One Man And His Canoe: The John Darwin Story

For six years John Darwin pretended he was dead – faking his own drowning in a canoeing accident. With his wife Anne at his side, he lived out a fantasy, changing his name, altering his appearance, and hiding from the debt-ridden world he left behind.

One Man and His Canoe: The John Darwin Story has exclusive access to the police investigation that pieced together the amazing story of their double life.

It shows how the Darwins found themselves hundreds of thousands of pounds better off – but deceived the police, their friends, and even their two sons who thought their father had been washed out to sea.

When he re-emerged last December, the world dubbed him ‘Canoe Man’ – and a picture of him enjoying life in Panama with his wife eighteen months before revealed the whole thing was a scam.

The film reveals the moment when John Darwin 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 John’s 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 how Anne Darwin revealed to police how she collected him from the shore and helped him go into hiding before deceiving everyone by going through a convincing period of mourning.

The Darwins were jailed for more than six years each for the scam.

One Man and His Canoe 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.

Last edited: Wednesday, 23 July 2008