ITV's gripping four-part drama, The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe, started on Sunday.
The story of John and his wife, Anne Darwin, captivated the nation when news of John's reappearance broke in 2007 and has now been turned into a much-anticipated series.
The drama focuses on how Anne, played by Monica Dolan, became complicit in her husband’s deception as she started to convince the world, their family and friends, the police and insurance companies, that he had gone missing in 2002 whilst canoeing off the coast of Seaton Carew in Cleveland, where the couple owned two large houses with panoramic views of the sea.
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The deception was to take its toll on Anne who lied to their sons, Mark and Anthony, for five years whilst her husband, in the early days of the fraud, secretly lived in a bedsit next door to the home he shared with Anne. Devastated by the loss of their father, neither son had an inkling their parents were capable of such treachery.
Anne and John eventually decided to leave Seaton Carew and move to Panama City to start a new life together before their secret was exposed by the discovery of an infamous photo of them posing in a Panama real estate office in July 2006.
At her trial Anne pleaded not guilty, arguing that she had been coerced into the plot by her husband, but the jury didn’t believe her. She and her husband were both jailed for more than six years in July 2008.
John was released in January 2011, and Anne two months later. According to The Independent, Anne separated from John before she was released from prison.
Anne got a job at the RSPCA and reconciled with her two sons, Mark and Anthony. John remarried in 2015 and moved to Manilla in the Philippines.
The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe is on ITV at 9pm from Easter Sunday to Wednesday, April 20
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