Suffocated by debts, prison officer John Darwin pretended to drown in a canoe accident so his wife could make fraudulent claims on their insurance. Anne Darwin played the grieving widow whilst police investigated his disappearance. Yet all along John Darwin was living in an apartment in the house next door to his wife, regularly visiting her through an interconnecting passage. Devastated by the loss of their father, neither of their sons had an inkling their parents had betrayed them.

Tired of laying low in England, John Darwin assumed a fake identity and left the country to invest in money making schemes. After these schemes failed, John Darwin persuaded Anne to leave England and start a new life in Panama.

5 years after faking his death, John returned to England and walked into a police station pretending he had amnesia. Their secret was finally revealed following the discovery of a photo of them posing together in a real estate office years after his disappearance.

This gripping and surprising true crime series is told through Anne Darwin’s eyes. We delve deep into a woman who appears to be under her husband’s control and who argued at trial she had been coerced to go along with it all. Was she to blame for her part in her husband’s absurd scheme?

Starring Monica Dolan and Eddie Marsan