While Darwin lives abroad in relative anonymity, his sons remain in the shadow of their parents’ infamy: Anthony previously worked in the insurance industry but had to change jobs, telling his mother it had become ‘too awkward to speak to clients’. He also changed his surname. John Darwin’s siblings, David and Sheila, are estranged from him too.
‘It was horrendous… a disgusting thing to do to their children,’ says one close family member, adding that the shame brought on the family was harrowing for Darwin’s father Ronald, who died in a care home aged 91 while his son was in prison.
The relative recalls that Ronald ‘crumbled’ following Darwin’s arrest. ‘I think David felt really that that was instrumental in killing poor old [Ronald] – the worry. Because he was a very honest person as well, so it was horrible. At the time, [Ronald] didn’t believe it; he said, “Not my John, not my John.”’
Anne Darwin, 69, could not have taken a more different course in life since being released from prison 11 years ago. She has pursued a path of atonement, working as a receptionist at an animal shelter and living quietly in a North Yorkshire village, devoting her energies to rebuilding the damaged relationship with her sons and earning the right to be part of her grandchildren’s lives.
She has said that in her village she is ‘left in peace’, and if people know about her past they don’t say so. When she wrote an autobiography, Out of My Depth, in 2016, she donated the proceeds to the RSPCA, for which she volunteered during day releases from prison, and to the RNLI, whose volunteers needlessly risked their lives to search for a man who was hiding on dry land.
When the 20th anniversary of John Darwin’s disappearance arrives next month, John and Anne, now living 6,500 miles apart, will no doubt reflect on the misery their lies have caused their family, and wonder how different life might have been.
‘I have no sympathy for either of them,’ says Tony Hutchinson, the former police detective who brought them to justice. ‘What they did to their family, to their sons, was absolutely despicable. And it was all to save face because they could have just declared themselves bankrupt.’
A ‘dreadful’ occurrence
It was on 21 March, 2002 that Anne Darwin dialled 999 and reported her husband missing. ‘This isn’t like John at all,’ she told the call handler.
Her husband, she said, had not turned up for work as a prison officer. She told police that his red canoe was missing from the hallway, and said, ‘I’m starting to worry something dreadful might have happened.’ Witnesses reported seeing John paddling out to sea earlier that day, heading towards a concrete pier at North Gare, a mile from his home in Seaton Carew, near the mouth of the River Tees. A paddle, and then his damaged canoe, would later be plucked from the water.
Anne Darwin knew that nothing ‘dreadful’ had happened to her husband at all. She had collected him earlier that evening and driven him to a train station so he could disappear to Cumbria and pretend to be dead.
