KEY POINTS:
The wife of former prison officer John Darwin "put on a great act", playing an "equal and vital" role in a plot in which the pair fraudulently claimed £50,000 ($130,000) in insurance payouts by faking his death, a court heard yesterday.
Anne Darwin, 56, claimed the money by convincing insurance companies, the police, the coroner and "most poignantly" her own sons that their father had drowned following a canoeing accident in 2002.
At the start of the trial in which Darwin faces 15 counts of fraud and money laundering, Andrew Robertson, QC, for the prosecution, told Teesside Crown Court that the Darwins hatched the plan after becoming laden with debt.
Their scheme was to fake his death and claim money on various insurance policies before fleeing Britain and moving to Panama to live an "idyllic life together".
"They were at risk of being made bankrupt - the shame and embarrassment of which neither of them wished to face," Robertson said. "Out of this dire financial situation, seeds of this fraud were born."
The prosecution said the Darwins' sons, Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, were led to believe, for 5 1/2 years, that their father was dead.
The court heard the scheme was concocted on 21 March 2002. That evening Darwin left the couple's home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, with enough supplies to live rough. Once by the sea, he pushed his canoe out into the waves before phoning his wife and asking her to drive him to Durham train station.
Later that night Darwin phoned the police to report her husband missing. She would go on to make numerous fraudulent insurance claims by "convincing them her husband was dead when he was very much alive and well".
In the August of that year, a body was found and Mrs Darwin was asked to identify it. Robertson said that when told it was not the body of her husband, Mr Robertson said that Mrs Darwin "burst into tears and said that she wanted the body to be John's so that he could be laid to rest and so she could move on".
Darwin is charged with five counts of obtaining money transfer by deception, six charges of transferring criminal property, one charge of using criminal property, one charge of obtaining property by deception and two charges of converting criminal property. Darwin denies all the charges. The trial continues. At an earlier hearing, John Darwin admitted deception and will be sentenced later.
PADDLING INTO DEEP WATER
* In 2002, John and Anne Darwin were facing bankruptcy.
* In March 2002, John Darwin pushed his canoe out into the waves at a North Sea beach in an effort to fake his own death.
* His wife, Anne, claimed £250,000 in life insurance payouts.
* John Darwin was pronounced dead by a coroner in 2003 but walked into a police station in December last year saying: "I think I am a missing person."
* By using the defence of marital coercion, Anne darwin is claiming her husband forced her to act against her own will.
- INDEPENDENT
