The world's most notorious liars

Anne Darwin

The story gripped the British public for weeks with more twists and turns than a plot line in your average soap opera. John Darwin turns up five years after he was presumed drowned in a canoeing accident and falls lovingly into the arms of his grieving widow and sons. But, the drama did not end there as it soon emerged that John and his wife Anne had formed an elaborate plan to get at his life insurance and she had successfully convinced her children that their father was dead. She played a vital role in his disappearance, even driving him away from the site of his "canoe accident", and had adopted the guise of devastated widow so convincingly even her closest friends and family didn't question the truth of it. Her epic campaign of lies not only sustained John Darwin's cover, while he skulked around their house for years, but what's more they very nearly got away with it. At the time journalists and commentators alike expressed incredulity that a rather sweet looking older lady could have been the Machiavellian manipulator of such extraordinary dimensions.



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