Darwin: I don't love my back-from-the-dead husband

8:56am Friday 18th July 2008

The wife of John Darwin told a court yesterday that she no longer loved her back-from-the-dead husband.

Anne Darwin said her husband had dominated her since they married in 1973, even after he was officially declared dead in a staged canoe accident in the North Sea in 2002.

Mrs Darwin told Teesside Crown Court she had considered suicide and wished he really had drowned when she was struggling to cope with the pressure of keeping up the deception.

David Waters QC, defending, asked if she still loved her husband, she replied: "At this moment in time, no."

But at the time of the deceptions she said she did love him - despite her revealing earlier her husband had an extra-marital affair some years after they wed.

She told the jury: "I was quite obviously upset when I found out about the relationship.

"I did consider leaving him but I just couldn't see a life without him.

"I didn't know how I would cope on my own so I forgave him."

On Wednesday, e-mails read out in court revealed she begged Darwin not to leave her as he flew back to London from Panama - where he had been hiding out - and hand himself into police.

She wrote: "Hope you had a good flight and everything okay with the family. Don't leave me. Love you, missing you already XXXXXX."

Asked yesterday why she did not walk away from the marriage when Darwin planned to fake his own death and cash in insurance policies and pensions, she said: "Because it was difficult to live with him at times; it would be even more difficult without him."The court has heard her domineering husband forced her to take part in the deception, which involved tricking their two sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, who were present at the £250,000 fraud trial.

She wept as she recalled how she pleaded with him not to carry out the scam to stage a canoe accident in the North Sea near their home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool.

She told the court she begged him: "Don't do it. Not now. Do you have to do it at all?

"He said there was no choice. He said he thought he would be able to come back in two to three months' time."

The former doctor's receptionist said: "He planned the family finances, including amassing a portfolio of properties despite her misgivings, she told the court."When Mr Waters asked her specifically about dishonestly obtaining a £2,000 from a pension scheme she blamed her husband for this and all other deceptions.

"It was just the same as all the other claims that were made at John's behest.

"That was the way that all of these things happened.

"It was John instructing me to make the claims."

The court heard Darwin, 57, has admitted making the fraudulent claims to clear the family debts and start a new life under the assumed name of John Jones.

Mrs Darwin denies six counts of deception and nine of money laundering, claiming the defence of marital coercion, meaning he forced her to break the law against her will.

The former doctor's receptionist said her husband insensitively left her moments before she underwent an emergency Caesarean when she was in labour with their son Mark.

Mrs Darwin wept as she recalled: "Even though the nursing staff had said to him it will only be five or 10 minutes before your baby is born, he said there was no point in staying, so he went home and left me.

"I was upset. I didn't want him to go, but he said there was no point in staying."

He would not shout, but spoke even more quietly when he was angry, she said.

He spoke to her like she was one of his pupils, and made her feel inadequate and believed she was intellectually inferior.

She said: "If there was something he wanted me to do, he would ask me initially to do it and, if I didn't do it, he would just go on and on at me until I did.

"All the major decisions were made by John. Superficially we would discuss things because my thoughts never seemed to carry any weight. Whatever John wanted to do, he did in the end.

"He had that power to make me feel insignificant."

Mr Waters asked her about prosecution claims that she was playing the "grieving widow".

She replied: "I honestly felt like a grieving widow. I had lost my husband, not in the sense he was lost, but he had left me.

"I felt desperate, I felt ashamed about what was happening. The emotions I showed were genuine emotions."

Mrs Darwin was then asked about the time when her son Mark travelled from his home in Basingstoke, Hampshire, to comfort his mother, when she flung her arms around him and said "he's gone, I think, I have lost him".

She admitted to the jury that she did remember doing that and conceded: "I had to make it look realistic and I was upset. I wanted everyone to think it was real."

Mrs Darwin said her husband joined an internet role-playing game and caught him sending messages to another player.

She said: "He became rather cagey when using the headphones and speaking into the computer if I came into the room. It was obvious he was in conversation."

After his disappearance, Mrs Darwin said she became aware of a woman called Kelly Steel from Kansas, US.

She said: "I think he met her through playing this game."

Darwin flew out to meet the woman, telling his wife "he needed to get away".

She said she did not try to stop him, saying: "There was not much point because I knew there was no point in arguing because, whatever John wanted, John got."

Later he returned, having lost £30,000.

She told the jury of one occasion when things had become too much.

"I ran out of the house and I crossed the road to the sea and I sat on the beach looking at the sea," she said. "I wished that John had drowned at sea.

"I considered walking into the sea. I got so desperate but I couldn't do it because of the effect it would have on the rest of the family, particularly Mark and Anthony, and I didn't have the courage so I calmed myself down and went back."

The couple planned a new life in Panama but last November he flew back to the UK to hand himself in to police, claiming he was suffering from amnesia.

"I really thought it was going to be a difficult story for anyone to believe," she said.

"He said he couldn't think of anything better."

After she flew back and was arrested, she initially told police she did not find out her husband was alive until February 2003, but then she came clean.

"I had time to think about what I had got involved in and I wanted to tell the truth," she told the jury.

"I'd had that time of separation from John and I was able to look at things differently."

After appearing before magistrates, she did not apply for bail.

"At that time I had nowhere to go and I had no one to turn to," she said.

"And once I had gone into prison I didn't want to apply for bail to come out and then face the prospect of going back in again."

Asked by Mr Waters whether that was still the case, she replied; "Yes."The trial was adjourned and will continue today.

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