If you're pretending to be dead the last thing you do is pose for a photograph, especially one that is digitally date stamped, yet that is exactly what John Darwin did. Darwin vanished in March 2002 from his home in northeast England and last week turned up, tanned and healthy, at a police station stating that he had suffered memory loss for the past five years but thought that he might be a missing person.

In the intervening years, Darwin had been pronounced dead and his wife had built a new life on the proceeds of his life insurance.

The final wheel fell off the Darwins' wagon when a British tabloid published a photograph of Darwin with his wife that was taken in a Panama apartment last year.

Mrs Darwin is en route back to England to face the music. I suspect that before long she'll wish her husband really was dead.

Reuters