Pushkin, a clothes store on Oxford Street, one of London's busiest shopping districts. In December, the busiest time of the year. It's two thousand and seven. A balding man in his late fifties approaches a store assistant.
Excuse me, I can't find my wife or the dogs.
The rock Violet.
The man isn't making much sense. He claims to have no idea where he is or how he got there.
Why are there Christmas lights? Isn't it June?
No, it's December. But the man is sun tanned. Clearly he hasn't been in Britain or winter. Equally, clearly, there's something not quite right with him, and whatever the problem is, the store don't want it to be their problem. A security guard escorts him to the nearest police station. The man tells the duty sergeant.
I think I'm a missing person.
Why do you think you're a missing person? Well?
If I knew that, I don't think i'd be here, now, would I.
The man has no idea on him, but he says he thinks his name might be John John Darwin. Five years earlier, in two thousand and two, a middle aged man called John Darwin indeed went missing in a canoe. He'd paddled out to sea one morning from the beach in the town in the northeast of England where he lived with his wife Anne, and said Anne, he never came back. The battered canoe later washed up on a beach, but no body was ever found. At the time, it
raised some eyebrows. The weather had been calm, the sea as smooth as a mill pond, not the kind of
conditions in which should expect a canoeist to get into difficulties. Also, John Darwin, it turned out, was a man with many debts, But once the requisite time had passed, an inquest judged that the missing man must be presumed dead and claimed on John's life insurance and moved abroad to start a new life in Panama, a country with a reputation for sunshine and not asking too many questions about where your
money comes from. And now he is a sun tanned John Darwin a London police station, saying he's got amnesia. He can't remember anything of the last five years, nothing at all. It's nonsense, isn't it. It must be nonsense, But how to prove it? The police have no grounds to detain John Darwin, so they call his adult sons, who are stunned. For five years they've assumed their dad was dead, and now he's back. Britain's newspapers leap on the story.
And what a.
Deliciously intriguing story it is. Where was I for five years? Amazing mystery of missing canoeists? What's his game? He must be lying, but how to prove it? The year, remember, is two thousand and seven. The Internet is less pervasive than today. A young mum, reading the news and feeling curious, does something very simple, but something that hadn't occurred to the police or to journalists. She visits Google. She clicks the images tab. She types three words John and Panama.
She presses search. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. John Darwin worked as a teacher, then retrained as a prison officer, and looked after their two sons until they went to school. Then got a job as a receptionist at a doctor's surgery. Ordinary jobs that bought an ordinary house in an ordinary village. It wasn't enough for John.
I'll be a millionaire by the time I'm fifty.
John borrowed money to buy run down houses to rent out, but tenants were hard to find that alone tenants who paid rent on time. The houses needed constant repairs, which John lacked the skills to make. The couples struggled to make their loan repayments on the houses or on John's luxury range rover with the personalized license plate. They ran
up debt on credit cards. John decided the solution to their problems was to borrow more money to buy more houses, two houses, specifically next door to each other, four story nineteenth century townhouses overlooking the beach in the faded seaside resort of seedn Kreou. The architecture was grand pointed gables and ornate balustrades, but one of the houses had been converted into thirteen bedsets, tiny dingy studio apartments for renting out to low income tenants. John and Anne would live
in the other house. Oddly, it had a secret passageway into one of the bed sits next door, a hole in the wall hidden in a wardrobe like the entrance to Narnia. John had worked out all the sums on a spreadsheet. The rent from the bedsits would surely cover all their debts. Anne was not convinced.
John told her stop worrying, It'll be fine.
It was not fine. The house was far bigger than they needed. Their two sons had now grown up and moved south near London. Heating was expensive, the house had high ceilings, no insulation, and drafty single glazed windows. They couldn't find tenants for all of the bedsits and didn't get on with the tenants they did have, mostly unemployed single men. They were glad they owned two Rockvilers. By the time John Darwin turned fifty, not only was he
not a millionaire, his financial situation had become desperate. Penalty charges for late repayments were piling up. The Darwins faced bankruptcy. John dreaded the stigma of being declared a failure. But they'd run out of other options, or had they.
I think I should crush the ranger over on the way home from work. We could claim the insurance.
Money, John thought some more. But I might.
Actually kill myself doing it. I don't want to do that.
What if he faked his own death instead?
You could claim the life insurance money?
And was not immediately sold on this plan. She later told the journalist David Lee.
For God's sake, John, you'll be phoned out and locked up. We both will.
Nonetheless, she agreed to go along with it. One morning in two thousand and two, John lugs his bright red canoe over the road from his house to the beach. He makes sure there are people around to see him. He paddles out to sea bend down on the coast to another deserted beach, where Anne meets him with her car. He fills the canoe with rocks and shoves it into the water and drives him to a railway station, where
he takes a train into the countryside. John planned to lie low for a while by camping, but for some reason, he'd taken his sleeping bag with him in the canoe instead of leaving it in Anne's car. It's now sopping wet. He checks into a bed and breakfast under a false name, and goes home and calls the emergency services.
This isn't like John at all. He's a very experienced canoeist, but I'm starting to worry something dreadful might have happened.
The Coast Guard Agency leaps into action. Dozens of volunteers from the Royal National Lifeboat institution a charity, drop what they're doing and take to the sea to search for the missing canoeist. The search goes on all through the night and the next day six boats, a plane, a helicopter, and watches from the window of her home. John watches on the television news in his bed and breakfast. The missing man has been named locally as John Darwin, and calls her two sons to break the news that their
father is missing at sea. One son is on holiday in Canada, where he had been planning to propose to his girlfriend. They cut short their trip and rush to Seed in carew where they find Anne surrounded by people family, friends, work, colleagues offering support, and the police, who seem to suspect that all may not be as it seems. They're methodically searching the house and asking Anne question after question.
I've told you everything I know.
After a week, Anne's phone rings, what's happening?
Has everyone gone home yet?
Are you mad? Of course they haven't gone home yet.
John has bought a new sleeping bag. Camping is cheaper than the bed and breakfast, but every night his air mattress slowly defects and he wakes uncomfortably on the ground. He doesn't have the cash to buy a new one, and he obviously can't use a card. He pesters Anne. Have their sons still not left. I've got to come back. You don't know what it's like for me.
It's not exactly easy for me either.
After three weeks, the sons go home, the coast is and John Darwin returns to Seaton carew Cunningly disguised he's grown a beard. He makes use of that odd secret passageway When visitors call on Ann, John darts through the wardrobe and hides out in the bedsit But soon he starts to take a chance on going out and about. The police have seized his computer, so he visits the library to get online. He starts doing repairs on his rental properties, introducing himself as Tom the Handyman, though his
skills are as limited as ever. One tenant later recalls how Tom tried to fix her toilet by tying a plastic bag to the ballcock. Incredibly, he's recognized only once a tenant sees through the beard and says, aren't you supposed to be dead? John isn't quick at thinking on his feet. Don't tell anyone about this, and he doesn't. The man later shrugs that he thought it was none of his business. John looks through newspaper archives from the year he was born. The death notices a baby called
John Jones died in infancy. If he'd lived, he'd have been about Darwin's age. Another John that's convenient, and Jones is a common surname. Darwin goes to the local registry office and applies for a copy of John Jones's birth certificate. He sends it off to the passport office with a photograph of himself. It can't be this easy to get a passport in a fake name, can it? Cautionary tales will be back after the break. John Darwin was hardly a criminal mastermind, So how did he know how to
get a passport with a fake identity? He learned it from a book. A novel, The Day of the Jackal, was published in the nineteen seventies. The central character, a shadowy assassin, applies for a copy of a dead baby's birth certificate and uses it to get a passport. The novelist learned of this trick from contacts in the criminal underworld.
Could it really be that easy?
He tried it out for himself before writing about it.
It worked.
When the Day of the Jackal became a best the author assumed that the government would quickly find a way to close the loophole, but no. Thirty years later, the trick still worked. The government's problem was making links between data held in different places. There was a paper based register of births and a paper based register of deaths,
but these records weren't connected. Give the Passport office a birth certificate for a John Jones, and they had no easy way to verify whether or not he died already. The world is very different now, of course, records are computerized and searchable. Information from one source can easily link to another. Back in the early two thousands, that shift to the modern era was taking shape, but slowly and piecemeal. The Day of the Jackal trick wouldn't work for much longer.
John Jones got his passport just in time. In two thousand and three, on the first anniversary of John Darwin's disappearance, his two sons visited their mother for a somber act of remembrance from the end of seatan Karoop. Here they threw commemorative wreaths into the sea. John watched from the window. When the coroner held an inquest into John's disappearance, the sons visited again, much to John's annoyance. Whenever they came to support their mother, he had to vanish through the wardrobe.
The inquest heard the police had found no evidence that Darwin staged his disappearance. A death certificate was issued, which gave the cause of death as probably encountered difficulties as a result of which he died. The sons went home, finally allowing John to emerge through the secret doorway Congratulations, you're dead. Armed with the death certificate, and set about claiming John's various life insurance policies and pensions. John celebrated by playing Abba Money.
Money Kits of money in.
The payouts came to maybe three quarters of a million dollars in today's terms. Later, their net about the same again from selling properties that would otherwise have been foreclosed.
On I'm a Genius.
The police had given back John's computer. He spent hours playing online games such as Asheron's Call, a fantasy role playing adventure, which his two sons also enjoyed.
You'll never guess so I've been playing with today the boys, but don't worry. They have no idea.
It's me.
In another online game, John befriended a woman who told him she was lonely and bored. He told her his wife was dead and he had no children. She sent him topless photos. He sent her fifty thousand dollars to invest in a business opportunity. He sheepishly confessed to Anne when he realized that the investment was gone, and brushed it off. There was plenty more money, after all. They traveled to Cyprus with the John Jones passport. Perhaps that would be a good place to start a new life
in the sun, but the bureaucracy seemed stifling. They agreed to buy a catamaran, thinking they could sail around the world, not that either of them knew how to sail. That fell through when John argued with the cellar. One thing was clear. They couldn't stay in seat and carew and risk someone else. Recognizing bearded Tom the handyman, what about Panama? John began to post in forums for expats. He liked what he was told.
It's going to be perfect for us. A wonderful climate, beautiful countryside, absolutely perfect in every respect.
John arranged for them to meet a real estate agent and booked flights, and still worried every time John presented his passport.
Stay calm, everything will be fine.
I'm trying my best.
Panama was beautiful. Indeed, they got on well with the real estate agent and his wife. At one point, the wife produced a digital camera a photo of the happy clients. John and Anne stood next to the agent and beamed. The agent's wife gave the photo a file name that included John and Anne and uploaded it to the agency website. The Darwins bought an apartment in Panama City. Anne returned to Seden carew to sell the last of their property,
their two big old houses. They bought a plot of land in Panama, nearly five hundred acres of unspoiled jungle next to Lake Gartoon, a huge artificial reservoir created as part of the Panama Canal. The plot had no electricity or running water, but they planned to build a luxury villa and open an eco tourism resort. They didn't speak Spanish. They'd ruined themselves trying to run a much simpler property
rental business back home. John couldn't even fix a toilet, but sure build a villa and run an eco tourism resort. Why not, As Anne later reflected.
The idea was, I have to admit in seeing.
They bought a machete.
But before they could get to work on their jungle, they had a problem to solve. They'd come to Panama on tourist visas to live their long term they'd need a different kind of visa, and to get it, they had to present a letter from their local police force back home attesting to their god character. Easy for Anne, who led an apparently blameless life as a doctor's receptionist. Tricky for John Jones, who didn't exist.
What to do?
It might have been wise to grapple with this problem before they bought an apartment in Panama City and five hundred acres of jungle. But they were where they were. John came up with a plan. He'd fly back to Britain, abandoned the John Jones identity, reestablish himself as John Darwin, and claim he had amnesia. If no one could prove where he had been for the last five years, there'd be no reason for the police not to give him the letter he needed.
It's perfectly feasible that I could have banged my head and lost my memory. It does happen sometimes, I'd say, I can't remember how I got to wherever I am, or.
How do you account for the suntan?
I could have been on holiday?
This is crazy. No one will believe you.
You think of something better then.
And could not think of anything better. John reassured her that thousands of people go missing every year and then turn up again.
Nobody will be that bothered about me. Don't worry, It'll be fine.
Three days after John flew back to London, the buzzer rang at the apartment in Panama City and ignored it. Then came a knocking on the door. She ignored that too. A voice with an English accent.
Said, missus, I see you.
What do you want?
The man explained he was a journalist, David Lee. What was her reaction to the news that her husband wasn't dead after all?
I'm finding it pretty hard to take in.
Anne agreed to give David Lee an interview. She had no idea where John had been for the last five years.
I'm as amazed as anyone. There are so many unanswered questions.
David Lee wrote up his story and emailed it to his editors with a covering note. She's obviously lying through her teeth, but how to prove it. Later that evening, David, Lee and Anne are having dinner when Lee's phone rings. It's an editor at his paper. It's nearly midnight in the UK, but they're hurriedly rewriting the front page after a tip off from a reader. A young woman up late with her baby, who says she's a bit of a geek, go to Google, click on images and typing
John and Panama. Lee is astonished by what pops up. He says to Anne, I've got something to show you, and I'm afraid it's not going to be very easy for you. Cautionary tales will be back in a moment. In the mid to late two thousands, with the rise of social media technology, researchers such as Dana Boyd began to observe an interesting new phenomenon. It became known as
context collapse. A classic example from the time your friend posts on Facebook a photo of you drunk at a party, your employers on Facebook, your gran Just a few years earlier, you wouldn't have been able to imagine how a photo taken at a drunken party might plausibly be seen by your employer or your gran It was easy to keep a separation between these different contexts in your life. There's now a body of research on how we've adapted to
context collapse. We self censor, posting only bland content in feeds that are relatively public. We share sensitive content in spaces such as group chats, which are easier to curate. John and Anne Darwin couldn't imagine how a photo taken in Panama might plausibly be seen by the police in Northeast England. Today, it's hard to imagine how such a photo could ever stay hidden. Two thousand and seven was
right on the cusp of that change in ears. The image was findable on Google, but it hadn't occurred to the police to search, or to the nation's top journalists. It crossed the mind only of a geeky young mum back in Panama, and Darwin looks at the image on David Lee's laptop, herself and John beaming at the camera in the office of their real estate agent in Panama City. She's just been telling the journalist how she's as amazed as anyone to learn that John Darwin is still alive.
She pauses to consider the implications of that photo.
My sons are never going to forgive me.
The police in Northeast England had always suspected that John Darwin might have staged his disappear pearance, but they hadn't found any evidence at the time. When Darwin reappears in London and claims amnesia, they dust off the file. He must be lying, but how to prove it. They appealed to the public for any information about where the missing canoeist had been. A woman calls in a young mum,
if you go to Google images. The chief investigating officer looks at the search results and bursts out laughing, stupid bastards. It's late in the evening. That photo's bound to be on the front page of tomorrow's papers. They'd better arrest John Darwin before he can do another runner. John has been staying at his son's house, feeling alarmed at the le of media interest. He'd assured Anne that nobody would be bothered. People go missing all the time. Instead, he's
gone viral. The canoe Man. Journalists have tracked down his ninety year old father, who helpfully explained how John was always obsessed with money. An eighty year old aunt chimes in, I'm a cynic. I don't believe he ever got his feet wet. But at his son's house, John has been determinedly keeping up the pretense of amnesia, or what he guesses amnesia might look like. When his daughter in law serves dinner, he pretends not to know what it is.
I've never had fish.
At ten to midnight, the police knock on the door and arrest John Darwin for suspected fraud lord. The next morning, a newspaper front page splashes the photo of John, Anne, and the real estate agent under the headline canoes this in Panama? The two Darwin's sons put out a statement to the press. We are angry and confused. We will be helping the police in any way we can. Back in Panama, the journalist David Lee reads their statement to Anne. She bursts into tears.
What have I done?
What sort of mother am I?
David Lee thinks to himself, not a very good one. As the details of the case come out, the jokes keep coming. A photo of the Narnia Life secret passageway in John and Anne's old house is published with the headline the Liar the Witch and the Wardrobe. When John's lawyer appeals for him to be allowed some time with Anne, it's reported with how about a canoodle? A local prankster puts up an official looking sign on the road into
Seedon carew welcome to Seton Canoe twinned with Panama. The nation's pedants tirelessly point out that John's canoe was actually a kayak. There's a difference. You know. It's a losing battle. There are so many more jokes you can make with canoe. But when details emerge of how John got his fake passport using a trick from a famous novel, there's a chance for the headline writers to please the pedants. The day of the kayakle But amid the hilarity, there's human hurt.
The two Darwin's sons give a raw interview about their parents. They trampled over our lives for the sake of money. They're as bad as each other. Their father had listened through the wall as they grieved for him, utterly cruel, selfish, and evil. Their mother had become such an accomplished liar she deserved an oscar.
She never tripped up.
Then there were the siblings of John Jones, the little baby whose identity John Darwin had stolen. My parents always used to speak about John, said a sister. The families disgusted. How low can you get? Remember why it was possible for John Darwin to get that fake passport? The Register of Births didn't talk to the Register of deaths. But that was about to change. Information everywhere was getting digitized, searchable,
easier to cross reference from one place to another. In twenty ten, the philosopher Helen Nissenbaum published a book, Privacy in Context, that explored the implications of that trend. When we care about privacy, she says, what we care about is contextual integrity, rules and norms about how information flows from one context to another. We might not want our medical information to come up in an employment check, or our bank to know our browser history, or marketers to
see our location data. But the smarter technology becomes, the more effort it takes to stay in control of who can find out what the idea is a cousin of context collapse. How social media makes us work harder to separate our audiences. Once again, the Darwins stand on the cusp of a change in eras Nowadays, you couldn't get a fake identity with a dead child's birth certificate. That's a good thing. But it's not only life insurance frauds us who might want to leave parts of their identity behind.
It's people who said stupid things when they were young, or sort of fresh start in a new city after a messy breakup.
The easier it gets.
For others to join the dots about our lives, the more challenging it is to reinvent ourselves. John Darwin bowed to the inevitable. How did he plead to the various charges of fraud?
Guilty?
Anne, however, surprised everyone not guilty. She wasn't denying that she did it. She was saying that John made her do it.
My thoughts never seemed to carry any weight. He had a domineering effect on me, and I had no choice but to do what he wanted.
Anne's lawyers dug up a little known legal defense called marital coercion. It sank like a canoe full of stones. The prosecution argued that Anne had played an equal and vital role in the fraud, and she'd played it with superb aplom The jury evidently agreed, finding Anne guilty.
As charged.
The judge declared that her involvement had been in not only efficient, but wholehearted. Anne and John served just over three years in prison. Soon after being parolled, John flew to Ukraine to meet a woman from an online dating site. He didn't yet have permission to leave the country, so he went back to jail again. He now lives in the Philippines with a new, much younger wife, and tried to reinvent herself. She dyed her hair and reverted to
her maiden name. She wrote a book with the journalist David Lee and donated the proceeds to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, A small way to make amends.
Although I'm sure many people will wonder whether I really deserve a second.
Chance, her sons eventually decided that she did. She sees them again and her grandchild. On a solo coach trip. She struck up a friendship with some other holidaymakers, though one kept looking at her, trying to figure out where he knew her from. Perhaps he quietly did an image search.
I was fairly sure he twigged who I was, and I was grateful he was kind enough not to mention it.
There are times when we don't want life to be an open book. Key sources for this episode include two books co written by David Lee, one with Tony Hutchinson, The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, and one with Anne Darwin Out of My Depth. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes that Tim Harford Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are
the work of Pascal wise Bender. Daffaffrey edited the scripts. Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Guttridge, Ed Gohan Stella, Harford, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Corin Gilliard, Fisher Bend The daff Haffrey, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. It really does make a difference to us and if you want to hear it, add free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode, and members only newsletter every month. Why not join the Cautionary Club. To sign up, head to patreon dot com slash Cautionary Club. That's Patreon, p A t R e o N dot com Slash Cautionary Club