Police quiz 'presumed dead' man

Police quiz 'presumed dead' man

news.bbc.co.uk

Officers from Cleveland Police are due to interview a Teesside canoeist, who walked into a London station five years after going missing.
John Darwin was presumed dead after the remains of his red canoe were found washed up on a beach in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, in March 2002.

(visit the link for the full news article)




[edit on 3-12-2007 by fiftyfifty]

A very unusual story!. This guy has been missing for 5 years and for some reason the details of where he has been haven't come out yet. I will be following this to find out.

Just for the sake of ATS.. what are your theories? Was John Darwin abducted? Maybe he is a distant relative of Charles Darwin who was maybe one of 'them'!? Or maybe he just wanted to get away and start a new life and eventually decided to come back?

Who knows... YOU decide.

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 3-12-2007 by fiftyfifty]

Wow.. this thread plummeted to the 3rd page in less than half a day. That's never happened to me before!

Well the late news update says he doesn't remember any of the past 5 and a half years.. hasn't anyone got any theories??

reply to post by fiftyfifty


He's a smoggie and anything can happen when you breathe the air in from around there.
Seaton Carew is also part of Chimp Choker country so maybe he's been held for questioning as a potential terrorist by the local OB.
en.wikipedia.org...

maps.uk.ask.com...

Lol....ok. I'v never heard of the term Monkey hanger before but i like it Hmmm not quite what I would have had in mind though..

-Double Post

[edit on 4-12-2007 by fiftyfifty]

Here is an odd quote located at the bottom of a chinese report on the story.

Darwin's wife, Anne, had declared herself a widow six months after his disappearance and abruptly sold their family home six weeks ago and left the country. Reports claimed that Darwin's bank account was active in 2005 and 2006 and that a John Darwin, using the family address near Hartlepool, applied for a credit card in March last year.

China View

Odd that it was included at the end with no reference to where the information came from.

[edit on 4/12/07 by RancidCat]

Originally posted by fiftyfifty
Wow.. this thread plummeted to the 3rd page in less than half a day. That's never happened to me before!

That is probably because this thread is ongoing already and people have been inputing there.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

cheers

His wife got him declared dead 6 years ago so i would hardly think selling the house 6 weeks ago to qualify as 'abrupt'.

if she now can't be traced, i would find it to be curious. curious, too, he should make an appearance after she's sold the house. coincidence? no such thing, IMO.

Originally posted by Dont Taze Me Bro

Originally posted by fiftyfifty
Wow.. this thread plummeted to the 3rd page in less than half a day. That's never happened to me before!

That is probably because this thread is ongoing already and people have been inputing there.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

cheers

Mine was actually posted first...

[edit on 4-12-2007 by fiftyfifty]

reply to post by fiftyfifty

No worries...I like your thread better anyways.

can have 2 threads - 1 in breaking news (which this is) and one on the general forum

If he was canoeing when he disappeared, then yes, maybe he was abducted. But that doesn't explain the suggested use of his bank and credit card application, although the large gap in time of him using any account is also a bit suspicious.

Maybe it's all a big scam to swindle life insurance. But that's a long time to be apart from your partner and why walk into a police station and say you think you're missing.

He may have had an accident in the canoe and banged his head, swam ashore, and got on with life as whoever he believed he was. But he should have shown up in hospital records and/or stood out like a sore thumb at the time of disappearance.

Why did he think he was missing? Was he abducted and is suffering from forced memory wipe? Had he seen the latest newspaper and worked out that he'd been gone quite some time?

Was he part of some smuggling or involved in another crime or having a secret relationship that meant he had to be picked up by another boat at sea and taken to lay low in another country for all that time.

He apparently used to work in a prison, so were hs connections inside the prison the cause of his vanishing? Did he know something that would have led to his imminent real death?

The plot thickens....

Well it appears last year he was in Panama with his wife — there is a picture of them together purportedly upon Panama property firm's website. they both look hale and hearty in the picture. i'll be interested to learn why he turned himself into police in the UK now. why didn't they continue to play the game? did they have a spat of some sort?

this is from a newspaper in Britain. i find understanding how links should be presented here complicated, but if anyone wants the link to the story and picture of him and his wife in Panama last year, please u2u me.

otherwise the story appears on the front page of The London Evening Standard.

hee, yesterday a newspaper reported his elderly aunt saying she didn't elieve he even got wet when he went missing. she was probably right. i can imagine his immediate family were possibly in on it all the time.

as far as i can discern, Extralien, it certainly looks like an insurance scam.

edited to add my trawl through google tells me there is an extradition treaty between Panama and the United Kingdom, so i expect authorities will be hauling Mrs Darwin back for questioning and allowance of the insurance company to reclaim what they paid out.

[edit on 5-12-2007 by Floh]

Yep, seems as though it was an insurance scam. How did he think he was going to get away with it by walking into a police station claiming to have no memory? Does he think the police are stupid haha.

Evening Standard

Looks like a plan to claim his insurance money then bugger off somewhere for the rest of their lives.