Missing canoeist Part 3

The papers mad scramble to cross the Atlantic and confront the wife of the missing canoeist John Darwin has given us some super front pages this morning

Missing Canoeist Part 2

Certianly a scoop for the Mirror this morning as it publishes a photograph of the missing canoeist John Darwin and his wife posing in Panama.

According to the paper

the manager of a holiday firm said the couple rented a room in Panama City in July 2006 and posed for the extraordinary picture on the company's website.
Former prison officer Darwin, 57, and Anne are both grinning as they audaciously pose for the photo beside Mario Vilar, boss of Move to Panama.
He said: "They said they were starting a new life in Panama and we helped them get their feet on the ground. Then they moved on. I thought nothing of it. The first I heard there was anything unusual about them was when your newspaper called

Many of the papers had tracked his wife down to Panama,amongst them the Mail which carries the interview on its front page under the headline

'Yes, I DID pocket the life insurance'

She said she could not return immediately to see her husband because of problems over her Panama visa which she had to resolve.
And she was waiting for her furniture to arrive.
"As soon as everything is sorted out, of course I'll be straight back," she promised.
Mrs Darwin rejected any suggestion that she was complicit in her husband's disappearance but said she accepted people would be surprised that she had not dashed back to England.

Nothing better than a good mystery

Well at least it will give us a respite for Teddy bears and dodgy donors.A case of a missing person returned from the dead with all the intrigue that it brings and all the papers are speculating and hypothesising

neighbours remembered him as an anti-social oddball who had variously worked as a science teacher, bank worker and prison officer.
Bizarrely, he used up to 20 phonelines installed in his bedroom to dabble on the Stock Market.
Residents were immediately suspicious when his canoe was found wrecked, with no trace of his body, declaring: "He's done a Reggie Perrin."

says the Mirror

The Times reporting

But it is his wife’s sudden departure from their seven-bedroom home that has puzzled neighbours in the coastal community of Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool.
Bill Rodriguez, a former neighbour, said that when he last saw Mrs Darwin in August, she told him that she had just returned from a six-week holiday in Panama. “She said she loved it out there and was going to move out full-time,” he said.
A former neighbour said that Mrs Darwin’s departure six to eight weeks ago, had been extremely sudden.

The British Embassy in Panama City would make no comment but Mrs Darwin is reported to have opened a bank account in Panama and now resides there. Inspector Helen Eustace, of Cleveland police, said Darwin's two sons, Mark, 31, and Anthony, 29, had spent the last five years thinking their father was dead.

says the Guardian

“She never said goodbye — just suddenly disappeared. It was as if she had gone shopping.” reveals the Sun