LONDON (AFP) — Police charged Monday the wife of a man who reappeared after being presumed dead for more than five years with two counts of deception on her return from Panama.
Anne Darwin, a 55-year-old former doctor's surgery receptionist, will appear in Hartlepool Magistrates Court on Tuesday, where her husband John, 57, attended a brief hearing earlier on Monday.
She was accused of "dishonestly obtaining 25,000 pounds (35,000 euros, 51,000 dollars) ... (and) 137,000 pounds by money transfer," a police spokeswoman said, adding that both offences were committed in 2003.
John, a former teacher and prison officer, has been charged with lying to obtain a passport, and obtaining a 25,000-pound life insurance payout by deception.
The 137,000-pound payment Anne Darwin has been accused of dishonestly obtaining relates to a policy to settle her mortgage in the event of her husband's death.
He was arrested last Tuesday, three days after walking into a central London police station and telling officers he thought he was a missing person but had amnesia.
Anne Darwin, meanwhile, was arrested on Sunday in Manchester, northern England, on her return from Panama, where she moved nearly two months ago.
She was tracked down to an apartment in Panama City by reporters when her husband re-emerged after he was presumed dead in a canoeing accident. She eventually confessed in a series of newspaper interviews that she had known he was alive and lived in secret with him for years.
Detective Superintendent Tony Hutchinson told a news conference Anne Darwin was "pale, drawn and very quiet" and said nothing during her arrest or en route to the police station.
"We are well aware of the stories that have appeared in the newspapers over the weekend and in particular we will be discussing with Mrs Darwin the version of events over the last five days that have been attributed to her," he added.
John Darwin was declared legally dead in 2003, a year after his battered red canoe was washed up on the shore near their home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool.
His arrest came after the publication of a photograph of him and his wife in Panama in July 2006, prompting her to tell the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail newspapers they hatched a plan to escape debts.
She reportedly said her husband told her faking his own death was the only way out but she did not think his disappearance was fake, because they had not spoken about his plans for some time.
"I really thought that he was dead," she was quoted as saying.
Then in February 2003, he returned, looking dishevelled, she said.
He moved back in, hiding in the adjoining bedsit the couple owned when their two grieving sons visited. When going outdoors he used a woolly hat, upturned collar, walking stick and limp to disguise himself.
He successfully applied for a passport in the name of John Jones.
At one point the couple travelled to Cyprus with a view to moving there, before turning to Panama City, where they bought an apartment in April.
But when Darwin had to return to Britain as his visa was running out, he told his wife he was going to re-emerge and claim memory loss.
Hutchinson appealed for help in tracking Darwin's movements over the last five years -- releasing a picture of John Darwin with a beard which he had at one point -- and said there was still no clear motive for the alleged actions.
But he told reporters the couple's sons were blameless.
"There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that the sons of John and Anne are anything other than victims in this case," he said.
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