BACK FROM THE DEAD
EVERY day he sits at home in front of a window, tapping away on his laptop for hours on end. The aloof Englishman types so much that his neighbours in Louisville, Manila, have long assumed he’s an author working on his latest novel.
He rarely ventures out into the oppressive humidity of the tropical day, preferring the sanctuary of the home he shares with his much younger Filipina wife, Mercy May.
As a result, few of the locals have any idea that he’s John Darwin, the “canoe man” who two decades ago pretended to die at sea in order to access £250 000 (then R3,9 million) in life insurance.
For a man to fake his death isn’t unheard of, but what made John’s case almost unique was that his wife, Anne, was in on the plot, agreeing that their sons and every other member of the family should believe he had died so they would display genuine grief.
With the insurance payouts they received, the Darwins – who’d been on the brink of bankruptcy – were able to begin a new life in Central America, living out an equatorial adventure far away from the chilly English seaside town of Seaton Carew.
But five years after John’s disappearance their lies caught up with them and as the extraordinary details of their deception emerged, it caused an international sensation.
Twenty years on, interest still bubbles. Last year British television channel ITV commissioned a four-part drama about the case – The Thief,
