The day was clear and the sea calm when John Darwin set off in his canoe from Seaton Carew on the Co Durham coast in the UK on March 21, 2002. Neighbours had seen him leaving home that morning and then paddling off from the shore, headed towards the mouth of the River Tees, a busy shipping channel. When his wife, Anne, returned from work that evening she noticed Darwin's car in the driveway, yet he wasn't at home. She called the prison where he worked and was told that he hadn't shown up that day. It was then that she spotted his canoe was absent from the hallway.
Anne reported her husband missing that evening and a large search operation began. The following morning a double-ended paddle was retrieved from the sea but there was no trace of Darwin. Four days after he disappeared the search was called off and it was assumed he had drowned and been swept away to the deep. It would take six weeks for the smashed canoe to wash ashore.
"That was a devastating blow," Anne said at the time. "I just believed there must have been an accident. It was difficult to do anything or get on with my life." In the intervening years the grieving widow continued to work as a doctor's receptionist and was supported by friends and family.
More than five years later, however, Darwin returned from the dead. On December 1, 2007, he walked into a police station in London claiming to have amnesia. While he could remember his name and that he had lived in Hartlepool, he said he had no memory of where he'd been or what he'd done for the past five years. His last memory was of a holiday in Norway in 2000. Believing it to be June, he asked the police officer why all the Christmas lights were up.
The media sensed a cracking story — but had little idea just how crazy and sensational it would be. Enter David Leigh, a British journalist living in Miami.
At 5am the day after Darwin resurfaced, Leigh was woken by the buzz of his mobile phone. The Daily Mail wanted him to find Darwin's 55-year-old wife, Anne, who had emigrated to Panama only a few weeks previously. Leigh, who worked as bureau chief of a news agency in Miami, was just a three-hour flight from Panama City.
By the time he and a photographer friend, Steve Dennett, touched down, they were well ahead of rivals in the British press pack. Thanks to a tip-off, Leigh knew where Anne lived, though he wasn't optimistic he would find her. "I was sure that a woman whose husband had just come back from the dead, after nearly six years, would be on the first flight home," recalls Leigh, 57.
But she wasn't: instead Anne was hidden away inside her flat. After 40 minutes of knocking, Leigh finally got a reply. "I couldn't believe it when suddenly this little voice says, 'What do you want?' I turned to Steve and said, 'Oh my God, she's in there.' "
Leigh convinced Anne to let him in, and as they talked he noted her strange demeanour. "It was a very stilted conversation. I was expecting her to say, 'I'm overjoyed, I can't believe the news, this is the day I always dreamt about,' and she did all that but not in a way that was at all convincing," Leigh says.
Anne told him there were a number of obstacles blocking her return to the UK and she had an air of desperation about her. At one point he said to her, " 'Perhaps I can help you,' and she replied, 'You can't. Nobody can.' It was such a weird thing to say," Leigh says.
Conscious that their competitors were closing in, Leigh and Dennett persuaded Anne that her best course of action was to move to a hotel and tell them the story of her life. Leigh did not know it then, but the move marked a turning point in both their fortunes. It would balloon into the biggest scoop of his career, lead him to forge a close friendship with a convicted criminal, publish two books recounting the whole shocking tale and result in a new four-part ITV drama, starting in the UK on Sunday. For Anne, it would eventually lead to jail.
Tucked away in the hotel in Panama, Anne told Leigh about her life — her first meeting with Darwin as an 11-year-old schoolgirl, their wedding day, their decades-long marriage and his disappearance. She said that a year after her husband went missing, believing he was dead, she made a number of claims on life and mortgage insurance policies he had taken out. The payouts totalled almost £250,000. Then, in 2006, more than four years after her husband disappeared, she took a holiday to Panama, which inspired her to relocate there.
Leigh pressed her on why she wasn't now dashing back to be by her husband's side. She told him her goods were being shipped over from the UK and she needed to stay in Panama in order to sign for them. She also had to sort out her immigration papers. Leigh's suspicions grew. "You'd just drop everything and go, wouldn't you, if that happened to you?" he says. He questioned Anne further, asking whether the couple had experienced any financial problems. She abruptly shut him down, telling him it was none of his business.
"It was obvious she wasn't being truthful," Leigh says, "but I had a great story because everybody wanted to hear from her."
When his interview was published the next day, it dominated the news. "Secret life of Mrs Canoe" and "Yes, I did pocket the life insurance" ran the headlines. In England, Darwin's two sons, Mark and Anthony, aged 32 and 29 at the time, enjoyed a euphoric meeting with the father who, for five years, they had believed to be dead. They quickly filled him in on key events from the intervening years and were eager to know where he had been all that time. They weren't the only ones. The police and the life insurance companies, who had paid out after Darwin's inquest, would soon be chasing answers too.
In Panama, with the interview out of the way Anne was much more at ease and had lunch with Leigh and a walk on the beach. "I think she thought, 'Oh, that was it,' " Leigh says. But later that day the story took an astonishing twist: Leigh received a photo that a reader of the Daily Mirror had uncovered online. The image showed Anne and Darwin together, smiling alongside an estate agent in Panama, and it was date-stamped July 14, 2006 — 18 months earlier.
The implication was damning. Not only had Anne known her husband was alive long before he resurfaced, but here was proof that he had visited Panama with her. Leigh told Anne that he knew she'd been lying. "She sat there for ages and then she broke down," he says. The image had sent "her fantasy world crashing down".
Once she had had time to digest the implications of the photo, she gave an account closer to the truth. "She hadn't told anyone the truth in nearly six years, not even her sons," Leigh says. "Every day she'd been living a lie, and once she started speaking it just came pouring out." Yes, she revealed, she had known for some time that her husband was still alive.
But where had he been living all that time? "Please don't tell me he was hiding in the garden shed," Leigh asked her in jest. Nothing could have prepared him for her response: "Well … almost."
Unbelievably, while everyone had been grieving Darwin's loss, he had been at home with Anne in Seaton Carew. She went on to explain that in the 1990s Darwin had visions of himself as a buy-to-let landlord and had set about building a mini property empire. Within a year he acquired 12 properties with the easy credit then available from banks. In 2000 he purchased two more properties in Seaton Carew, Nos 3 and 4 The Cliff. No 3 would become a home for him and Anne, while No 4 was earmarked as a buy-to-let investment. The houses were adjacent and had a warren of connecting doors and corridors — a structural quirk that would, in time, take on huge significance.
The 2000 property deal left the couple saddled with a hefty mortgage and Darwin, a prison officer and former teacher, was soon drowning in debt. Anne urged him to declare bankruptcy, but he was delusional, according to Leigh. "He had this ridiculous Range Rover with a personalised number plate and the monthly repayments on the mortgage swallowed up his wages," Leigh says. "He was living beyond his means and it was all for show. He'd told everyone he was rich; he had this big car and his mini buy-to-let empire. He convinced himself he was going to be a millionaire. That's the reason he decided to disappear, because he couldn't face what he saw as the humiliation of being declared bankrupt."
December 2001 was a pivotal time: Darwin took out an insurance policy that would pay £50,000 if he had a fatal accident and told Anne that he would rather fake his own death than face the shame of bankruptcy. When Anne challenged him, she was emotionally blackmailed by the man she had known since she was a young girl. "It's either that or I do it for real," he told her, according to Leigh.
Despite those threats, Anne told Leigh that when Darwin disappeared she genuinely believed he had drowned and that she had made insurance claims in "good faith". She also said that when he showed up at her door a year after his disappearance, she urged him to go to the police. He refused and, she alleged, threatened to tell them she had played a role in his disappearing act if she pushed him on the matter.
She admitted that she and Darwin subsequently lived under the same roof as man and wife while plotting a new life in Panama.
When Anne had visitors, Darwin would scuttle back to No 4 through the connecting doors — one of which was coffin-shaped and hidden behind a wardrobe. He was effectively a prisoner in his own home and would pass the day reading, on the computer, watching TV or doing odd jobs around the house.
Over time he grew his hair and beard long as a disguise and began to venture outside. Using a cane, he shuffled about with a stoop and a limp. When it was cold, he wore a woolly hat and pulled his collar up. Amazingly, it worked: locals didn't recognise him.
The couple built up a significant financial pot thanks to the insurance payouts and sale of properties. Borrowing from the plot of the Frederick Forsyth spy thriller The Day of the Jackal, Darwin obtained a false passport in the name of John Jones, an identity stolen from a child in Sunderland who had been born around the same time as Darwin but had died young. The couple travelled to Panama and put their money towards an apartment and a parcel of land. "They had this crazy notion to have an eco-retreat," Leigh says. "They'd prune roses in the garden and that's about the only experience they had, and they'd proved themselves pretty incompetent at running a business. The thought that they were going to convert this land when there were wild animals, snakes and howler monkeys …" Leigh chuckles.
The couple might have got away with it all but for a simple oversight. It was only after buying the property in Panama that Darwin discovered he needed to have a letter of good conduct from his local UK constabulary in order to be a Panama resident. This posed a difficulty since he had travelled to Panama on a false passport.
"John Darwin was then John Jones, and there's no way in the world he was ever going to get a good conduct letter, because he didn't exist," Leigh says. "He was stunned. He'd invested all this money. He said to Anne, 'I'm going to go back and say I've had a bump on the head, got amnesia.' " He believed he could then get the letter of good standing. "I think Anne knew then … I mean, she's told me, she said it was crazy. She said, 'I knew nobody was ever going to believe it.' "
By the time the fraud was uncovered in December 2007, the amount of money, land and property owned by the couple amounted to more than £500,000. Taking into account the proceeds of the sale of Nos 3 and 4 The Cliff, they had been sitting on a pot of close to £700,000.
As Anne described the web of deception, she was desperately worried about the impact the revelations would have on the couple's sons, who had been frequent visitors to her home and had offered her their shoulders to cry on. "She was saying, 'My sons are never going to forgive me,' " Leigh recalls. "But at the same time she was relieved it was finally over. She had been lying to friends, family and neighbours for six years, which must have put her under considerable strain."
Leigh believes she thought she was protecting her sons by not telling them their father had faked his own death. But there was also an element of coercion, he says. Darwin had told Anne that if the boys found out, then they would either be accessories to the crime or they'd probably turn them in.
According to Leigh, Darwin didn't think his sons would be unduly upset by his passing. "It's absolutely true that Darwin said, 'Oh well, the boys will miss me for a week or two and then they'll be all right.' That's how he felt and how he thought."
Leigh knew the story he had was dynamite. "It was a really tense moment," he says. "I had an amazing story but I was also watching someone's life disintegrate. I felt for her. It was tough and I was worried." That night, Anne was so emotional that he feared she might self-harm. "I was in the room next door. All night I was hoping she wouldn't do anything silly," he says.
As Anne had anticipated, the photograph of their parents in Panama was a devastating blow to Mark and his brother, Anthony. The death of their father had crushed them both; but now they were blind-sided by the discovery that their mother had lied to them for years. Ultimately they would break off all contact with their parents.
As a result of the photograph and Anne's confession, Darwin was arrested three days after his reappearance and questioned under caution about alleged fraud involving insurance payouts and property deals. Soon afterwards he dropped the act and pleaded guilty to charges of obtaining cash by deception and a passport offence.
Anne, though, was ready to face justice. "She told me, 'I don't want to be a fugitive. I want to go home,' " Leigh says. He still suspected she was holding things back, so on the flight home he tried to persuade her to tell the police the full truth. He told her, "It really doesn't matter if you've lied to me, but don't lie to the police. You've got to draw a line under this and face your punishment."
When she arrived back in Britain, Anne was arrested and held on remand. But it would take Christmas behind bars before she offered a full confession, admitting that she had been in on the whole scam right from the start. "That's it," she told her lawyer. "I'm lying. I've got to end this."
On the advice of her solicitor, Anne pleaded not guilty to charges of deception and money laundering. She sought to rely on the defence of marital coercion, with her barrister arguing that her domineering husband had forced her to go through with the deception. But even her own sons testified against her. "The sons were called as prosecution witnesses," says Leigh, who attended the trial and was in court on the day the jury found her guilty. "It was horrific. I saw her torn to shreds. She was lying in the box to try and make this marital coercion defence work. Everybody knew she was lying."
She was convicted of fraud and, along with her husband, sentenced to more than six years in jail. Anne, described by police as a "compulsive liar", was sent to the maximum- security prison HMP Low Newton. Former inmates include the serial killer Rosemary West and Tracey Connelly, mother of "Baby P", who died after suffering horrific injuries.
Leigh, who is now chief content officer of the Mega Agency, a global news and pictures agency, believes her sentence was excessive. "The judge obviously wanted to make an example of her. He said, 'The real victims here are the sons.' Yeah, they were the victims, but is it a crime to lie to members of your family? I mean, sure, it should be taken into account — but six and a half years for a £250,000 insurance scam was outrageous."
Leigh visited Anne in prison and the pair forged a firm friendship. He went on to co-write her memoir, Out of My Depth, published in 2016. He has also written a second book, The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, published earlier this month, which inspired the ITV dramatisation.
So what of Anne now? Leigh says the 69-year-old lives a quiet life. "When she was released, she got a job at the RSPCA. She did that for a number of years and she loved it. Her colleagues were very protective of her because journalists were always trying to talk to her." She has since retired and lives in a small flat overlooking farmland in Yorkshire. She and Darwin divorced in 2011 and she recently told Leigh, "I just wish I'd had the courage to do what I should have done a long time ago. We'd fallen out of love but I couldn't face being by myself."
Most importantly, she has been reconciled with her sons. "It's such a story of redemption," Leigh says. "If the boys can forgive her, what does it matter what anyone else thinks? It took a long time, and she wrote to them almost from day one, begging forgiveness. Eventually Mark started seeing her, then Anthony did."
Leigh describes the moment Anne met Anthony's son, her first grandchild, for the first time. "Anthony came to visit her at the Askham Grange, the open prison near York to which she'd been moved in readiness for her release. She heard his car pulling up, so she walked outside. He gets out and then his wife, Louise, gets out holding the grandson that she didn't even know she had. She broke down in tears. She sees them all the time now. She's got four grandchildren, who she loves. There are pictures of them all over her flat."
Last month marked the 20th anniversary of Darwin's disappearance, so it was fitting that Leigh should be in the UK, attending the preview screening of The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe. The story is played for laughs in parts. One Christmas Day scene shows Darwin, wearing a party hat, on one side of the wall dividing Nos 3 and 4 The Cliff as his family eat Christmas dinner on the other side.
But there is an undercurrent of unease throughout, cultivated by Anne's internal monologue voiceover. She comes across as an empathetic character. Meanwhile Darwin is depicted as a chancer — a bumbling, charming one but with flashes of narcissism and cruelty. "No one is queueing up for a woman like you, Anne. They weren't when I married you and they certainly wouldn't be now," he says to her at one point.
As for Darwin, Leigh has never met him. "Darwin is a real oddball," Leigh says. "He never said sorry to the boys." It seems he cared more about his reputation than his relationship with his sons, and Anthony is still estranged from him.
On Facebook Darwin lists his favourite quote as "live life to the full each day and have no regrets". After his release from prison in 2011, the 71-year-old signed up for several online dating sites. In 2013 he was rearrested for breaching his probation when he travelled to Ukraine to meet a woman he had been corresponding with. Later he moved to the Philippines after meeting Mercy Mae, a Filipina mother-of-three, online. They married in 2015 and have been living in a £30,000 (NZ$57,833) three-storey house in a gated community in Antipolo, an hour's drive from the capital. Darwin was recently spotted driving a £25,000 SUV, but neighbours say he is elusive. Mae, 48, owns a clothing business and a storage firm. "Where he gets his money, whether she supports him, I don't know," Leigh says.
In an interview last month, Mae said her husband was on his way to Ukraine to join troops fighting against Russian forces. And it's no surprise that he intended to be well prepared in one regard. She said he had "good life insurance" in place.
• The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe by David Leigh is published by Hodder.
Written by: Audrey Ward
© The Times of London