Canoe wife Anne Darwin gets longer sentence
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Husband and wife team John and Anne Darwin have been jailed for fraud and money laundering.
Anne has been sentenced to 6 and a half years in jail, slightly longer than her back-from-the-dead husband who will serve 6 years and 3 months.
They had both deceived their two sons, insurance companies and the police by faking John's death six years ago. He walked into a police station last year pretending he had lost his memory.
At first Anne pretended to be the overjoyed wife before The Mirror uncovered a photograph taken of the couple in Panama the year before.
When they showed her the photo she replied: "Yes, that's him. My sons will never forgive me."
"They knew nothing. They thought John was dead. Now they're going to hate me. They'll be devastated and will probably want nothing to do with me again."
The judge told the couple earlier this afternoon: "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."
