scam, which came to light after her husband John walked into a police station claiming to have lost his memory.
"She put on a great act... she kept up the facade that she was genuinely grieving for the death of her husband," said prosecutor Andrew Robertson at the start of the trial at Teesside Crown Court in northeast England.
"Anne Darwin clearly thought nothing of lying to her sons... and convincing them that their own father was lost at sea and dead in order to see this fraud through to its conclusion," he added.
Darwin was presumed dead after disappearing while canoeing in the sea in March 2002 near his home in Seaton Carew, northeastern England.
But he reappeared on December 1 last year when he walked into a London police station, telling officers he could remember nothing of the last five years, and believed himself to be a missing person.
His wife was tracked down to Panama City and initially claimed shock at his reappearance, before being confronted with a photograph of the couple from last year which had emerged.
In subsequent comments to newspapers as the full story came out, Darwin's wife said she went along with his faked death to escape huge debts, and lived with him in secret for years.
The prosecutor at her trial said Monday that Anne Darwin -- who is claiming her husband forced her to go along with the scam -- played her role to perfection, driven by the couple's dire financial straits.
"They were at risk of being made bankrupt -- the shame and embarrassment of which neither of them wished to face. Out of this dire financial situation, seeds of this fraud were born," said Robertson.
"The initial idea may well have been John Darwin's rather than Anne'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."
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