'Canoeist wanted to come home – but his wife wouldn't let him'

John Darwin, the man who faked his own death as part of an elaborate insurance fraud, cried and begged his wife to let him come home after just a few weeks in hiding but she wouldn't let him return, a court heard yesterday.

Anne Darwin, 56, told police officers investigating her role in the scheme, which saw the pair fraudulently claim £250,000, that her husband had pleaded to come home in the weeks after his supposed loss at sea while canoeing in March 2002. But she said she was minded to leave him at his Lake District hideout. She explained to officers: "I still had family with me. He was finding it hard. He was getting desperate."

Transcripts of Mrs Darwin's interviews with police were read out at Teesside Crown Court yesterday. At first, she denied jointly planning his disappearance and said she was shocked when he turned up on the doorstep of their home. But later she changed her story, admitting that she had been involved in the plot to stage his death from the start.

Mrs Darwin said her husband had thought he would only be away from the family home, in Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, for two or three months, and eventually the time would be right for him to return.

"He phoned me and gave me directions to where he was," she told detectives. "I wanted to leave him there. I didn't want to go and pick him up but I couldn't leave him. At one point, he was literally crying on the phone. I couldn't see him hurt." She said that, when he returned, Mr Darwin lived in a bedsit next door to the family home.

Iit was revealed earlier in the trial that the plot to stage Mr Darwin's death was hatched after the couple fell into debt. The plan was to claim £250,000 on various insurance policies and live together in Panama. Yesterday, the court heard that Mrs Darwin told officers she thought the scheme was "a ridiculous idea" and she had argued with her husband that they should declare themselves bankrupt.

"But he just wouldn't hear it," she told officers. "He said we had both worked hard all our lives and he didn't want to lose everything he had worked for."

She added: "He was not violent but could be very manipulative. He had a way of making me feel quite small. I used to say he treated me like a second-year pupil that he used to teach.

"From the day he came home I tried to persuade him to come clean. He couldn't, he wouldn't... I knew it was stupid but, once I set out along the road, it was difficult to turn back."

The court also heard how police asked Mrs Darwin if the most difficult part of the deception had been lying to their two sons. She replied: "That is extremely painful, always had been."

The court heard that John Darwin eventually moved to Panama and sent many emails to his wife before being joined by her in October 2007. Two months later, Mr Darwin handed himself into a police station, saying he thought he was a missing person and could remember nothing about the previous five years. Mrs Darwin was then tracked down to a flat in Panama City by a journalist. She was interviewed and admitted she knew that her husband was alive all along.

The court also heard from Mrs Darwin's best friend, Irene Blakemore, who said she was devastated to learn that she had been lied to for five years. She told the jury that Mrs Darwin had marked the first anniversary of her husband's "death" by throwing roses into the sea.

Mrs Darwin denies 15 counts of fraud and money laundering. She is using a defence of marital coercion. The trial continues.

Emails that led to Panama

Anne Darwin sent her husband an email asking him not to leave her just hours before he walked in to a London police station and claimed to be suffering from amnesia. The email, dated 30 November 2007 and sent from Panama, was one of a number the pair had exchanged during the five years that Mr Darwin was presumed dead. It read: "Hope you had a good flight and everything okay with the family. Don't leave me. Love you, missing you already XXXXXX"

In another, sent by Mrs Darwin on 10 October 2007, she signs off: "I miss you so much XXXXXX." In an email sent on 6 October, she tells her husband: "Love you XXX."

The jury was told that Cleveland Police accessed John Darwin's Yahoo account and found a total of 1,012 emails, of which 923 were unread. Police rules meant officers could only look at the 89 opened messages.