( AFP ) - The wife of "back-from-the-dead" Briton John Darwin was arrested after arriving back in Britain, police said Sunday, a day after her husband was charged over the alleged faked death plot.
Anne Darwin was detained on her return from Panama, where she was tracked down after her husband walked into a London police station last weekend, claiming to remember nothing since he disappeared five years ago following an apparent canoeing accident.
"Greater Manchester Police arrested a 55-year-old woman in connection with allegations of fraud as part of an investigation being headed by police in Cleveland," said a police spokeswoman.
She was detained on arrival at Manchester airport, and was due to be handed over to Cleveland Police who are leading the probe, the spokeswoman added.
On Saturday John Darwin was charged with fraud, with prosecutors specifically authorising "offences of obtaining a money transfer by deception and making an untrue statement... to procure a passport," a police spokesman said.
He is due to appear in court on Monday, and is expected to be remanded in custody for further questioning.
Darwin was presumed dead after disappearing in March 2002 near his home in Seaton Carew, north-eastern England.
But he reappeared last weekend, telling police officers that he could remember nothing of the last five years, and believed himself to be a missing person.
His wife was tracked down to Panama City and initially claimed shock at his reappearance, before being confronted with a photograph of the couple from last year which had emerged.
In comments to two British newspapers Saturday, Darwin's wife said she went along with his faked death to escape huge debts, and lived with him in secret for years.
"For three years, while virtually everyone close to us believed John was missing, presumed dead, he was actually at home with me," Anne Darwin said in the interview published in the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror tabloids.
"I know it seems too incredible to be true, but it is," she added.
Recounting how the extraordinary tale started, she said the couple had about 12 houses as rental investments and began to run up debts of tens of thousands of pounds.
Her husband told her faking his own death was the only way out -- and on March 22, 2002, he took his canoe out to sea and did not return, though the canoe washed up weeks later.
But she insisted she did not think his disappearance was fake, because they had not spoken about his plans for some time. "I really thought that he was dead," she said.
Then in February 2003, he returned, looking dishevelled.
He moved back in, hiding in the adjoining bedsit the couple owned when their grieving sons visited. When going outdoors he used a woolly hat, upturned collar, walking stick and limp to disguise himself.
He successfully applied for a passport in the name of John Jones.
At one point the couple travelled to Cyprus with a view to moving there, before turning to Panama City, where they bought an apartment for 97,000 dollars in April this year.
But when Darwin had to return to Britain as his visa was running out, he told his wife he was going to re-emerge and claim amnesia.
"I didn't think he would get away with it, but he had had enough of being dead," she said.
Darwin's aunt Margaret Burns, 80, said Saturday of the case: "It's beyond satire. You couldn't make it up."