Rotten Mango - #237: Vanished Man Came Back 6 Years Later With A CRAZY Secret (Case of John Darwin)

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

It was a good day to look for a missing person. It sounds dark, but the conditions at sea were optimal for a search and rescue. But life is funny, it never works out the way you expect. They searched for days before they gave up. It’s like the man had vanished into thin air. For 6 years, his family mourned his disappearance. A husband, father, son, had been ripped from their lives. But the story wasn’t over. He would come back 6 years later. He would show up in a small town in summer clothes, in the middle of December, and confused about his surroundings. He was confused about who he was, but he was holding onto a big secret that would shake the whole world up. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast? With Progressive, it is. Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverage you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate, then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 29 million drivers who trust progressive. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates comparison rates not available

in all states or situations, prices vary based on how you buy. Betta being betta boo. Welcome to this week's main episode of Rod and Mango. I'm your host Stephanie Sue. March 22nd of 2002 was a good day to look for a missing person. I know it sounds dark, but if there was any day that would have provided just the perfect, optimal conditions for search and rescue teams, it was March 22nd of 2002. But life is funny.

You know, it never really works out the way that you think it should. Six rescue boats, one helicopter, one small search plane, one Royal Air Force aircraft, one Royal Navy warship, partly cloudy skies, calm waters, I mean they should have found him, they wanted to find him alive, but they should have found him regardless. That's what they all thought. The grim belief was that the man in the red canoe had been hurled overboard his tiny little flotation device. I mean have you seen a canoe in the sea?

Have you seen one? Even seeing the biggest ship in the sea just feels daunting. Like even that doesn't stand a chance with the deep ocean. So a canoe? I mean, that's kind of crazy. Think about it. Up against the strong tides, up against mother nature, the canoe doesn't stand a chance. They believe the man was swept out to sea towards the river tees.

The river tees is one of the busiest shipping channels in the UK, which meant that he could have easily, easily been sucked into a giant ship's propellers and shredded to death. Do you know how strong those propellers are? Yeah. Incredible. He could have been sucked into one. I mean, it sounds like a slim chance, but not in this area. Nobody wanted to say it out loud. It sounds gruesome and pessimistic.

What do you tell the potential new widow? What do you tell the now-fatherless children? Sorry, we think he's been sucked into a propeller, and that's why we can't find his body because it's no longer whole? No, instead the search and rescue team searched all day, all night, before heading home, disappointed. They were annoyed with themselves. They promised the grieving family they would try again tomorrow. Thankfully, the widow, or potentially a new widow, she had support. Her parents, her siblings, her co-workers, neighbors, even her two sons. They dropped everything to be with her. One of her sons came from London, the other son rushed from overseas where he was in the middle of proposing to his girlfriend when he heard the news that his dad was missing.

They boarded a plane without a second thought. They wanted to be with their mom. They stayed with her for weeks, and even when they left, they would come back for the weekends. Any time that they could be with their mom, they would be there. I mean, she'd look like she needed their support desperately. All day, she would sit on a chair, staring at the wall in front of her. Eyes bloodshot red. No appetite, not even drinking water.

They begged her to eat, please mom, you gotta be stronger. So when dad comes back, when the love of your life comes walking back in through that door, you're gonna be jumping up and down Mom, it's gonna be okay. You know how dad is? It's all gonna be a funny story one day. He's gonna be back We're all gonna laugh about it. She would nod and she would listen But it was hard to leave her in her grief. They knew the moment that she closed the front door on them She would go back to her chair and stare at the wall some more. It just broke everybody's hearts to see her like that, and they would promise her, don't worry, we'll be back in

a few days, okay? She would nod and wave goodbye. When she was alone, she would walk all the way upstairs, shoulders slumped, dragging her feet, one step at a time, and then she would knock on the door that led to the house right next to theirs, she would say. They're gone now, you can come out. If any of the family members had walked back into the house at that moment, they would have believed that they had seen a ghost, because there was a dead man standing in the room.

He had heard all the crying between the family members, his family members, and he turned to his wife and said, if I hadn't been alive, how on earth would you have coped with all of this? She rolled her eyes and stared at him, since when did Deadman talk? He was hiding in the room the whole time? Yeah. As always, full show notes are available at rodmancopodcast.com, but a major source for this episode was a book written by one of the key players of this case.

And Darwin. She works with a journalist, David Lee, to get this book out there. It's called Out of My Death. I do recommend checking it out. I thought it was fascinating to see someone be so vulnerable, transparent, and open about something so utterly humili really humiliating? I was worried the book would feel self-serving, but it thankfully didn't.

It's a really good read to get an understanding of just how this case even escalated to this point. Because I mean the only word that I have for this entire case is that it's baffling. That's like the word of the day. Even David Lee, the journalist, the author that helped her with this book, said he is investigated so many cases all over the world. Internationally, he had never seen something so quote breathtaking in terms of sheer audacity. And it didn't go on for one

day or two days it went on for almost a decade. So with that being said, let's jump into these cold waters. Mario had two British friends. That's two more British friends than most people in Panama. He was ecstatic. He's like, leave me and my two British friends, OK? When they came to visit him, as a way to memorialize this special moment, he's like, can I take a picture?

Before his two British friends could even reject Mario, Mario's wife had the camera pointed at them and snapped. Right there, there were Mario's two friends, she was wearing a white top and a brown leather handbag. He was standing with a short sleeve shirt on and Mario stood there beaming at the camera. It's a polaroid picture. So the date, July 14th, 2006, was burned into the photograph in orange font. This picture would come back to hunt everyone in it because one of the people photographed, died in 2002.

Whoa. It could have been a Christmas miracle. That's what they could have called it until it escalated, almost amongst all the holiday decor, the Christmas spirit, the smell of pine trees in the air, a man was seen in the busy part of town wandering around. He looked really confused, he was grabbing onto the walls, he looks like he's stumbling about like he just woke up from a bad dream. He was wearing off-leaf and clothes, considering it's December.

In the UK it's freezing cold. He walked up to the store clerk and asked, why are the Christmas decorations up? I thought it's June. Oh my goodness. The clerk was alarmed enough to call the police. You know, they thought that they had someone who needed psychiatric help in their store.

But instead, they got a wild, wild story, a wild situation that the whole world would soon be so intrigued by. The man said his name was John Darwin and he was dead. But here he was, standing in front of the police in the flesh. The man was escorted to the police station where his family members were called to ID him. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was a doppelganger, someone that looked like their dad, someone that

looked like their family member. There's no way he's been dead for what, like six years? He's been missing, he's been presumed dead, just don't even get our hopes up. But when the kids ran in, they saw their dad's face, they screamed. I didn't believe it would really be you, oh my god. They would run to their dad in tears, it's been so long, six years, dad. What the hell is going on here? Dad, what do you remember?

He sat down and said, I remember I was a teacher at one point. I think I liked rabbits or maybe I hunted rabbits. I don't really remember much more. He couldn't even recall if he took sugar with his coffee. For his family, this was the best news ever. And for the price, well, this was the best news ever. And for the press, well, this was the best news ever. Okay? Are you kidding? A man who died five years ago came back from the dead with amnesia? The press were out for blood. They wanted the ins and outs of

this story. Every journalist in the United Kingdom and all around the world wanted to talk to the man that came back from the dead. The knock on the door, positively terrified Anne. She was not expecting any company. She has no friends in Panama, maybe like one or two, but not really. So she froze. She was petrified to make any noise. I mean, who knows who's on the other side of the door?

Maybe they weren't even looking for her. Maybe they're the wrong door, right? It's optimistic. No. She heard the British man's voice on the other end. And Darwin? Let's talk. I need to speak with you.

Are you there? And Darwin held her breath. She was scared whoever it was could hear her breathing through the door. For 30 minutes, she sat there, not daring to make another noise. Finally, she decided she had had enough. What do you want? She tried her best to sound confident, okay, but her voice was shaking. It betrayed her.

We'd like to talk about your husband and are you not happy that he was found alive? Perhaps I can help you and and sunk on the floor on the other side of the door. Exhausted, she said, you can't help me. Nobody can. This is how Ann Darwin bounced around the world with a journalist named David Lee, whom she would later write this book with. They were chased around the world by other journalists who wanted a piece of Ann, a piece of her story.

It had story of the year written all over it. I mean, she went through like multiple car chases. That's how crazy this story was. So that very night, she opened the door and led in the first British journalist that came knocking, David Lee. He was standing awkwardly in her Panama apartment, looking around at the sparsely decorated place. Sorry, my staff's all still in England. It's coming in a week. How can I help you? And in approximately an hour or two, your place is gonna be surrounded.

Do you have food for a month here? I didn't think so. Because any luck of getting out to grab food, grabbing fresh air to do anything will be gone. They will be waiting till they smell your blood and they're quite hungry. So do you still want my help? He's basically saying all the other journalists

are gonna do exactly what he did. Okay, and Anne thought it through, and she knew he was right. The only reason David Lee got here before anyone else was because he resided in Miami and not the UK. So she packed a light bag and asked, where do we go? Anne was now at the mercy of journalists David Lee and his photographer Steve. They drove all night long before settling down at a motel, and that night, once they settled in, I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the fact that they booked with fake names and they were on this covert mission together that brought a sense of camaraderie, whether it was pure exhaustion or thankfulness. Maybe Anne was grateful that these two men had saved her. She told David she was ready to give him a front page story, the one that he needed, the one that he flew all the way to Panama for.

Steve snapped a few pictures for the front page and she answered a few questions from David. David asked, like what was the precise moment when you found out that your husband was alive? How did you feel? My son called me three days ago from the police station. He told me that John had miraculously come back to life and asked if I would like to speak with him.

Clearly I was overwhelmed, I couldn't sleep that night. I just laid there wondering if this was all real, if this was all true, or maybe I had imagined it all. Well, what do you think of it all? And I couldn't make sense of it, of course. I knew there must be some sort of accident that day. He went out on the canoe. He must have hit his head or something.

But, you know, there's just a lot of unanswered questions. It's a complete mystery to me. Did you know all along that John was alive? No, no, I did not. I must maize does anybody else. Ann, of course, due to the nature of this situation, it's being suggested that John faked his death. Do you believe that to be true?

People can think what they want. My family knows the truth. John wouldn't have done that. If there were problems, he's the type to have talked it through. Why did you move to Panama when all your loved ones and your family are in England? I wanted to start fresh, you know? And on vacation, I found it breathtaking here and I fell in love with the country.

Right. And, Anne, now that your husband has come back from the dead six years later, what do you think the future holds? Now, I really don't know what our future holds. I will see him when I get back and maybe he can move here and we can start fresh. I really don't think I'd like to live in England anymore.

I don't like the cold. Whether John wants to come or not remains to be seen, but there's loads to talk about. It's not gonna be easy. David Lee looked up from his notepad and he smiled curtly at Ann. And smiled back. She had no idea that David had written down in his notes, not for publication. These are her claims she's obviously lying through her teeth. For a few days, David and NST ran around Panama,

trying to find a way to leave without alerting journalists to camp out at the airport or worse to try and get on the same plane as them. So while they were organizing their flight plans, they would actually go to Miami, then Atlanta, Georgia, and then they would from Atlanta go back to the UK. It was, it was a lot. So while they're organizing their plans, David asked to sit down with Anne to talk to her about something serious. Sure, what is it? I have something to show you, Anne, and you're not going to like it. It's not going to be easy for you, but I have to show you. He set his phone down on the counter.

And there was a picture, a picture of Anne, John, and Mario. The date was right there for everyone to see. This was when John Darwin was dead and missing. This was during the time that Anne claimed she hadn't heard from her husband. David tells her, and this is from a year and a half ago. The game is up. We know that you know that he's been alive.

This story was front page news everywhere. They called John the Canoe Man, all that scheming, the fake death, it was all out. Even Anne's kids knew that they had been lied to. Anne looked at the screen and said, Well David, I guess that picture answers a lot of questions. Yes, that's John. That's my husband, and that's me. My sons are never going to forgive me.

Believe it or not. Anne was raised to be honest, okay? I'm not even just saying that. Her parents took pride in their humble background. They took pride in how they raised their family. and grew up in this small, small town. It's basically a seaside mining village. And don't be imagining one of those cute little beach town aesthetics like Malibu or San Diego.

The town was all about the mines. Every house, every building was covered in black suit all the time. Most people rode around on carts and horses when Ann was growing up. And this is a relatively recent case. So Ann was born, Ann Catherine. She had two siblings, and Ann's dad Henry worked at the mines. He mainly stayed above ground, but sometimes he would go under. Ann's mom Kathleen was a full-time mother, and the family did not fork around with their schedule.

I could not find any evidence of a military background in either parent, but they ran this house like a tight ship. Monday is washing days, ironing days on Tuesdays. Friday was housework. You start upstairs, work your way down. There's designated crochet days, grand parents visiting days. Saturday is grocery days, Sunday is church and since Sunday is a special day, Sunday was reserved for a fancy roast dinner with rice pudding for dessert. It was the only day of the week that they all ate in the formal dining room. Their bathroom was outside the house in the back. They had to drag in a bathtub into the kitchen every week for their weekly baths.

They would place it in front of the kitchen fire and each person would take turns in the bath and you would hope that nobody needed anything in the kitchen when it was your turn. Yeah. And knew as a kid that they weren't well off. She knew that her parents were always stressing about money, wondering if they could make it to the next payday, but I never really wanted for anything. She had food on the table, she had the necessities, she had clothes, she had shelter, and was not the type to try and keep up with the Jones' kids.

If you get what I'm saying, she didn't really care for the prettiest clothes, or the most expensive backpack. She just wanted to have fun. I mean, that kind of started to change as Anne got older, not the money part, and truly was never really a materialistic woman. And then she met John Darwin. John Darwin wanted to be rich. He would much rather die than be poor for the rest of his life. Poor like his parents.

He had a chip on his shoulder, and he wanted everyone in high school to know, OK, you know what, I may be poor now, but just you wait, I'm going to be somebody one day. John was two years older than Ann. They knew each other from grammar school, which site note, and really did not get the fuss that John made about himself. Like, he was OK at best. OK, looking at best, OK at school at best, okay, just in general.

Just okay. On a good day, he was maybe a six, maybe, maybe. That's being generous. He wasn't that good looking, and his confidence and his aggressive peacocking made you wonder if he had some sort of like enchanted mirror at home, and his reflection looks like tongue looks like Jungkook, I don't know, okay? He really thought that he was the greatest man alive. To give you an example of the kind of guy he was, Anne's getting off the bus one day, John's right behind her. He follows her and boop, knocks her hat off her head for no reason at all.

Now her hat's on the ground. I mean, I assume that this is his very cringy, flirting protocol and Anne turns around and he's laughing to himself. She's like, I don't know what's so fucking funny. She crouches down, grabs her hat and glairs at him. It wasn't cute, but he thought it was. Then he went to college. He had dreams of becoming a teacher.

Someone should tell him that teaching is a very important job, but they should be paid a lot more. It's not really the industry to get rich, okay? But he's like, I'm gonna be a teacher. He was determined. He would come back every weekend and talk about how rich he was gonna be one day. If anything, the guy with self is shirt.

I'm gonna give him that. He asked out and every single weekend non-stop, and even though she rejected him almost every single time, he didn't get upset. He would just try again the next week. So finally when she's 20 and he's 22 she gave in and she's like okay just stop asking. Let me just go bowling with you one freaking time and if it's not fun then it's over. They went bowling.

It was a freaking blast. Okay the rest was history. There is something just something about big glossy balls being chucked full speed toward a wide opening that can turn on any pessimist. Seriously, choose into it. Look, in this town, this village is what they called it. This is practically marriage. You go bowling a couple of times with a boy.

You're seen around town with them. You're what, 20 years old. Everyone's like those two. They're gonna get married very, very soon. Everyone just assumes you're gonna be marrying that person. And wasn't opposed to it. She didn't get mad when people are like, oh, that's the one for you, huh? She thought John was funny. He's pretty attentive.

They had spent many a days walking down the beach holding hands talking about life. John would do most of the talking. He would tell Ann about his childhood, about how his brother and he would do these crazy adventures and be outdoors and see the world. They hated being stuck in some sort of shit whole town. Oh wait, hold on. John would stop the walk on the beach. Bend down.

Pick up a little pebble. Wash it off in the foamy wave that was ebbing and slowing from their feet. And he would hand it to her. A heart a little pebble. Wash it off in the foamy wave that was ebbing and slowing from their feet. And he would hand it to her. A heart-shaped pebble. Yeah, he could like to hard-shaped pebbles on their walks. And Anne would smile. And she's thinking, you know what, maybe this is the guy for me. Is she had always wanted to be married? She had always wanted to have a family. Okay, do you see the problem with what I just said? She liked John. She did.

But you can't marry someone off their stone-picking prowess and wanted a family in a marriage more than she wanted John Darwin to be her husband and the father of her children. Like this is the life she wanted and she was going to marry the person in front of her to get this life that she wanted. So they get married. They move into this two bedroom house, and John's parents did not do well for themselves. But they would do anything for John Darwin, it seemed.

They put down the deposit on the house, they even put a down payment on John's first car, and thought it was sweet. She felt like she would do anything for John too. He always had a way of getting what he wanted, and what he wanted was the best of everything And thought it was his parents fault. I mean just seeing them together They all seemed to hate being part of the working class

They put a lot of emphasis on what others thought about them even with Anne She would later get a promotion at work. She would be promoted to a secretary and John's father said oh, Anne That's great much better isn't it to be able to tell people that you're a secretary now? Yeah. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into warrior one in the break room before your shift,

whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier, or pay description starting at $12.99 per month. What you watch depends on what kind of majoring. Sometimes you're craving comedies like friends or South Park, and sometimes you're more

into dramas like HBO's Succession in House of the Dragon. There's also cooking shows like Chopped and Beat Bobby Flay, and even movies like The Lord of the Rings and Shazam, Fury of the Gods. Well, Max is the streaming destination that has the best of entertainment for whatever mood you're in anytime. And Plants start at as little as $9.99 a month. Max, the one to watch. Subscription required.

Visit max.com. money, this money, that it's all they talked about. But money was tight and was a secretary, John's a teacher. This is not really giving Forbes 30 under 30, even though it should. Okay, these are very, very important jobs, but they're just undervalued in the job market for some reason. So do they really need to splurge on the best of everything for their first home? Now mind you, they're also very young. So it's not like they need to buy these luxury vehicles and start living this lavish life. This is like their starter home. They're just getting their foot started alone. They went to go buy a washing machine for their first home. Big purchase, probably one of the biggest purchases you'll make for the house. These appliances get very, very pricey. And Anne is thoughtfully thinking about what she needs, what can save water, what's the best deal, all these little factors.

And she settles on something that's kind of in the mid-range. Not the cheapest one, not the most expensive, somewhere in the middle. She thinks it's perfect. We can grow into this washing machine. If we get kids one day, it's big enough to fit multiple loads. We can do this, we can do that. And John's like, that one?

That one, honey, no. That's not gonna be good enough. We have to get this one. He rests his hand on the most expensive washing machine in the lineup. I mean, literally why? And it's like, I don't understand. Why, you don't even do the laundry?

How would you know what we need? And he says, because look at all these different cycle options you can have with this one. Besides, you don't know if you'll never use these cycles because you've never had these cycles in your life. At least one day in the future, you have the option to use all of these cycles. If we're going to spend the money anyway, why not get this one? But if you get the cheap one that you picked, you won't even have the choice to use these

cycles later. Every company's best customer. And the two stood there near the line of washing machines debating for a while before they bought the most expensive one. It seemed like a reoccurring theme in this relationship. John always won, even in the most devastating ways. And Stream, the whole reason she married John, was because she dreamed of being a mother, having her own family.

And of course, when she falls pregnant, she's over the moon, she's ecstatic. But like many people out there who will have had to endure a devastating, a particularly emotional, painful loss, and suffer a miscarriage. And John's reaction is, oh thank god and seriously, it's too too early to start a family. The guy literally said thank God and showing his relief in front of her. Anne's pain did not go away until she felt pregnant again a year later, and I guess this time John seemed a little bit more ready to start a family. He was a biology teacher, so the pregnancy just fascinated him. He insisted on learning everything about her physical changes.

So once the baby is ready to join them, they rushed to the hospital and waited and waited and waited and their baby had no intention of coming out. He's like, I'm happy in here, mom. Thanks for the invite, but I respectfully decline. And the nurse and the doctors are like, yeah, we need to perform an emergency c-section because I think your baby is going to go into distress and he's going to be at risk. This is too much. We gotta go. We gotta go. Go. Go. Go. John's looking around. He's like, well, shit. Look at this chaos. That's the case. I'm going home. In a stressed, her child isn't distressed. That's what the doctor just said. This is not what she had in mind. This is the very first time she's giving birth. She's in desperate need of emotional support. What do you mean you're

going home, John? I'm going home. I've been here all day and there's no point in staying if you're going to the OR. I can't even go inside the OR. So there's no point in me staying if I can't witness the birth. She's like, yes. But right after the C section, because John, those are fairly quick as long as I don't know. I don't die or the baby doesn't die. The baby's gonna be born and you'll be able to see our baby right after. Yeah, no, I'll just come back tomorrow. He waltzed out of there without a second thought.

Listen, I don't know how many cases we've done, but all the cases where the men choose not to be present, like at the birth, it never ends well. Okay, it's different if you have an emergency, you're out of the country, it's for work, like something's happening. But if they're like, yeah, I think I'm gonna go home and sleep on my comfortable bed. Just raging red flag right there. John did not visit until the next day.

He had no regrets about not being there for Anne. He didn't even care to see the child immediately after the child was born, which is Wild, but that's how their first son Mark was born in the hospital. Mark was the only thing that kept Anne from breaking down and becoming depressed at the fact that her husband abandoned her when she needed him the most. John was focused on the family, or at least he said he was. He claimed that he needed to focus on buying them a bigger house, a more modern house, in order for their child to truly be happy. Okay, yeah, precisely, because that's what kids care about.

It's not about him being present as a father. It's about Florida sealing windows, updated furnishings. So they move into a newly built three bedroom house, and they were definitely house rich, meaning most of their money was tied up in their house. They couldn't afford this house. It was way too big of a house. It was a very luxurious purchase.

It was not a comfortable situation to be in. But then Anne had fallen pregnant again with their second child. Baby, Anthony was born. So she has two sons, Mark, and Anthony. Anne's life felt perfect. This is what she wanted all along. Two beautiful children, a loving husband, a nice home, a family. But John Darwin became restless.

He was pacing around the house, ranting, scheming, smoking. I hate teaching. The students don't even care to learn. The lack of discipline in this generation is out of this world. I don't know what's wrong with these students, and I'm over it. They don't even pay me enough to put up with this shit. I am done. The first few rants, and listened intently trying to give advice or just hear him out, but

by the one hundred ninety second rant, she was pretty fed up. Can you please just stop smoking in the house around the boys? It's not even good for them. He argued, if I want to smoke in my house, I'm going to damn well smoke in my house. The thing with John is he never yelled at Ann, never. Instead he talked to her like he talked to his students, he lectured her, and I don't know which one is worse. Honestly I think I'd rather be yelled at.

He constantly talked down on her, made her feel stupid, his level of condescension just knew no limits, and he was the only person in Ann's life. Like naturally after having children, becoming a stand-home mom, having no time freedom, no financial freedom, and lost most contacts with the outside world. At first it was, oh I don't have time to join you for tea. I gotta do something with the boys. Oh let me call you in a second. I gotta feed the boys.

And then slowly she lost contacts with her friends. But John would still do everything he wanted. He'd go camping with his brother, skiing, hiking, sailing, cycling, whatever he wanted. And after 10 years of being a stay at home mom, Anne felt ready to tackle the workforce again. She just wanted to get out of the house if she was being honest. John did not disagree because it meant more money coming in. So come on, let's do it.

Anne would work her way up from being a saleswoman at a shoe store to being a receptionist for a surgery clinic. Don't get me wrong, these are big progressions in a career. Huge milestones to be celebrated, but the celebration would outweigh the financial promotion. So to celebrate her part-time sales job to becoming a full-time receptionist, they moved into another bigger house. Like, a four-bedroom house. John also used her working as an opportunity to quit teaching. He got a job working for Barclays Bank as a financial advisor, which this is why I don't trust financial advisors at big banks.

Or, like, just any financial advisor typically, a big chunk of them have no idea what the hell they're doing. I mean, same, don't get me wrong. But, like, you get paid to know what you're doing. And I say this because John was a financial advisor, and he was soon driving his whole family into a debt hole that they couldn't even crawl out of. Side note, John would quickly find himself dissolutioned by finance. He's like, wow, I thought my life would be so much happier and I'd become a millionaire by changing professions, turns out I'm more overworked and just a tiny bit richer but not much because I keep blowing it on a new ranger over. He hated every second of his job and he started looking for new positions.

It was kind of strange that he took a job as a prison guard. Yeah, but he thought it would be fun. So prison guard he was and for the first time in his life, he was actually enjoying his job. He's 42 at this point. He likes his job but he's still not a millionaire. On his free time, he starts dabbling in stocks. He kept bragging about how if he invested, according

to plan, he was going to be a millionaire by the time that he was 50 years old. And like, John's plan is always kind of crazy. So you know how some people's plans are very realistic and they're kind of tied down to the realities of Earth. John's plans were like, I'm gonna invest in these penny stocks and make a 500% return every single year,

and I'm gonna be a millionaire by the time I'm 50. So, I mean, the plan itself was flawed, right? But he was invested. He just needed more capital so that he could invest more money. I'm sorry, but I feel like dating a man like this would drive me absolutely insane. Like, I think I would wanna crawl up in a fetal position and cry myself to sleep every night

because just the constant changes of his life direction and goals I would be having whiplash. He's like, anyway, I have a genius plan. This is going to get me on Forbes 50, 150. I will be on the cover of all the financial magazines. Two words, baby. Two words. Garden? No, ma.

You don't want to guard it, no, ma. No words. Garden, gnome. You don't want to garden, no, it's. No. Those little statues and gardens, they look like little gnomes, okay? John bought a bajitlian of these rubber molds and they were gonna pour in cement, let it harden, take it out, and the boys were gonna paint them bright colors

to sell at the market. Okay. Garden, gnomes. It was not the easiest business to scale or to even get running in the first place, but he spent a lot of money on the molds and paint. And then he realized nobody really wanted to buy them, especially at the prices that he was marking them up to be. So he's like, okay, this is not going to make me Forbes rich. So I'm going to quickly blend in the plan and I'm going to breed snails. This is wild. I was trying

to find information on what snails were doing. I don't know what he was thinking. Maybe he was ahead of the skincare game and he was like, you know what? One day snail mucin is gonna be huge. It's gonna be an anti-aging serum. Or I don't know if there was already a prevalent giant market for snails. I have no idea. I'm not a snail expert, but John liked to think he was. He was gonna breed snails. Sell him, make it, but load him money, okay? He made no money, and he was left with a bunch of slimy snails. Quickly decided, snails were not his thing,

they weren't good enough for him, those slimy little pieces of shit. So he's like, okay, well, I watched a ton of people talking about how they got rich, and it's all in real estate. They're all real estate people, so that's what I'm gonna do. Okay, I guess this part was not the worst plan he had, but instead of dreaming of owning commercial real estate and generating cash flow with rental properties,

he was dreaming of his real estate agent. He even told Anne that he needed to go on a weekend conference with this female agent. And she's like, okay, yeah, sounds good, honey. Just a quick question, are you fucking her, honey. Um, just a quick question. Are you fucking her? Yeah. Oh, don't be ridiculous. We're going to a conference. She's taking her daughter to and let them go. But she knew that there was something there. The way that he looked at the agent, he used to look at her like that and said she could see her marriage

falling apart right in front of her eyes. So one day after the conference, Anne waltzed over to the local agents house to give her a piece of her mind to tell her to back off my husband is married. At first, the mistress tried to deny the affair. She mentioned, no, no, no, no, we're just trying to start a business together. That's all. Anne pressed and she finally confessed, okay, fine. Yes, we're having an a fair okay? Ann walked home, confronted John. He begged, he promised, he sobbed

that it would never happen again. But let's be real. He still kept seeing the agent after this. The only reason they stopped was because John's life was threatened by the agent's husband. Yeah, she was very too. And he was like, I'm gonna fucking kill you if you don't stay away from my wife.

And was her broken for the relationship, but also for her future. She had been married for 20 years. She did not know how to live without a partner. She didn't even know she could. John always told her how she had never thought things through or how dumb she was or how she couldn't do this or that. But also, what about the boys? They would be devastated if they broke up.

And didn't even know she could afford housing by herself. It was just too much to think about. She felt so utterly trapped. It was the lowest point of her life. But she stayed married to John Darwin, and it would be the biggest mistake of her entire life. It always started the same. John would sit and down.

Very serious, like a contestant, presenting a deal to the shark tank. And I thought everything through. Every single problem has a solution, it's a good plan. It's failproof, honestly. It's foolproof, even. But I'm not a fool. We're gonna buy a ball these cheap rental homes

are going for like a couple thousand a piece. We're gonna rent them out to the working class. A lot of them get housing covered by the government so that's a guaranteed rent. And if we're sick of that, we're gonna renovate the places and then start renting it out to professionals and families. There is no way to lose on this one. It's basically a win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win. There's- and we're the ones winning every single time. And agreed. The way he presented it, it kind of made sense. He even wrote down how much he estimated renovations were going to cost.

He was going to do all the labor. The supplies were going to cost this much. It was going to cost this much to manage the property. He had thought it all through. But the thing is, John had never done this before. So the numbers were just pulled straight out of his butt crack. He's like, I imagine renovations by DIY everything, it's gonna take $50, but if you've ever bought a house you know, upkeep kills you. That's what kills

you. The maintenance fees, if something's gonna go wrong, the ACs are gonna break down, plumbing, everything. The John would point at the piece of paper. See, it's all right there. Plain black and white, I've thought of every single possibility and, and I'm telling you, this is a gold mine. Anne wasn't so sure. She saw other problems like, we have no experience with this. Why, I thought of every single possibility and, and I'm telling you, this is a gold mine. Anne wasn't so sure. She saw other problems like, we have no experience with this. We're already overworked. We already don't have social lives.

I mean, I'm just worried this is adding more stress to our lives, but he insisted. So from there, they bought up nearly, I think, 12 rental properties. They weren't a lot of dead. They just kept buying up more and more properties. They weren't a lot of dead. They just kept buying up more and more properties. And then the final property, the final nail on the coffin. John's like, there's a town called Seaton. It's near the sea. It's a tiny little town. There's these huge houses that are super old built in the 1890s. Victorian style homes. On the cliff overlooking the ocean. I mean, it sounds beautiful, right?

It sounds like a TikTok dream. You go there. Victorian style homes on the cliff overlooking the ocean. I mean, it sounds beautiful, right? It sounds like a TikTok dream. You go there, you're like renovating my abandoned Victorian mansion on the seaside cliff. Will two of the properties, house number three and four, they were connected to each other. It's like a duplex. John insisted that they buy both of them.

They will live on house number three, and the other side house number four will be for the renters. Ann agreed, it kind of made sense, and she would be closer to work in this town, but when she visited the houses, I mean, they were in over their heads. Like, yes, you know those TikToks of like,

you can buy this abandoned mansion for $1,000. What's the catch? Basically, everything's the catch. It would cost a bajillion dollars to fix it. It would cost a bajillion dollars to knock it down. And the land is probably useless over here. So the fact that these houses were so huge, John's like see, that's a slam and deal. We're getting so much square footage.

But Anne is like, no, I think it's the opposite. It's so daunting. The flooring, the infrastructure, the heating, the windows, everything, the insulation is... It's so bad! The bigger the space, the more costly to fix it, the more, everything, the insulation is...it's so bad! The bigger the space, the more costly to fix it, the more costly to heat it, to run it, to renovate it. We are in over our heads. It was terrifying. And didn't want to live next door to the tenants. I mean, that sounds like a nightmare too. Think about it. Your landlord lives next door.

You're going to be knocking on their door every single day. Hey, the sink's not working. The water pressure's not good enough. John didn't care. He walked through the house selling her the dream, how they were gonna get rich here. He was super focused, he kept telling her they would easily make $2,000 a month on rental income. I mean, that's pure cash, that's after all the expenses, babe. He talked about his, the day, his dream day.

He's gonna give his notice to the present. He's gonna watch his co-workers jealous little faces while you drove off into the sunset off to the land of rich landlords and retirements while they all still had to work like little idiots. That's what John wanted. It wasn't providing for his wife and his family. No. It's for these randos he worked with. That's what really mattered.

John had accumulated 12 rental properties and yeah, they were very impressed. The co-workers were like, incredible good for him, but John was a horrible landlord. This is another reason and didn't want these massive houses. He wasn't just slum lord vibes, but the numbers weren't numbering. He had loans out for all of his houses, which is normal, but the problem with his properties were that they were either to run down to attract the tenants that he wanted. So he really wanted professionals and families, but the area that they were in, you weren't going to get that.

The houses itself were so run down, you weren't going to get that. So they had a different demographic for their tenants, typically single working class men. But John was annoyed because they were constantly tearing up the place, being too loud, not taking good care of it, ruining the kitchen and the bathrooms, just being very not sanitary with the place, disturbing neighbors, not paying rent on time. It wasn't looking good. They were behind on a lot of payments. So from the outside, sure you could say, wow, they have 12 properties, they're wealthy landlords, and reality, they were suffocating in debt and now John wanted to add more to the mix so he convinced Dan to sign on the dotted line and just like that they had

doubled their debt but they were gonna be moving seaside and of course right outside their house was John's pride and joy you're like why are the kids outside no not the kids John's pride and joy. You're like, why are the kids outside? No, not the kids. John's dark blue ranger over. The license plate was B9JRD for John Ronald Darwin. It didn't matter their financial distress. As long as from the outside, they looked to be super wealthy, that's all John cared about.

So they move in, the house sucks, the heating sucks, the windows are horrible at keeping the house warm or cool. The walls are paper thin, they could hear all the tenants and they knew the tenants could hear them, there was no sense of privacy, everything was falling apart. There were doors connected from house 3 to house 4, in practically every room on every floor, and sure they could be bolted, but it's just a sense of unease, you know, that Anne felt. She hated it. They tried to renovate house number 4, but it just wasn't turning out the way that they wanted.

So all their tenants, yet again, were single men who loved to drink, made a lot of noise, and just were not the nice families they were hoping to get. They were constantly being kicked out for not paying rent, and eventually it was even hard for them to find tenants. Anne felt like a tidal wave of financial ruin was about to climb up that cliff and swallow her whole. Every time the door rang, the male man stopped by Anne would be filled with utter dread, another angry debt collector, another angry bank, another past due notice.

She's just trying to stay afloat, like trying to hold water in her hands. Not only were they behind on their loans for their 14 properties, but John has managed to spend $65,000 in credit card debt, that he had no plan of paying back. None of it was for essentials and begged John to see if they could sell the Range Rover, but nope, he refused. Instead, he had the brilliant idea of trying to crash the Range Rover on the way home from work to see if he could claim a massive insurance money and tell everyone, oh no, no, no, no. I didn't have to sell the Range Rover.

I got into an accident. But he decided it was a bad idea, not because insurance fraud is bad, but he said in a quote, but I might actually kill myself doing it because I got a total of the car, and I don't want to do that. And through her hands up, John, don't be stupid! None of this is okay! Our lives are falling apart! There's gotta be a better way, even bankruptcy, okay? Yes, it's humiliating, it's painful, but we still have each other, and we could start fresh again with our slate-wiped clean! John would not even consider it. Instead, he took out life insurance policies on both himself and Anne.

They had multiple insurance policies, but they also had some sort of like mortgage protections of one of them died. You get paid out from the bank for some reason. So it's hard to say when John wanted to die? I guess that's a very personal question. Maybe it started slowly, maybe it was gradual. Maybe he woke up one day and decided he would be much happier dead than he was alive. But he wanted to talk to Anne about it first.

She was speechless. You want me to tell our sons, the police, our families, the whole world, that you're dead. So we can claim life insurance? For God's sake, John, this is ridiculous. Impossible. You're insane. We have to find another way. I think you're losing your mind. Well, Anne, it's either that or I kill myself for real. Which one do you like? But I'm the one that has to do all the lying. You can't honestly expect me to tell the boys that you're dead. What sort of mother do you think that I am? This was the first fight they had about it. They would continue to fight more until Anne finally gave in.

Not because she thought it was a stellar idea, or she wanted to. Purely because she felt like she had to. Like there was no other way, John would constantly berate her. Would you have a better idea? Do you? I'll vanish for a couple weeks and we'll have the money. This is the best solution, Anne. I thought about it all. This is the best. March 21st, 2002. John Darwin, husband, father of two, landlord, disappeared. He was last seen leaving his house with his brand new red canoe and heading into the waters. Passerby saw him heading straight into the ocean with his canoe. Before poof, he vanished. Anne got off work as normal, got in her car, and just a five minute drive from her house, she stopped near the woods and flashed the headlights.

She saw John walking towards her, he had a bag of stuff and a tent. Oh my god, it was perfect, and there were passerbyes. They saw me struggling down to the sea with my canoe. I came back to shore, hid near the dunes. I filled the canoe with rocks to make it sink, and the paddle kept washing back to shore, so had it give up on that one. And then it got dark, and I ran out to meet you. I mean, it went everything, everything went according to plan. The two reached their destination, a few towns over where most of the area was wooded lands. Unfortunately, babe, it's all up to you now.

So sorry, they cried and Ann watched as he skipped into town and cried the whole way home. She knew what she was doing was wrong. She didn't even want to do it in the first place, but oddly, she felt like she had no choice. For some reason. He's just living in the tent. For the initial search. She's gonna come back in like a week or two because he can't handle it. Yeah, instead she stuck with a story and she called the police. Her voice sounded frantic, but not too much. I mean, it was perfect. I don't think that Ann Darwin is an Oscar-winning or actress,

but I do think that she was able to channel her feelings of anger, stress, anxiety into her lies. She came off very much as an honest woman. She told the police she had gotten window shopping after work, got home, John's car was home, so he should have been there, but he wasn't. She looked around and his red canoe was gone. Maybe she's just being a paranoid wife, but she was really worried.

I already called his workplace and they said that he hadn't turned up for work today, and that's just not like John. Not like him at all. It could be nothing, but I'm feeling very uncomfortable." And was shocked at how easily she repeated the lies. Police went door to door asking some of the neighbors if they had seen John. They had. Walking towards the ocean with his red canoe. So yeah, the police felt like there was a real risk that he was fish food. So they put together a full-scale searching rescue investigation. And this is where the Darwin's were way in their heads. They had no idea just how screwed they were.

They didn't even think that there would be this big of an operation. With Air Force and Navy vehicles being used to find John Darwin, 65 search and rescue volunteers spent nearly 100 hours looking for John in the next few days, the sheer amount of resources and planning that went into this. The next morning, there was still no sight of John and it was time for all the support to flow in and knew this was the hardest part, telling her parents, her family, John's family, but worst of all, her full grown sons. They all rallied around her, rushed her house from neighboring towns and areas and was shocked just how serious everyone was taking it. People were packing their bags, putting their lives on hold to be with Anne. The police were in the house looking

for clues looking under the beds and the cupboards. Her kids drove up from London. I mean, this was the hardest part. Her kids were trying to comfort her. They'd say, Mom, it's okay, you know what he's like. He's going to turn up and wonder what all this fuss is about. Anne was so sick at what was unraveling that she played the part to it. She was worried, anxious, sleepless, she had no appetite. Her eyes were red from crying.

Her dark circles were settling in. She was in a state of complete misery, but for a completely different reason. And after about four days, John was presumed dead at sea. Drowned. The search was called off. A week after John disappeared, Anne still had family and friends over. There hadn't been a single night that she had been alone. She was sitting there zoning out when the phone rang.

Hello? It was John's voice on the other end. She panicked. She rushed into her room. Are you crazy? Why are you calling? What's wrong with you? I just wanted to know what's happening. Has everyone gone home? No! Are you mad? Of course they haven't gone home. I've got a house full of people in the police are in and out all day. I can't talk to you like this. John called to complain about how hard it was being dead. And was positively over it. On another call, she begged him to give up, but he refused. And I can't. I haven't come this far to give up now and lose everything. You're that easy for you to say. All you have to do is hide away, and I'm

the one being interrogated and having to face people and lie to them all the time! Well, they'll get over it, Ann. They'll stop looking soon enough. Everyone will go home. Things will go back to normal. Trust me, we'll work it out. For three weeks, nobody went home. And sons stayed to comfort Ann, putting their careers, their happiness, their relationships on hold, trying to be strong for Ann, but she could tell that they were thick in their grief. Everyone thought it was because John was presumed dead. And once the house was somewhat empty again, people would stop by, stay for a few days. But it was less of a coordinated, never-leave-an-alone operation. Once they all left, John decided to waltz back home, not even kidding you. He believed the cheapest option was to stay home, so he snuck back home in the middle

of the night. And was incredulous. Are you insane? Someone is gonna see you and we're gonna be arrested. He kept telling her he thought it all through. This was the best way. Nothing could go wrong. John moved in and one of our Anne had visitors, which was quite frequent.

He would use one of those doors leading into a room in House number four, their tenant house, and hide away. They didn't have a lot of tenants at the time. He even ran drills, where someone would knock on the door, and he would practice how fast it would take him to get into House Number 4. He also wondered if anyone would even recognize him if he had stayed, because he had lost a considerable amount of weight when he, quote, vanished, and he even grew up beard. Yeah, and what's wild is that the first thing he wanted to do was yell at Anne for not trying

to get the insurance papers handled right away. She screamed back at him, I haven't done anything! Because how could I? And while John was hiding away in the house, they had multiple visits from their kids, family members, even the police. And it was a wonder that John wasn't caught. I mean, this guy has dumb sheer luck on his side and nothing else. With the police coming back non-stop, it was suspected that they felt something fishy

was going on. They constantly asked Anne for more questions about, you know, what John was doing before his disappearance. I think they dug into his financial records and saw that there was a lot of motive for him to want to be dead. They even peeled back her sheets from her bed, thinking that they would find two indentations on the bed from the night before. Wow. So they think this is not really a accident.

But that didn't happen mainly because Anne hated John and they weren't sleeping with each other. And in the meantime, John went out and about. He was getting balls here. He started going to the local library to read books and hang out on the computer. He watched a movie where the main character had a stolen identity, so he recreated the whole thing, found a John that was born around the same time he was, John Jones, but John died as like a four month old. So he took John's Jones as identity. It was much easier back then to do this in like the early 2000s, because I don't know,

I guess maybe everything was in the process of becoming digitized. So he was able to pull records, get a birth certificate for John Jones, get an ID with that, and soon he was on his way to getting a passport. And it worked. And then the red canoe was found, broken up, having been tossed around in the wild waves, and and nailed another grief-stricken performance. Now truly, any hope that John could have survived was long gone. Even the police seemed to give up. I think it hit the boys the hardest. You know, this was their father. They had no clue that he was watching over them. Lovingly, from the window, as they left Ann's house. Mark sobbed that he felt like he lost a best friend and a father, and that he was

distraught and all Ann could do was watch them suffer. And she thought to herself, how could a mother do this to our kids? But she did it anyway, so they filed for insurance papers. And soon enough, there was a whole inquest for John Darwin's death. A judge had to rule him presume dead. It was the only way Anne could claim any sort of insurance money, and it was a stressful time for Anne. John was moping around the house complaining about how he felt like a prisoner in his own home. The relationship deteriorated. Anne wondered what life would be like if John just moved away, and they could start

their own separate lives apart from one another. Once when Anne was breaking down, John yelled at her, pull yourself together. Yeah. So, she was left to deal with everything, the inquest, the police, the family, the insurance companies, the lies, everything. John did nothing. He didn't even do his own laundry. And once the insurance money came in, John became even more unbearable.

They were paid out about like 150,000 pounds. They paid off a lot of their debt, a big chunk of their mortgage, and still had money left over. So John was super anxious that all the money was an aunt's account that she controlled, even though he knew all her passwords, he was stressed. He knew there was nothing stopping her from walking away and taking all the money, leaving him a dead man literally. So he used his fake identity, John Jones,

to set up a bank account and slowly started transferring money into his own account. And he started buying a bunch of stocks and he started spending all day and all night on the internet thinking about how his life should be. And he decided we're going to move to a whole new country. We're going to immigrate because that's the only way that I can live a normal life that I deserve. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there.

Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No. Who's going to catch us? What a police. It was the height of the crack era, and instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to want some drug dealers, and I know how to do it really well.

This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat? 100%. I save my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Autosy Originals documentary podcast series available now in the Autosy app the Odyssey app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your shows

He became obsessed with the idea of moving to Greece He wanted to move to Greece to buy a plot of land build his dream home from scratch It was a ridiculous dream to build a house of land, build his dream home from scratch. It was a ridiculous dream. To build a house in a foreign country where you don't even speak the language where work would be difficult to supervise, it's a shit show. They actually traveled to Greece together, with John's fake passport. Very ballsy indeed, and they decided they didn't like Greece.

So then John is like, America it is. John was fascinated with the state of, can you take a gander, take a guess. What state in the US did he wanna move to? Florida. Kansas, no offense, but we're all like why? Okay, I'm from Georgia, it's not like the most attractive state either. No one's like, I'm itching to move to Georgia.

Because of a woman named Kelly Steele, that's why he was fascinated with the state of Kansas. A woman from Kansas that John met online while gaming. She had been sending a ton of topless photos to John, and he quite liked the mountainous terrain he was seeing. He told her that his wife had died, and he had all this extra money, and his dream was to buy land in America

and marry a pretty young girl like her. He told her that, it's incredible. Around this time in 2004, and gets a call from the police that John had been spotted outside her house by a neighbor. What? Yep, they said it was John. The neighbor was like, yeah, it was John with a beard, but it was definitely John.

I'm not seeing things I swear to God. And nervously laughed and answered all the police questions claiming it must have been someone who just looked like John. But it wasn't John, they believed her. So John's like, oh my God, the heat is, it's a lot. I gotta go to Kansas for a while. I'm gonna visit Kansas, babe, don't you worry. If it's nice, we'll buy some land there

and immigrate to Kansas. When he gets back, John tells Anne. He can't even look her in the eye. I lost $50,000. What? When I was in Kansas, Kelly told me that we could renovate a farm and raise cattle. She knew everything there was to know about farming So of course I was impressed by her knowledge

Everything inside of her brains was intriguing So she offered to split the initial investment and later the profits I jumped at the idea and I wired her $50,000 She then immediately transferred the money to her estranged husband and used it to pay for renovations on her own house and paid off some old debt so There was nothing I could do about it. We didn't even sign a contract. But I tried though. And don't worry, I tried to threaten to kill Kelly.

I told her that I knew some very, very bad people in New York, which is a complete lie. You know, like mafia people who would pop on over to Kansas and punch her daylights out. She contacted the FBI. So I don't think I'm a lot back in America ever again. Wow. And was pissed. She even found the topless pictures of Kelly and Jon's phone. I mean, what was she gonna do? Leave her husband, her dead husband. It felt like they'd be tied together for the rest of their lives. And death! Jon was becoming increasingly unhinged. He went from wanting to move to Greece, then America,

then later he wanted to buy a sailboat, sail around the world. He didn't even know how to sail, so what the fork is he trying to do? And said, it was positively ironic. Everything he put us through to get his hands on some money, yet he was so good at giving it away to strangers. This is how the first four years went by, and then John initiated plan

Panama. They were going to move to Panama and have a blast. Panama had the climate, the lower standard of living costs, the people, the cities that they wanted. He concluded, never having stepped foot in Panama yet. This was the best. He had seen everything, he thought everything through. This was full proof. And the opinion on what she does with the rest of her life, moot point, not his problem. So the plan was set in motion. They would sell their houses. One of the houses they would sell to Mark for $30,000, even though it was worth maybe like $250,000. The other house they would sell to get money. And this would be a move that Anne would regret for the rest of her life. I think that they just wanted

to give the property to Mark, but they were gonna get the 30 grand from him, and it's really complicated, but basically it would implicate Mark. But he genuinely had no idea that his dad was alive. But the later the police would come back and be like, see, Mark was in on all of this. So the two were off to Panama. At first, Anne hated the idea,

but when she got there, she quite liked it. They had a nice host, Mario, and they would be staying with Mario's parents while they looked at property to acquire. So John was adamant that they would build from scratch. So the first thing that they do, their initial trip, they buy an apartment for like $90,000.

It's a fully furnished condo and it's beautiful, and they're gonna live in this apartment while they buy a giant property that they're gonna renovate. So this is their first vacation and goes back to the UK where she starts leaving little seeds. She's planting seeds of, oh I really loved Panama. I could really see myself there so that when she does finally move nobody suspecting anything more sinister.

So without they move, John even took out a few small bones under John Jones and took the cash with no intention of paying off the loans. He argued to Anne that this is what the banks deserved because it was their fault he ended up in this situation to begin with. So he blamed the banks for not being more lenient with his payments than himself for not being able to pay off what he had spent. So with the sales of the home, they had over 300 to $400,000 to invest in land in Panama, which they believed would go a long way. They bought the apartment, and from there they started looking for land in the jungle. I'm not even kidding you.

They're not even looking for developmental land. They're looking for land in the jungle, and not once did it occur to them. Maybe it hasn't been developed here for a reason. They were like, no, we're going to the jungle to build an eco resort for fellow expats and tourists. They wanted to build a castle like house for them to live in, which is wild considering the lands they were considering were like 500 acres.

They were full of wildlife, particularly poisonous, deadly lethal, fatal, animals, insects, bugs. Literally, it's a jungle. It's a jungle. And they were like, yeah, let's do that. We're gonna make a Disney level resort there. So just to show you how in over their heads were, John didn't even know how to kill bugs.

He hated it. So he went out and bought a hammer so he could squash cockroaches. Listen, they lived in the UK. If you live in a pretty cold area, like places like the UK, even most parts of the United States, you're not going to get bugs, like you're going to get bugs in like very humid climates and very tropical areas. You get that Australia,

of you seeing their bugs. I mean, insanity, no. So he had never really killed that many cockroaches. He bought a hammer. So this is giving the energy of shooting a spider. John was becoming more and more enhinged by the day. He would yell at locals at their face for being stupid. Why? Because they spoke Spanish.

John, you're an idiot. They speak Spanish here. You're here. You're in someone else's country. Learn the language and now, or don't yell at them for not speaking your language. It's very weird. So he also bought a machete. He thought it would be useful to clear the brush and the land that they were trying to buy.

Yeah, a machete. It's like two. Yeah, it was something. And of course, it made sense because John had spreadsheets. He proudly showed Anne all of his spreadsheets of how much utilities were going to be, how much it was going to be to hire staff. He even had a rough draft floor plan of their beautiful home where there was enough space for staff to live because you know, he deserved to live a life of luxury.

And he plotted out every single expense and income they had, which is wild. He even had a name for the business Jaguar Lodge. And I know you're thinking Jaguar, are there even Jaguars in Panama? No, Jaguar was his favorite dream car. He really wanted a Jaguar one day. So yeah, the list was freaking detailed. He had a list of animals he wanted in the eco-center to greet tourists, six horses, 20 cows, 20 sheep.

He also wanted fresh fruit trees so that guests could enjoy fresh fruit every day. They would set up an LLC Jaguar properties. Now another big mistake. They named Mark and Anthony as directors for shits and giggles. They believed that when they died, their kids would inherit everything. They were also under the belief that whatever was under the LLC name couldn't be touched if they were ever suitor arrested. Which is false. Okay, it's a misconception. John informs Anne. After all this planning, after all this buying a property, I don't think our plan's gonna work.

And he knew it before they initiated all of it. And she's like, what do you mean you knew our plan was gonna fail from the get go? Why did we spend all this money? And he said, okay, so Panama was in talks of cracking down on visas. Either you get permanent visa status, and the only way to do that is you have to provide a ton of paperwork. You actually have to go to the local police station

and your home country to get proof that you have no criminal record, and then you have to bring it to Panama, which Anne can do, but John can't do it. And add to that, they're cracking down on visitor visas, meaning you can no longer leave Panama for 24 hours to renew your visitor visa back Then people would just go to like neighboring Costa Rica and then come back to Panama. So Yeah, there's no way for me to legally live here

I knew that they were thinking about doing this before I brought the property But I didn't think they were actually gonna do it even though they said they were gonna do it That is the thing that made John realize he wanted to move back to the UK He wanted to come back to life to be born again. He didn't wanna go back as John Jones. He wanted to be John Darwin. He was scared of looking over his shoulder every day. And with speechless.

How? It's perfectly feasible that I had an accident. I could be banged on the head and lost most of my memory. It does happen sometime. And how do you account for all the missing years? I'd say I banged my head again and I can't remember. See you banged your head twice and got amnesia precisely. How do you account for the suntan? You're so tan. I could have been on holiday I wouldn't remember. That's insane. That's crazy. You know that John no one's gonna believe you. Well you think of something better than. So it was settled.

John Darwin was gonna get what he wanted. And new, John was never gonna get away with his reincarnation plan. I mean, it was even ridiculous to imagine that he would, but they talked about how they were gonna handle this situation. If his movements and his activity in the past few years came to light and was to say that she found out recently that he was still alive,

she found out that after she had already collected life insurance, that he was alive. But John was adamant, it would never have to come to that. He said, the police didn't care when I was dead, they're not going to care now that I'm alive. Everyone would be too happy for me to be back. Too happy to ask questions? So with that, John booked a one-way ticket to England by himself and would stay behind in Panama making sure all their stuff from England arrived safely. So the timing was just not ideal. All their furniture, all their belongings were coming to Panama. So she had to stay.

Maybe this was for the better. And new, with John being, quote, back alive, she would have to go through another series of performances, acting shocked that her husband was alive, that he had amnesia, that he wasn't dead, and it was a very tricky situation. But she just wanted to do that. And she kept lying. She told David Lee and everyone else that she spoke with, including police. She told them, yes, okay, I didn't know that he was alive. That's crazy. I can't believe my husband is alive. Then the photo comes out on the internet. Mario posted it. It went viral on all these forums.

And then she's like, okay, you know what? I knew that he was alive 18 months ago when that picture was taken, but I didn't know he was alive until maybe two years ago. So for most of the time, I thought he was dead. Yeah. David asked her, do you still love John? And she responded, yes, I do. And that's probably what got me in this situation.

When you love someone, all you want to do is protect them. So as much as Anne wanted to hate John, she couldn't. She loved him and wanted him to be his wife. She wanted to protect him from himself. When Anne went back to England, an investigation was launched into Ann Darwin and John Darwin. If found guilty of a crime, both of them would be spending time behind bars. They were being investigated for life insurance fraud. Listen here's the thing, don't fork with the IRS and insurance companies because these insurance companies

They don't play. They investigate better than the police. They have so many resources. Oh, they don't care I knew someone who was in a car accident and he was being followed by insurance companies non-stop What? Yeah, they would actually send pictures to his attorneys of him skateboarding and be like um, he's fine It was like the most wild thing ever. The bonkers. And I remember being like, wait, is this for real right now? Because the sounds insane.

They were being heavily criticized by the public once that photo came out. I mean, remember how both the sons were listed as directors of Jaguar properties? Now the public suspected that the sons were in on it too. Their relationships, their careers, their lives, everything was in jeopardy. These sons, they were forced to talk to the press to clear their names and the sons said, if the investigation proved the parents to be guilty,

I feel like victims of a terrible crime and a heartless scam. I would want nothing more to do with my parents in that case. And soft and she asked herself, what kind of mother am I? What kind of mother could do that? How would they ever forgive me? Now the police and David, they both knew that Anne was holding back. And it was actually through David's advice. Because Anne really started seeing him as a friend. I mean, she knew in the beginning that he was out for his own stuff, he was out for his own story,

but he just always treated her with the utmost respect, which she couldn't say about other journalists and other police officers. So with his help and maybe his advice, she decided to fess up. And when the truth came out, both darwins were arrested. Her whole life, she had never cared for anything, not the houses, not the cars, nothing materialistic. All she wanted to do was live a happy life with her family. That was it. And now, look where she was.

Her elderly parents supported her during her trial and her jail time, so did her sister, and it was just really hard to see how it impacted them. Her father, who had always been so goofy and happy, looked depressed, looked much older than before. I mean, the whole world was hounding them for answers. Like, did they know, too? Did the parents know? How did they raise a woman to do something like this? What kind of woman watches her own children

grieve their father's death and not put a stop to this madness? She was that obsessed with money? Side note about the money. The police were racing to find any and all accounts owned by the couple because the insurance company is one of their money back. Anne's walls were closing in on her, and she decided she was going to plead not guilty

by reason of marital coercion. So, this is a plea that's been banned from use in the UK now, but it's to say I'm not guilty because my partner made me do it. This was more common back in the day when a woman didn't have really agency over themselves and they didn't have any rights so their husbands could force them to basically do anything, including breaking the law. So it's a big risk. If you lose, if the jury finds you guilty, you will be sentenced pretty harshly because you just try to shift blame on your partner and nobody likes a blame shifter.

But Anne was willing to do it. She had not spoken to her sons since she had gotten back to England and she did not want to waste another day rotting away in prison she wanted to work on fixing her life. During the trial, both her sons testified, and this was the first time she saw them since Panama, and she was taken aback. It sent a shiver down her whole body to see how much anger they had in their eyes. For her. Mark said, the actions of my mother crushed my entire world, I could never have imagined that she knew he was alive for this long and lied for God knows how much. So July 23rd,

2008, six years after John Darwin died, and Darwin was found guilty. Now, John pled guilty, so he got a lighter sense of six years and three months in prison. But because Anne pled not guilty by reason of marital coercion, she was found guilty and sentenced to six years and six months. So three more months than John. But people suspect if she had pled guilty, she would have gotten less time than John. She was shocked. So here we are. I mean, it was wild. Anne broke down into tears immediately. She couldn't even speak. She went back to those prison walls and she was just terrified of what her life was going to be. The media transformed her into a complete hideous lying bitch mother who had gone to outrageous lengths for such a vile thing like money.

She would let her kids suffer, grieve, let them believe that their father was dead for money. Mark and Anthony made public statements that they wanted nothing to do with their parents. They said that what they did was betrayal in the cruelest way. Anthony said, it's bewildering. Nothing seems real anymore. It says if our whole lives have been alive, they have tarnished all the good times that came even before that. I can't ever forgive them for putting us through this torment of mourning.

He said, they were in it together, and they deserve the sentences that the judge has handed down. They're just as bad as each other. Dad told one lie and disappeared, but she lied for six years. She was the face of the lies. She kept lying even when the evidence was overwhelming against her. She dragged us through hell forcing a court case. I don't think they planned to do it to us, but we were a consequence.

We were collateral damage to them. They trampled over our lives for money. That's not something you do to people you love. Anne was mortified when she read what her kids truly thought about her. And the worst part was, it was all true. Side note, while in prison a lot happened. So just really crazy. John kept writing letters to Anne non-stop talking about how they were looking for a place to live afterwards when they got out telling her how much he loved her. He would constantly think about happier times with her, how he wanted to be with her. No one could stop their love. Like that's what he's writing.

And then in another letter, he was like, hey, do you mind if I have a female penpal or two? Unbelievable. Ann did not respond. And then news broke. Headlines front pages. John was sexting a female penpal, the letters were filthy nasty.

Anne was humiliated once again. I'm sorry, this guy is like the worst man alive. Why does he sound like a caricature of a horrible husband? Just horrible. Scrubb has been who humiliates his wife over and over again. And even after that, John continued to send letters to Anne asking, hello, why aren't you responding, did you choose a place to live afterwards? Yeah.

And then he had the audacity to get mad at Anne for not writing back fast enough. But he was punched in the face a few times in prison, if that makes anyone feel better. He was a formal prison guard who committed a notoriously stupid brazen crime, and now he was in prison, he was gonna get punched a few times for sure, if not worse. And if you're gonna feel bad for him, don't. John was obsessed with making front page news. While in prison, he told all of his inmates that he was gonna make millions of dollars off his story.

He had this great novel idea, novel idea, where he was gonna write a novel, where the cover would be a man paddling in a red canoe towards the tropical island. Now, I don't know if this is a fun fact or a morbid fact, but in prison Ann Darwin was once mistaken for Rosemary West, the serial killer. Yeah, they were in the same prison at one point, and they had similar haircuts, so Ann decided to wear her ponytail from now on. It took an incredibly long time for Mark and Anthony to even want to talk to their parents. Mark came around first.

He went to visit Ann, and she never expected them to forgive her, so this was more than she had ever imagined. She knew that their lives have been ripped apart, their financial details, their phones, every aspect of their lives have been analyzed and poured over by parents, by police, all because of their parents.

Particularly hard for Anthony, because he worked in the insurance industry. He had to quit his job. So it started with very short letters and would be on the edge of her bed every day, just trying to get the privilege to look into their lives, even a tiny bit, a glimpse. And all she could do was hope that they would warm up

to her again. And in moments of vulnerability, and would sometimes write to John. And then John sold her private vulnerable letters from prison to the tabloids. So there it was. Yeah, plastered all over the front pages and private intimate letters to John in her most vulnerable moments.

She wrote about how much she still loved him and how maybe they could have a future together. She wrote it during a vulnerable tough time and he did not care about her feelings. He just wanted to make headlines again. He enjoyed it. He had no regard for Anne or her feelings. She was officially done with him, done. She felt like she had finally been stripped of the little dignity that she had.

There were hard moments, okay? The road to forgiveness from her sons wasn't a smooth upward trajectory. Sometimes they would be bursts of anger. Oddly, a lot of it happened when Anthony's wife got pregnant. She asked Anne, how could you? How could you do this to your child?

I guess as she got pregnant, you know, she's realizing the responsibility of motherhood. She's like, I could never do that. Anne's heart broke because again, it was true. So it meant a lot. When one day, Louise Anthony's wife came in, holding Anne's very first grandchild. And she held the baby in her arms and it was just the most wonderful moment of her life. Anne had a lot of love and respect for Louise, even though she was so mad at putting her husband through so much. This isn't even her child, you know, Louise's

priority is Anthony. It's not Anne, but they drove 200 miles to introduce Anne to her very first grandchild. It was an incredible gesture, and Anne could never be more grateful. John Darwin was released first, and he made headlines for walking his dog on the same beach that he disappeared from, so that's great. He loved it. He loves headlines. Anne was let out soon after. They only served about three years and three months, so half their sentence.

Anne was just grateful to have a second chance at life, but the family was broken. Mark was in contact with John, but not much. Anthony was no contact with his dad. Shortly after getting out, John served Anne, divorce papers. Finally, after 37 years, the Darwin marriage had crumbled.

Anne never heard from John again, at least not personally. She did see like everyone else said he had remarried a young Filipino woman that was half his age. He was making headlines for it. And it was just, um, he continues to blame banks for his jobs and how he lost everything, he's not taking responsibility for any of it. And Anne says, you know, I'm sure many people wonder if I really deserve a second chance either. Mark and Anne then he decided I did. And to me, that's all that matters. Since her release, Anne works at an animal shelter, they know about her past, they don't care. She's working hard, she volunteers in her free time, she lives in a tiny little village and spends

most of her time with her grandkids. She said she's not proud of what she did, but she's proud of who she has become since she's gotten out. I think also context in time matters. I think if someone got married now and did this years from now, it'd be a little bit different, but Anne definitely was raised in a time where the husband is in charge. And for years, he just emotionally and manipulated her into feeling like,

she had no good ideas. She was not bright. She could never be alone. She could never handle life by herself. Oh, and she said one of the biggest things was getting an education in prison, was to get some sort of power. So now, she didn't feel like she needed John.

That was huge. So she wrote this book because she hopes readers will see that she needs a family, but she doesn't need a husband. It is possible to be self-reliant and even happy by herself. She said it took her a 37-year marriage and a 6.5-year prison sentence to realize that. But if the reader takes anything from her book, she says, it's that it's never too late to start again. If I can do it, anyone can. And that's the wild audacious story of the canoe man and his wife. So the canoe man's still out there, living his best life.

Living his best life. Trying to apply his next scam. Yeah. I mean, what are your thoughts? He went around trying to marry a bunch of young women, like in Ukraine, in the Philippines. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely bonkers.

I don't even know what it's to say about this case other than just bonkers. It's a red flag, man, huh? Yeah, he's so incompetent, but acts like the world owes him something. The fact that Anne is going through some crazy stuff and he's complaining that like laundry and giggling, it's crazy. It's like a man child, the definition.

What are your thoughts? I don't even know what else to say. But I hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode, and I will see you guys on the Sunday for the mini-sode. Bye! And if you guys have listened to the very end, I want to give you guys a little sneak peek. So March 5th, Mark your calendars. Starting March 5th, we're gonna have a Rotten Mangle Podcast YouTube

channel and we're gonna post visuals, the video content of the mini-sodes on there every single Sunday. So stay tuned because I'm so excited. I even like, oh, there's this bookcase that I'm decorating right now to sit in front of. It's gonna get really crazy, really cozy and I feel like it'll feel more intimate when you can see my- anyway, I'm rambling, but stay tuned to March 5th. sit in front of it's gonna get really crazy, really cozy, and I feel like it'll feel more intimate when you can see my f- anyway, I'm rambling, but stay tuned to March 5th.