Thursday, December 13, 2007

THURSDAY-13TH DECEMBER 2007-‘Back-from-dead’ Briton in court, police to quiz wife

‘Back-from-dead’ Briton in court, police to quiz wife
LONDON:
A British man who resurfaced more than five years after being presumed dead in a canoeing accident appeared in court Monday on fraud charges, as police prepared to question his wife. John Darwin was given a brief hearing before magistrates in Hartlepool, northeast England, and was remanded in custody until Friday. The 57-year-old is accused of lying to obtain a passport and obtaining a 25,000- pound life insurance payout by deception. The former teacher and prison officer 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. Darwin’s appearance in court -a procedural hearing at which he spoke only to confirm his name and date of birth - came as detectives prepared to interview his wife, Anne. The 55-year-old former receptionist at a doctor’s surgery was arrested Sunday on her return to Britain from Panama, where she moved nearly two months ago. She was to undergo a medical examination before any formal interviews took place, police said. A news conference is scheduled for later Monday, they added. John Darwin had been declared legally dead in 2003, a year after he disappeared from the family home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, and his battered red canoe was washed up on the shore.
He was arrested last Tuesday after the publication of a photograph of him and his wife in Panama in July 2006, prompting a rash of revelations from his wife in interviews with British newspapers. She told the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail she went along with her husband’s faked death to escape huge debts, and lived with him in secret for years. She said the couple had about 12 houses as rental investments and began to run up debts of tens of thousands of pounds (euros, dollars). Her husband told her faking his own death was the only way out. But she said she did not think his disappearance was fake, because they had not spoken about his plans for sometime. “I really thought that he was dead,” she said. Then in February 2003, he returned, looking dishevelled. 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 for 97,000 dollars in April this year. But when Darwin had to return to Britain as his visa was running out, he told his wife he was going to reemerge and claim memory loss. -AFP