- The story of the "Canoe Man" John Darwin who faked his own death and tried to start a new life with a false identity.
- Five years after he disappeared in a canoe 'accident' John Darwin walks into a police station, claiming to be an amnesiac but his wife Anne knows better and recounts the events of the disappearance. A prison officer whose fanciful money-making schemes leaves him facing bankruptcy - John plans to fake his death and persuades a reluctant Anne to collude with him. Anne feels guilty but plays her part well, leading her two twenty-something sons to believe their father is dead whilst he holes up in a bedsit he owns. After he is declared officially dead he gets a passport in a false name and, with half a million pounds in life insurance pay-out, moves to Panama with Anne, whose sons believe she has gone there alone. When John finds he needs the British police to verify his identity to get a resident's visa he concocts the amnesiac story but in the meantime the couple have been rumbled by a journalist and both are eventually sentenced to six years in prison.—don @ minifie-1
- This hour-long drama is based on a true story. Wanting to end his financial difficulties, John Darwin decides to fake his own death, with his wife's reluctant connivance, by apparently drowning in a canoe accident. Anne Darwin is then obliged to live the lie and play the grieving widow, breaking the news to their two sons and attending the inquest, as a result of which their insurance policy will pay out. In the meantime John has become tired of living in hiding and returns home, living in one of the bed-sit rooms they own next to their house, connecting the two by a passage. John decides that they need to sell up and move to Panama, where they buy a flat. Anne joins him and it seems that all their problems are finally solved when it turns out that they need a residence visa for Panama which requires a UK police check which John, on his false passport, will fail. He then decides to return to the UK, walk into a police station and declare himself a missing person who has been suffering from amnesia. The lie quickly breaks down when journalists discover a photo of John and Anne buying the flat from the Panamanian estate agent. The whole pack of lies collapses and the two are tried and sentenced for a variety of crimes, Anne strangely receiving the longer sentence.
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