Jury sent out in canoe wife trial

Anne Darwin denies deception and money laundering charges

The jury in the £250,000 fraud trial of back-from-the-dead canoeist's wife Anne Darwin has been sent out to consider its verdicts.

The 56-year-old claims her husband John forced her into a plot to fake his death in a canoeing accident in the North Sea in 2002.

She denies six dishonesty charges and nine counts of money laundering at Teesside Crown Court.

Mr Darwin has admitted deception and will be sentenced later.

He walked into a police station five years after being presumed dead when his canoe was found in the sea close to his home at Seaton Carew.

Mrs Darwin put forward the defence of "marital coercion", meaning her husband made her act against her will and was with her whenever an offence was committed.

It is a case which has been both dramatic and emotionally charged Mr Justice Wilkie

David Waters QC, defending during the seven day trial, told the jury that Mrs Darwin was bullied by her husband during their 30-year marriage and that she had reached a point where she could no longer resist his will.

But Andrew Robertson QC, prosecuting, told the court the couple were co-conspirators and equal partners in the plot.

The court heard the couple were facing mounting repayments on a £245,000 mortgage, taken out on about a dozen properties in the Durham area, and other debts totalling £64,000 before Mr Darwin's disappearance.

'Highly unusual'

The jury heard how the former doctor's receptionist had picked up her 57-year-old husband from the beach, and helped him flee inland, before raising the alarm he was lost at sea.

Mr Darwin had hidden out in the Lake District before returning to live in secret in a bedsit in the property the couple owned next door.

The court was shown a photograph of the couple in Panama, Central America, taken four years after Mr Darwin's disappearance and was told how they had bought land on which they planned to run an eco-tourism canoeing centre.

The jury also heard evidence from the couple's sons, Anthony and Mark Darwin, who told how they felt "betrayed" by their parent's scam.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Justice Wilkie told the jury that the case was "highly unusual."

He said: "Of course, this is, and has been, a highly unusual case in which you are being asked to consider, in respect of many of these counts, a highly unusual defence.

"It is a case which has been both dramatic and emotionally charged."

The jury was later sent home for the night and will return to court on Wednesday morning.