Sons of 'dead' canoeist enraged over case

LONDON - The sons of a canoeist they thought had died five years ago said on Thursday they wanted nothing more to do with their parents if their father and mother were found guilty of concocting an elaborate fraud.

"How could our Mam continue to let us believe our Dad had died when he was very much alive," the sons of John and Anne Darwin asked in an anguished statement to the media.

"If the papers' allegations of a confession from our Mam are true, then we very much feel that we have been the victims in a large scam," Anthony and Mark Darwin added.

John Darwin, who was presumed to have drowned five years ago in a canoeing accident, walked into a London police station last week and said he could not remember anything that had happened to him since 2000. He has been arrested on suspicion of fraud.

The case took a new twist on Thursday when his wife Anne Darwin admitted that a photo of her and her husband taken in Panama last year was genuine.

Anne, 55, who sold her home and left Britain for central America with 450,000 pounds shortly before his shock reappearance, said when confronted by the photo "Yes, that's him. My sons will never forgive me."

"They knew nothing. They thought John was dead. Now they are going to hate me," she said when shown the photo by tabloid reporters who descended on Panama en masse.

The sons certainly appeared to be furious.

"We have not spoken to either of our parents since our Dad's arrest and at this present time we want no further contact with them," they said in their joint statement.

"We are very much in an angry and confused state of mind," they added.

Darwin, 57, who vanished in March 2002 from his home in Hartlepool, was cleared on Thursday as medically fit to be interviewed by detectives.

The mystery began in 2002 when Anne Darwin reported her husband missing. She said she feared he had suffered an accident while kayaking in the North Sea near their home.

A few weeks later the shattered remains of his red kayak were discovered and, following a police inquiry, in 2003 a coroner declared him dead.

Police said they received a tip-off three months ago that indicated there might be "something suspicious" about his disappearance.

"There is at one side the potential he's suffered amnesia for five-and-a-half years, right to the other end of the scale whereby there has been some criminal offences committed," said Detective Superintendent Tony Hutchinson.