Four Corners: April 13

This Monday Four Corners screens a true life hoax story produced by Britain’s Channel 4:  “Back From the Dead: The John Darwin Story.”

For six years John Darwin pretended he was dead. Drowned in a canoeing accident in the North Sea off the coast of Britain. With the assistance of his wife Anne he cashed in six hundred thousand dollars of insurance and pension entitlements and lived a fantasy life, changing his name, altering his appearance and hiding from the world he had left behind.

Now using police tapes, interviews with family, friends and police investigators the full extent of John Darwin’s fraud is revealed.

The film shows the moment when John finally faced up to the truth with the police. Confronted with the evidence of his secret life, John and his wife Anne revealed how their debts spiralled out of control, how John remained hidden for five years and how they lied to their sons to protect their own secret. It was a web that stretched from the North East of England around the world to Gibraltar, Kansas and beyond to Panama.

Facing mounting evidence that his disappearance was a hoax, the film tells how John admitted to plotting his own death, picking the right weather conditions and canoeing out of sight, before sneaking back to the shore to begin his new existence. We also learn that Anne told police how she collected John from the shore and helped him go into hiding before deceiving everyone by going through a convincing period of mourning.

The programme reveals how John tried to explain his dramatic return to Britain just when it looked as though he had pulled the scam off, and how Anne’s lies to her sons were “the most difficult” deceit of all.

It airs at 8.30 pm Monday the 13th April ABC 1 and is repeated at 11.35 pm on Tuesday the 14th April.