His sons, Mark and Anthony, visited their mother regularly during the years of their father’s supposed death. They were, according to every account of this case, entirely unaware that their father was alive and nearby. The grief they carried—the grief of young men who believed their father had died in a paddling accident before they could have expected to lose him—was real, even as its cause was not.
Anne Darwin maintained the performance. She was the bereaved wife, dealing with the practicalities of a husband’s death, managing properties, receiving pension payments, receiving insurance. She was also, in number 3, connected through a hidden door to the man those payments were supposedly made in memory of.
The sons were not told.
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## The Pensions and the Benefits
Insurance was not the only financial stream the Darwins fraudulently collected. John had accumulated pension rights from his years of teaching—covered by the teachers’ pension scheme—and from his time as a prison officer. After his apparent death, Anne began receiving payments from both pensions.
The teachers’ pension payments documented in the prosecution evidence totaled £25,186. Additional pension payments amounted to £58,845. The Department for Work and Pensions, through benefit channels, contributed a further £2,000 and £2,273 in separate amounts.
Each payment arrived in the context of a death certificate affirming that John Darwin had died on March 21, 2002. Each payment was collected by the widow. None of it was properly hers to collect, because her husband was alive.