Canoe wife appeals against conviction
Aug 13 2008 by Cathy Gordon, The Journal
THE wife of back-from-the dead canoeist John Darwin has lodged an appeal against conviction and sentence.
Anne Darwin and her husband were each jailed for more than six years last month for carrying out a determined, sustained and sophisticated £250,000 fraud by faking his death in a canoeing accident.
They were sentenced at Teesside Crown Court over a swindle which deceived the police, a coroner, financial institutions and even their sons, Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29. Mrs Darwin, 56, was convicted of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering after a seven-day trial.
The Court of Appeal confirmed yesterday that she had lodged an appeal against both conviction and her six-and-a-half year jail sentence.
Mr Darwin, 57, was jailed for six years and three months.
His wife claimed that her domineering husband forced her to go through with the plan to con insurance and pension companies by faking his death at sea.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Wilkie, told the Darwins their sons’ lives were crushed by the deception, and that meant a severe sentence was needed.
The court heard the plan to hoax insurers and pension schemes into believing Mr Darwin was dead was hatched as the couple faced losing their imposing seafront home in Seaton Carew in 2002.
They had a 12-home property portfolio and were struggling to make mortgage repayments, when he paddled into the sea in his home-made canoe and then disappeared.
They were undone by a photograph of the grinning couple taken in Panama four years after he disappeared.
Speaking at the end of the trial, Mr Justice Wilkie said the real victims of the Darwins were their sons.
After the trial, detectives said that after a tip-off, they had already been working on the basis that Mr Darwin was alive before he walked into a London police station to hand himself in.
And they said it was clear that the couple were working as a team when they examined Mrs Darwin’s financial transactions, in particular the sophisticated way in which she was transferring money to Panama.
