Now dead' canoeist's wife goes missing

[Ms. Squirrel 11]

Now dead' canoeist's wife goes missing

The back-from-dead canoeist saga has taken further remarkable twists, with Anne Darwin failing to meet police at Heathrow Airport and her son Mark fleeing his home in the middle of the night, leaving instructions for his girlfriend to meet him at London City airport.

The new twists come after a remarkable week, begun when John Darwin - declared dead in 2003 after reportedly disappearing during a canoe trip the year before - walked into a London police station on Saturday and declared: "I think I'm a missing person."

For the early part of the week English newspaper stories covered his remarkable tale of survival, but when a photo showing the Darwin couple together and happy in Panama last year the story took an entirely new and fraudulent dimension.

Confronted with the photo in her new home of Panama yesterday, Mrs Darwin broke down and confessed she had known her husband was not dead for years, despite banking what British newspapers are now saying may have been as much as £700,000 ($1.6 million).

She feared what her sons Anthony, 29, and Mark, 31, would think of their parents, after believing their mother was a grieving widow and their father was at the bottom of the North Sea, and said she planned to return to England to "face the music".

But police were left waiting at Heathrow only a few hours ago, when the flight Mrs Darwin was meant to be on from Panama, which had flown via Madrid, failed to contain the 55-year-old doctor's receptionist.

And the same night Mrs Darwin failed to appear at Heathrow, it was revealed her eldest son Mark had suddenly disappeared from his North London flat, leaving a rambling notebook which reportedly contained instructions for his girlfriend to meet him at a London airport.

Continued Now dead' canoeist's wife goes missing, The Age, 07 December 2007

What I don't understand - Why did he turn himself in and how could he travel from Panama to the UK without a passport - or can you still use a dead person's Passport? What stunns me - if it's true that their sons really didn't know about the scam - how can greed be stronger than the love for your own children? They hurt their children, were fully aware of it, because of money. I cannot understand that.