'Back from dead' canoeists wife arrested

LONDON - The wife of a man who "returned from the dead" after apparently being lost at sea in a canoeing accident five years ago was arrested on her return to Britain from America on Sunday, police said.

Anne Darwin, 55, was arrested on suspicion of fraud after arriving at Manchester airport on a flight from Atlanta. She was then taken to Cleveland Police Station where her husband John was charged on Saturday with deception.

"She is being given a medical examination and then there will be a period of rest," a police spokeswoman told Reuters. "We don't know whether interviews will take place this evening or start tomorrow."

Darwin reported her 57-year-old husband missing in 2002 when he failed to return home after canoeing in the North Sea near their home in Hartlepool, northeast England.

A few weeks later the shattered remains of his red kayak were discovered. A coroner declared Darwin dead in 2003 after a police inquiry.

Newspaper reports said Anne Darwin had cashed in her husband's life insurance policy and received his work benefits after he was declared dead.

A Manchester police spokesman said she had been "arrested on suspicion of fraud."

On Saturday she told British newspapers her husband had turned up at their home a year after disappearing, and she had hidden him there for the next three years, without telling their two sons he was alive.

They had lived in the family home, but if visitors came, John had to flee through the false back of a wardrobe into an apartment the couple owned in the neighbouring house, she said.

They moved to Panama, but John missed their sons and decided to return to England, Anne said. Last week he walked into a London police station saying he was suffering from amnesia.

On Saturday he was charged with obtaining money by deception and making a false declaration to get a passport. He is due to appear at Hartlepool Magistrates Court on Monday.

Anne Darwin flew from Panama to Miami, and then travelled to Atlanta from where she returned to Britain.