Dad faked his death and Mum knew all along

When Mark and Anthony’s father was lost at sea they hid their own heartbreak to support their grieving mother. But when John turned up almost six years later, the boys’ world began to unravel…

As they huddled together at the beach on a cold, blustery day for their father’s memorial ceremony, the hearts of brothers Mark and Anthony Darwin went out to their mother Anne, whose grief still seemed to overwhelm her a year after losing her husband of almost three decades.

Never in their wildest dreams, however, could Mark or Anthony have contemplated the possibility that the man who had raised them was now watching his own service from a window of the family home.

Yet while Mark and Anthony, now 32 and 29, struggled to come to terms with the disappearance at sea 12 months earlier of their father John Darwin, the 58-year-old British prison officer and former teacher was celebrating the fact that he and his wife had successfully faked his death to claim more than $500,000 in insurance and pension funds…

Words: Mail On Sunday