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'Dead' man's return a case of fraud, police say

LONDON - British police filed fraud charges Saturday against a man who was declared dead after he disappeared on a canoeing trip in 2002, then walked into a police station last week claiming amnesia.

Police in Cleveland, in northern England, charged John Darwin, 57, with making false statements to obtain a passport and using deception to make money transfers. Police said they wanted to interview his wife, Anne, 55, who recently moved to Panama.

Police provided no other details of Darwin's five-year odyssey, but his wife laid out an extraordinary tale in a lengthy interview published Saturday in two British newspapers.

According to her account, Darwin began planning to fake his death in early 2002 because he believed it was the only way the couple could escape growing debts related to their apartment rental business.

She said she doubted he would go through with the plan and initially believed he had died when he disappeared in March 2002. But she said he returned to their family home in northern England in February 2003, looking dirty, thin and "disheveled."

For the next three years, she told the newspapers, Darwin lived with her in their family home, spending most of his time in a small room in an apartment building they owned next door. She said his secret room was connected to their bedroom by a passageway that was knocked into the wall and hidden behind a large wardrobe.

She said her husband would often take walks disguised in a woolly hat and faking a limp.

He was hiding in his secret room, she said, on the day in April 2003 that she and their two grown sons returned home from the coroner's inquest at which John Darwin was officially declared dead, she said.

The declaration allowed her to collect life insurance payouts of about $50,000 in cash and another $260,000 to pay off the mortgage on their house, she told the newspapers.

Anne Darwin said her husband insisted that their sons not be told that he was alive. But he said he missed the boys and would insist that she put them on speakerphone when they called so he could hear their voices, she said.

She said the couple decided in 2004 to move abroad and start a new life.

John Darwin began researching properties in Panama last year, she said, and they traveled there for a visit. In March, they went to Panama again and paid about $100,000 for a two-bedroom apartment in a suburb of Panama City. She returned to England a month later to sell their home, while he remained in Central America.

While in Panama, Darwin decided he missed his sons "desperately" and could no longer go on without seeing them. "He had had enough of being dead," she said.

John Darwin told her that he wanted to return to England and claim amnesia, and she said he thought, "we would live happily ever after."

[Last modified December 9, 2007, 01:51:31]