LONDON (Dec. 9) - A woman whose husband is accused of faking his own death in an insurance scam was arrested Saturday on suspicion of fraud, police said.
Anne Darwin was arrested at Manchester's airport shortly after arriving from Atlanta, Ga., police said. She had been living in Panama but left that country Wednesday.
Her husband, John Darwin, walked into a London police station last week claiming to have amnesia five years after he was believed to have disappeared at sea. He was charged on Saturday with life insurance fraud and lying to get a false passport, and was to appear in court Monday.
Police say he masterminded an elaborate fraud to pay off family debts.
Two British newspapers reported Saturday that Darwin spent much of the last five years hiding in a small room tucked behind a closet at his home in northeastern England.
Anne Darwin said the couple had tens of thousands of dollars of debts because of the failure of their apartment rental business, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror newspapers said.
"John said there was only one way out of the situation, and that was to fake his death. I pleaded with him not to do it, I said it was the wrong thing to do," the newspapers quoted her as saying.
The newspapers said Anne Darwin said had not expected her husband to go through with the plan and genuinely thought he was dead when he disappeared in an apparent canoeing accident. But a year later, her husband came knocking at her door, she was quoted as saying.
She said her husband pressured her to keep his reappearance a secret so he could have himself declared dead, the newspapers said. That would allow her to collect $50,000 in life insurance and lift the burden of her mortgage.
After authorities officially declared him dead, John Darwin moved in with her and hid in a small room reached through a hole in the wardrobe, the papers said. She said the two moved to Panama this year and that her husband was tired of hiding and decided to return to Britain.
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