She thought
she was
protecting
their sons by
lying. If they
found out,
Darwin said,
they could be
accessories
to the crime
38 • The Sunday Times Magazine
Over time he grew his hair and beard
long as a disguise and began to venture
outside. Using a cane, he shuffled about
with a stoop and a limp. When it was cold,
he wore a woolly hat and pulled his collar
up. Amazingly, it worked: locals didn’t
recognise him.
The couple built up a significant financial
pot thanks to the insurance payouts and
sale of properties. Borrowing from the plot
of the Frederick Forsyth spy thriller The
Day of the Jackal, Darwin obtained a false
passport in the name of John Jones, an
identity stolen from a child in Sunderland
who had been born around the same time
as Darwin but had died young. The couple
travelled to Panama and put their money
towards an apartment and a parcel of land.
“They had this crazy notion to have an
eco-retreat,” Leigh says. “They’d prune
roses in the garden and that’s about the
only experience they had, and they’d
proved themselves pretty incompetent
at running a business. The thought that
they were going to convert this land when
there were wild animals, snakes and
howler monkeys ...” Leigh chuckles.
The couple might have got away with it
all but for a simple oversight. It was only
after buying the property in Panama that
Darwin discovered he needed to have a
letter of good conduct from his local UK
constabulary in order to be a Panama
resident. This posed a difficulty since he
had travelled to Panama on a false passport.
“John Darwin was then John Jones, and
there’s no way in the world he was ever
going to get a good conduct letter, because
he didn’t exist,” Leigh says. “He was
stunned. He’d invested all this money. He
said to Anne, ‘I’m going to go back and say
I’ve had a bump on the head, got amnesia.’ ”
He believed he could then get the letter
of good standing. “I think Anne knew
then ... I mean, she’s told me, she said it
was crazy. She said, ‘I knew nobody was
ever going to believe it.’ ”
By the time the fraud was uncovered
in December 2007, the amount of money,
land and property owned by the couple
amounted to more than £500,000. Taking
into account the proceeds of the sale of
Nos 3 and 4 The Cliff, they had been sitting
on a pot of close to £700,000.
As Anne described the web of deception,
she was desperately worried about the
impact the revelations would have on the
couple’s sons, who had been frequent
visitors to her home and had offered her
their shoulders to cry on. “She was saying,
‘My sons are never going to forgive me,’ ”
Leigh recalls. “But at the same time she was
relieved it was finally over. She had been
lying to friends, family and neighbours for
six years, which must have put her under
considerable strain.”
Leigh believes she thought she was
protecting her sons by not telling them
their father had faked his own death. But
there was also an element of coercion,
he says. Darwin had told Anne that if the
boys found out, then they would either
be accessories to the crime or they’d
probably turn them in.
According to Leigh, Darwin didn’t think
his sons would be unduly upset by his
passing. “It’s absolutely true that Darwin
said, ‘Oh well, the boys will miss me for a
week or two and then they’ll be all right.’
That’s how he felt and how he thought.”
Leigh knew the story he had was
dynamite. “It was a really tense moment,”
he says. “I had an amazing story but I was
also watching someone’s life disintegrate.
I felt for her. It was tough and I was worried.”
That night, Anne was so emotional that he
feared she might self-harm. “I was in the
room next door. All night I was hoping she
wouldn’t do anything silly,” he says.
As Anne had anticipated, the photograph
of their parents in Panama was a
devastating blow to Mark and his brother,
Anthony. The death of their father had
crushed them both; but now they were
blind-sided by the discovery that their
mother had lied to them for years.
Ultimately they would break off all
contact with their parents.
As a result of the photograph and
Anne’s confession, Darwin was arrested
three days after his reappearance and
questioned under caution about alleged
fraud involving insurance payouts and
property deals. Soon afterwards he dropped
the act and pleaded guilty to charges
of obtaining cash by deception and a
passport offence.
Anne, though, was ready to face justice.
“She told me, ‘I don’t want to be a fugitive.
I want to go home,’ ” Leigh says. He still
suspected she was holding things back,
so on the flight home he tried to persuade
her to tell the police the full truth. He told
her, “It really doesn’t matter if you’ve lied
to me, but don’t lie to the police. You’ve
got to draw a line under this and face
your punishment.”Top: Anne with her sons,
Anthony and Mark, c 2007.
Above: John with his second
wife, Mercy Mae. He now
lives in Manila