Faked canoe death costs couple 6 years

John and Anne Darwin were each jailed for more than six years today for carrying out a £250,000 con by faking his death in a canoeing accident.

 
 
By Nigel Bunyan and Richard Edwards
Last Updated: 4:28PM BST 23 Jul 2008
Anne Darwin describes in detail to police the first stages of her husband's plan to fake his own death. ; http://link.brightcove.com/services/link... http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?ch...
 
The 56-year-old wife was convicted by a jury at Teesside Crown Court of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering today, while the husband admitted fraud at an earlier hearing.
 
Anne Darwin received six and a half years in jail. Her husband got six years and three months.
 
Sentencing them, Mr Justice Wilkie said the "real victims" of the Darwins were their sons.
 
He told the couple: "Although the sums involved are not as high as some reported cases, the duration of the offending, its multi-faceted nature and in particular the grief inflicted over the years to those who in truth were the real victims, your own sons, whose lives you crushed, make this a case which merits a particularly severe sentence."
 
Mrs Darwin, 56, spent years lying to her sons about the fate of their father, John Darwin, while knowing all along that he was alive and plotting a life insurance fraud.
 
She had claimed her "domineering" husband forced her to go through with the plan to con insurance and pension companies by faking his death at sea.
 
But the jury at Teesside Crown Court rejected the former doctor's receptionist defence and convicted her today of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering after a seven day trial.