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From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And this is British Scandal. British Scandal
So, Alice, over the past few episodes, we've been following the story of John Darwin and his crazy plan to fake his own death by looking like he drowned in a canoe accident. Yeah, it doesn't sound any saner now that you've said it again. And, of course, his wife Anne, who, for some unknown reason, went along with this plan till the very end.
It's a crazy story. What are the main things you take away from it? I'm glad you asked. First and foremost, always read the small print of your insurance policies before you fate your own death. Secondly, don't trust a man with rottweilers. Don't trust rottweilers. Don't trust rottweilers. Angry dogs. Horrible. I'm sure there are nice rottweilers before we have letters of complaint. And amnesia is actually harder to act than you think. Yes, and if you are...
running away, don't take a grinning photo in an estate agent's office that's going to go on the internet. That's rule one. Even if you're in Panama. Anyway, we ended the story with both John and Anne locked up in prison. But one thing we didn't really cover over the past few episodes is how the police put them there. So we wanted to talk to someone who knew all about that. And next, we're joined by the man who headed up the case into John and Anne.
The former detective superintendent who was in charge of the Cleveland murder squad, Tony Hutchinson. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.
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So my name is Tony Hutchinson and up until 2008 I was a serving police officer in Cleveland Police and my last 10 years was in the rank of detective superintendent and probably my last eight years was in charge of Cleveland Police murder team. So my involvement with John Darwin began in December 2007. And so this was kind of not really in your wheelhouse then Tony?
No, absolutely not. As a murder team, we were dealing with the range of murders, homicides that you would see in the UK, from domestic murders right through to sexual homicides. To actually have somebody come back from the dead was quite unusual for us to investigate.
It was also quite unusual in so much as that it was what we would call a slow burn inquiry. We weren't attending the scene of a murder and everything that goes with that. A lot of the story takes place in Seaton, Carroove. For listeners who haven't been to that specific part of the north-east of England, what's it like and is it fair to say that it's a small place where people know each other's business?
Yes, it is a small place set right on the sea, the coastal community. And a lot of people have lived there all their lives. So a lot of people know each other. And of course, whenever you get somebody missing at sea in a coastal community, it is the topic of conversation. So in a way, was it the ideal place for John Darwin to try something like this or the worst possible place?
John Darwin and his wife Anne, they'd only moved into the area fairly recently and they'd kept themselves to themselves.
So is it the ideal place to do it? Well, certainly from the fact that the sea was opposite his house, yes. But it was always going to be talked about. Do you remember it hitting the headlines? Do you remember it being the talk of the town and beyond? Yes, because spookily enough, whilst I was not involved in the investigation, I was head of the murder team in 2002. I actually lived at that time in Sink Crew.
So I knew a lot of people and everybody expected me to have the inside track, but I didn't. I knew no more than they did. Of course, it hit the local media, but it was a local story at that time. And at that time, was there any cynicism or scepticism around about whether John was actually missing and dead? Or were people even at that stage saying, something about this story doesn't make sense?
To go back to thinking at the time, I can't remember what people think at the time. Of course, subsequently, everybody now says, oh, well, I always knew that was a bit fishy and I knew this and I knew that. But at the time, some people were saying the tide would have washed the body up at some place. Well, to be fair, I've known over the years people going to the sea at sea and crew and they've never come back. People weren't like banging a massive drum.
saying this is something the matter here it's not right it's not right well that doesn't feel like the default position does it when somebody goes missing you know you you're trying to find them you genuinely believe that they're out there and in trouble if not worse so that was 2002 let's jump forward to 2007 the December when this becomes your problem so what happened on
On the Saturday, I think it would be the first Saturday in December, John Darwin walks into a police station in London and announces to the sergeant behind the desk
I think I'm a missing person and why are the Christmas lights on when it's only June? The sergeant made some checks and discovered that John Darwin wasn't missing, he was actually dead. They then subsequently contacted the police at Cleveland and it culminates with the sons going to the police station and having an extremely tearful reunion with their father who for the last five and a half years they thought was dead. That would be the Saturday. He goes and stays at one of the sons' houses
And I don't get involved until the Tuesday. The world's media are camped outside of police headquarters. And we decide that we need a press conference. Apart from anything else, my view is we need to sort of ask the public, where's John Darwin been for the last five and a half years? Somebody must have seen him somewhere. And our strategy then was quite simple. We'll just leave John Darwin with his son. We know where he is. There's no rush. And then that all changed at 7pm on that Tuesday night.
Can I just ask you, Tony, what you were thinking, considering you remember it being headlines in local papers, then it became a national story, then it's turning into an international story, and it's on your doorstep. So what are you thinking on that Tuesday? That John Darwin's many things, but he's not suffering from amnesia, and it's clearly been a fraud, and he's faked his own death.
I'm old enough to remember the TV programme with Leonard Rossiter, Reggie Perrin. Reggie Perrin! Yes! I'm old enough to remember Reggie Perrin. And he was just a Reggie Perrin. Convinced of that from the moment it landed on my doorstep, if you like. It was just a case of proving that.
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You've said, Tony, that you knew basically from that moment that something wasn't right. Was that the general feeling, that the amnesia story was a complete lie? Or were some people willing to believe that? Certainly within my group, the murder team, everybody was of the same opinion as I was, that this was just a big con. About a month earlier, the economic crime unit, they'd actually started looking...
into Anne Darwin's financial history because there'd been some mutterings that Anne Darwin, who was a very quiet woman, had suddenly decided to up sticks and move and go and live in Panama. You know, she wasn't going to live on a two-hour flight and live on the Costa del Sol. She was going to Panama. So,
So Cleveland Police, unbeknownst to me at that time, had started to look at the financial history. But where have you been for five and a half years and coming in and saying, oh, why are the Christmas tree lights on when it's June? It just didn't add up at all.
How crucial are the public in a situation like this? Obviously, you get the photo tip-off. That really is such a crucial piece of evidence for you. So all that publicity can be very positive for a police investigation, can't it? How important was that to get as much publicity as possible to cast the net far and wide? I was always a great believer.
and the media are a great source for the police in so much as that they get the story out there. Local radio is normally the quickest, but the newspapers, the local TV, and I always had a good working relationship with the media. Obviously, at the time, the photograph you're alluding to came out. That was the Tuesday. We had not had the press conference because that was planned for the Wednesday.
But what happened from our point of view was that at 7 o'clock on that Tuesday night, I got a phone call to say that a female anonymous woman had been on the telephone saying that she was a geek and that she'd found this photograph of Anne and John Darwin and a Rialta estate agent all smiling for a camera in Panama, which of course blew the story straight out of the window, but also changed our investigation from a slow burn to a quick burn.
Because as soon as I was told about the photograph, my decision then was we need to go and get John Darwin now. Because if this woman's rang, well, she'll ring the media. And that photograph will be in the newspaper. I mean, to be fair, when I went on the internet and looked at the photograph, I just laughed. Because I just thought, oh, well, it's made my job a lot easier, this. That's a smoking gun, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt, it was. Without the photograph...
Do you think you still would have been able to pursue the case in the same way, get the same charges, get the same convictions?
Yes, you know, the whole case didn't rise or fall on the photograph. What the photograph did was obviously show that they were in Panama together. But that was not the only strand of the investigation. We weren't just waiting for that smoking gun, if you like, to drop into our laps. There was all sorts of other stuff. We'd have had the press conference on the Wednesday. We'd have done the immediate appeal. And people would have started to contact the police. You can't vanish for five and a half years. He wasn't living in a cave somewhere.
Even though he was pretty good at hiding, he was hiding in plain sight. One of the things that I imagine you were judging this case on was, of course, John Darwin's performance and what he was saying to you. Can you paint a picture for us? What did he look like? What was his demeanour like? Yeah, well, so what we decided before we commenced the interviews, we do a three interview strategy. So the first interview, we would just let John Darwin tell us what had happened.
Second one, we'd sort of like probe, if you like, ask a few questions. And then the third one would be the challenge interview. So that first interview, we just let him tell us what had happened. Basically, he couldn't remember anything. He'd been on a family holiday in Norway.
And he obviously read up on amnesia. And he would have probably been the first person in medical history to have displayed every symptom of amnesia. Normally people have about two or three, he had them all. So he was presenting all the time as like the confused person with amnesia. I have no idea what's happened.
He's obviously putting on an act in these interviews. Yeah. But are you as well? Do you have a strategy for dealing with individuals like that? Do you think actually in the first one, I'm just going to let him talk, I'm going to be friendly, I'm also going to present as if I believe him, or do you have to be a bit tougher with him in that first interview? Oh no, there was no toughness at all. That first interview was basically just to allow him to have his say. And we deal with that many, many times.
the two interviewing detectives they're just pretty poker faced and they're just letting them say what he wanted to say and is good cop bad cop real does one of you be a bit nicer than the other one you know does one of you make him a cup of tea or offer him a cigarette and the other one's a bit tougher with him is that dynamic based in any fact uh that dynamic was probably based in fact when I was a young detective back in 1981 but not now uh
Are you saying you can do both, Tony? You can do good cop and bad cop? Yeah. But...
No, they're very professional in the interviews now and it just all went to plan really. So how did things change in the second interview? The second interview would be like a bit more of a probe. Oh, well, can you explain this? Could you tell us a bit more about this? In any interview, the best lies are always the one nearest to the truth. If your lies are like miles away from the truth, then you can start tripping yourself up.
So all we're doing in that second interview is asking him questions. And then it's the third interview when it's the challenge, when we're basically saying, well, this can't be right, this can't be right, this can't be right. And of course, in the third interview, we just produced the photograph of him, his wife. And the stage agent, Panama, basically said, can you tell us about this? And I think his reply was somewhere on the line, I'm the short, ugly one. That's what he said. Something like that, yeah. Yeah.
Did you feel like you saw a flicker of recognition? Did you feel like that was the end of it for him? He knew, you know, his time was up. Well, certainly that photograph came as a shock to him because he was travelling back north in a car when the newspapers were hitting the stands. So he knew nothing about that photograph. That certainly knocked the winds out of his sails. In the interview, he came across as quite sort of like arrogant, quite sort of...
Narcissistic. And I was always of the view that he thought he'd just walk into a police station and say, I've been missing, hello, here I am. My name is John Darwin. And everybody would just welcome him with open arms and then send him back on his way. Didn't quite work out like that for him. Do you think he underestimated you?
I think he certainly thought he was more intelligent than we were. Definitely. I mean, you've got to, you know, let's think about it. He's got on a plane.
from Panama and flown over to London. You've got to be a particular type of individual if you sort of think about it. You know, to sit on a plane and think I'm going to hoodwink everybody. Yes, and hoodwink an organisation that, for a profession, gathers evidence and prosecutes people. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
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Part of what you're doing, I imagine, is assessing him as a person, trying to work out his motivations, trying to decide, you know, if he's dangerous, if there's more to this, if he's done it before. All of this is going through your mind. So what did you think about John Darwin's psychology at the time? Earlier in 2007, I'd been invited to
go and do some three-week period of study with some of the retired members of the FBI behavioral science unit, as it was, you know, the Silence of the Lambs guys. So Darwin was definitely a narcissist. He could have had a bit of small man syndrome. The financial pickle they found themselves in was, like, quite horrific. But yet he still would drive around in his Range Rover, costing them hundreds and hundreds of pounds a month. He didn't want to give that up.
And at any time, he could have gone bankrupt. And what did that tell you about him, Tony? That he was prepared to lie to his father about his death. He was prepared to lie to his family about his death. Friends and colleagues, he was prepared to put...
the coast guard, the lifeboat, the sea king helicopter. He was prepared to put all those people at risk to cause unknown grief to his father and his family, all to save face. You tell me what it tells you about him. Well, the tragedy at the heart of this is obviously his relationship with his wife and particularly his sons, who grieve for a father that hasn't died yet.
and then going along on this crazy ride, the confusion they must have felt towards their own parents. I mean, you saw John and Anne Darwin together. You saw him with their sons. What were John and Anne like together?
And to be fair, I never met them. The job of the senior investigating officer is the conduct of the orchestra, but he doesn't play any of the instruments. But they were, by all accounts, were a close couple. They've come up with this scheme. And of course, Ann Dow, when I was maintained right up to court, she pleaded not guilty that she'd been coerced by her husband because he was a stronger personality.
She was the public face of that fraud for five and a half years. You know, if anybody came around the house, John Darwin would just skip through his wardrobe and throw a hole in the wall into the bedsit. Anne Darwin was the face of maintaining the story.
She paid for that, of course, didn't she? I mean, there's a lot of discussion about Anne and, you know, Anne's culpability and her active nature in this con. But do you feel she was a sort of, if not equal partner, a partner in it? Absolutely, without doubt. I never bought into this. I've been coerced and he's made me do it. And, you know, the week before he gives himself up, you know, they're both horseback riding and they're all smiles. Everybody's seen the photograph.
with the estate agent in Panama. Well, she didn't look coerced on that photograph, did she? I mean, shockingly, she did more time than John. She did. He got six years, she got six years, six months. But the reality is that was because she pleaded not guilty, he pleaded guilty. And as a policeman...
When you're prosecuting these cases, when you're investigating them, I imagine you have various emotions depending on the case. I imagine some of the people that you're interviewing and prosecuting make you feel sick, that you're horrified at some of the things they've done.
How did you feel about John and Anne Darwin? To be fair, you're right. And I've stared into the abyss of human depravity too many times. And my sympathies were always with the family and the victim's family. Anne and John Darwin, it was my last investigation before I retired. And actually, it was an all right one to finish on because...
But did you think, oh, this guy's an idiot? Did you feel any personal animosity to him?
I didn't feel any personal animosity to him. I did think he was just... I thought he was a clown. I thought he was a clown for thinking he could get away with it. And I thought he was a clown for coming up with a scheme in the first place. But that said, he didn't lack intelligence.
By the time he was missing, he was a prison officer. He'd been a school teacher. He'd worked a short time in a bank. And that was one of the questions I posed at the time when I was sat around with a couple of the senior detectives, if you like. How has somebody like John Darwin got a passport named John Jones? How has a prison officer got a false passport? I hadn't even thought of that detail, of course. You would have thought that, you know, that would have been brought to light. Yeah, exactly. And then I remember saying, oh, do you think he's done a day of the jackal?
And I was met with an incredulous face. I said, oh, look, just people using the graves of babies. And of course, subsequently since then, you've had that big investigation with the Metropolitan Police and their undercover officers doing the same thing. But this was prior to that.
And I said, the detectives looked just human. And I said, we know he's got the passport and name of John Jones. Let's go and do a search of infant deaths, two years either side of Darwin's date of birth and see if we can find a John Jones and do it within a 20 mile radius of Seaton Crow. Took me 20 minutes to find John Jones. It was a baby who died and was buried in Sunderland about 15 mile north.
Hartley Fall. And of course, all he did from there was he applied for a birth certificate in the name of John Jones. He's not an idiot. And he's thought long and hard about this before he's got into that canoe he has. And he's vanished. On the night he goes missing where everybody's looking for him, Ann Darwin's picked him up in the next cove, driven him to a railway station.
in Durham, about 15 miles away, and he's gone over to the west side of the country and he stayed in bed and breakfast. He's watching the TV with all the rescue operation on the late night local news.
Yes, it's absolutely unbelievable. Part of what drew us to this at British Scandal is that it's so absurd and far-fetched. Is it fair to say this is unlike anything else in your career and your colleagues' careers? Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt, I suspect.
There won't be a police officer in the country that dealt with anything like this because it was so far-fetched and it was so unusual. There was some comedic aspects to it, but let's not forget there was family at the heart of this who thought John Darwin was dead.
You must love talking about it. You know, it follows me around. It doesn't matter how many murderers I brought to justice. The only story anybody ever wants to talk to me about is John Darwin. And of course, there's going to be a dramatisation of it next year. Do you know who's playing you yet? I don't.
Brad Pitt? Well, we love talking to you about it, Tony. Absolutely fascinating. It is incredible. It is stranger than fiction. It definitely was stranger than fiction. Even stranger than Reggie Perrin. What a brilliant person to talk to. Next week, we're doing a very different scandal. Very, very different. We're talking the godfathers of punk, the Sex Pistols.
This is the final episode in our series, The Canoe Con. If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and a review and be sure to tell your friends. You can listen to new episodes one week early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, the Wondery app or wherever you're listening right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app to listen for free.
In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. Please support them by supporting them you help us offer you this show for free. If you'd like to know more about this story, there was some extensive coverage in most British newspapers. Books include Up the Creek Without a Paddle by Tammy Cohen, Out of My Depth by Anne Darwin and The Canoe Man by John Darwin. I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford.
Our sound design is by Rich Evans. Our senior producers are Russell Finch and Joe Sykes. Our executive producers are Stephanie Jens and Marshall Louis for Wondery.
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