When Anne Darwin's sons walked into Teesside Crown Court yesterday morning, it was the first time in seven months that they had shared a room with the woman who has been accused of lying, deceiving and betraying them.

Mark Darwin, the elder brother, appeared emotionless as he took the stand in Court 11, only yards from his mother. He avoided eye contact with her as he began his testimony as a victim of the most elaborate, personal and lengthy of lies.

He described his initial surprise at the return of their father, John Darwin, five years after he was apparently swept away in a canoe in 2002 and was presumed dead. Then, with controlled brevity, he spoke of the rage of learning that his parents had deceived him, and for so long.

Mrs Darwin, also emotionless at first, bowed her head — her first visible response during the trial — as her son described how the news of his father's disappearance had “crushed my world”.

As he continued giving evidence, describing how he discovered the part of his “Mam” in the deception through a photograph of his parents in Panama, Mrs Darwin, 56, borrowed a tissue from the female guard seated next to her in the dock and cried.

“She flung her arms around me and said, 'He's gone, I think I've lost him,' and wouldn't stop crying for ages,” Mr Darwin said of his mother's response to his arrival at the family home on the day of her husband's disappearance. “She was the same as the rest of us, she was distraught. She didn't eat much, didn't drink much, didn't sleep much.”

Mr Darwin, a property consultant, telephoned his brother, Anthony, who was holidaying in Canada, but “couldn't summon up the words to actually tell him that my dad had gone missing”. Instead, he had to pass the phone to his aunt.

Anthony Darwin arrived in the family's home town of Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, soon after, and in the weeks that followed set about checking coastguard and missing persons websites.

“I knew the police would be doing this themselves, but it was a way of me doing something,” Anthony, 29, said, giving evidence after Mark. “It was difficult with the fact that he was missing and there was no body. It made it hard to initially grieve.”

Both sons had no idea that their mother had lied to them about their father's death — as part of the couple's scheme to secure £250,000 in insurance and pension payouts — for more than 5 years, the court heard.

They agreed, unaware of the motive, to purchase Premium Bonds using money their mother gave them. Most of the proceeds went to Mrs Darwin. The family home, and the house next door, Nos 3 and 4, The Cliff, Seaton Carew, were for a time held in Mark's name after she told him that it would avoid inheritance tax.

When the two properties were sold, Mrs Darwin took the £455,000 proceeds, the court heard. She moved to Panama in October 2007. Her sons thought that, as a practising Christian, she liked it partly because it was a Catholic country with good weather.

In the brothers' eyes, “their widowed mother was now financially secure and settled in a new country”, said Andrew Robertson, QC, prosecuting. “However, paradise did not last long, because on December 1 of last year, John Darwin walked into the West End police station, London, claiming to be suffering from amnesia.”

Anthony Darwin, wearing a black pinstripe suit, told the court that his first reaction was “disbelief, anger”, thinking that it must be somebody else who had heard his father's story and decided to impersonate him. That soon changed.

When he arrived at the police station, his brother was already there.

Mark Darwin rang his mother in Panama and “rambled for ten minutes” before breaking the news that her husband was alive. “She sounded really shocked that he had turned up after all these years,” Mark said.

Then, after the police visited Anthony's house in Basingstoke, Hampshire, to arrest their father, the brothers logged on to their computers — to see a photograph of their parents happily property hunting in Panama in 2006.

“I couldn't believe the fact that she knew he was alive all this time and had been lying to me for God knows how long,” Mark Darwin said.

Anthony told the court that he did not believe it, even when he saw the image on his computer.

“I suppose my first reaction was that someone had Photoshopped the photographs,” he said, explaining how he thought it must have been a fake.

It was only after reading a newspaper interview with his mother that he realised the photograph was genuine and began to feel “upset, betrayed”.

Mrs Darwin does not deny her involvement in the scheme to fake her husband's death, but claims she was coerced into participating by him. She denies fraud and money laundering.

Mr Robertson told the jury that she was not the sort of woman whose will could easily be overcome. When carrying out her part of the scheme, he said, “she was able to act alone so effectively and did so because she was motivated by greed”.

“It is the Crown's submission,” Mr Robertson said, “that far from dealing with a shrinking violet, we have here a determined, resolute woman who is able to lie and deceive at length, who is able to act out equally the emotions of the tragically bereaved widow, and the emotions of a weak woman who was somehow bullied into telling lies for nigh on six years, she would have us believe, much against her true nature.”

The court heart that in October 2007, just after Mrs Darwin had emigrated and only six weeks before John Darwin reappeared, the police became suspicious and began investigating her bank accounts.

Whether that or something else was the reason for Mr Darwin's return, Mr Robertson said, “only he and she really know. In our submission, anyone would be slow to believe anything that Anne Darwin might have to say about that.”

The trial continues.

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