Dead Canoeist Finally Turns Up

[Metal Head]

I wonder if he saw Lord Lucan on his travels?

December 03, 2007 03:17pm
Article from: http://www.news.com.au/images/sources/news_sourcelogo.gif</IMG> (http://www.news.com.au/)
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A BRITISH man who went missing during a canoeing trip and was presumed drowned more than five years ago has walked into a London police station. The wreckage of John Darwin's canoe was found washed up on a beach in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, in March 2002, the British Press Association reported. No trace was ever found of Mr Darwin, then aged 51.

But on Saturday afternoon, the married father-of-two walked into the West End Central Police Station in London. "Mr Darwin is fit and well and relatives have been informed of his whereabouts," a police spokesman said. "It is not known at this time where he has spent the last 5-½ years."
His disappearance was agonising for his family, with his wife Anne saying six months later that she needed to bury his body so she could move on.
"It's difficult to grieve without bringing things to a close, but as it is I'm in limbo and there's nothing I can do," she said at the time.

[Metal Head]

A MAN who "returned from the dead" after apparently being lost at sea in a canoeing accident five years ago was charged by police today with obtaining money by deception and making a false declaration to get a passport. The charges come after a week of revelations that began with John Darwin, 57, walking into a London police station claiming amnesia and ended with his wife Anne telling newspapers she had hidden him at the family home during the missing years.

Anne Darwin described how her husband had avoided discovery by using a small passage to an apartment in an adjoining house owned by the couple. "For three years, while virtually everyone close to us believed John was missing presumed dead, he was actually at home with me," Anne Darwin, who recently left Britain for central America, told the Daily Mirror. "We were living as man and wife, although it was far from a conventional life," she added. "There were a few hairy moments and I lived in fear of being found out," she told the Daily Mail in another interview. Today police urged her to make contact with them as soon as possible but said they did not know when she intended to return to Britain. Newspaper reports said Darwin's life insurance and work benefits had been paid to his wife.

Anne Darwin spoke to the Daily Mail in Miami where she had travelled from Panama, apparently heading to Britain after telling reporters she had been "living a lie" and feared her children would never forgive her. She told the Daily Mirror her husband had partly lived with her in the family home, but if visitors called, had to flee through the passage hidden by a wardrobe with a false back to the neighbouring apartment. Former prison officer Darwin vanished in March 2002 from his home, but according to his wife, turned up at their house a year later. "I didn't even recognise him at first," she told the Mirror."He was an absolute mess, all dishevelled. I was relieved he was alive, of course, but I was also very angry with him." She said the couple decided to move to Panama, but Darwin, who was missing their sons Anthony and Mark, invented a plan to "return from the dead" to see his sons.

In 2002, Anne Darwin reported her husband missing, saying she feared he had suffered an accident while canoeing in the North Sea near their home in Hartlepool, northeast England. A few weeks later the shattered remains of his red kayak were discovered. In 2003, following a police inquiry, a coroner declared him dead.