Speaker 1: Pushkin, a clothes store on Oxford Street, one of London's
Speaker 1: busiest shopping districts. In December, the busiest time of the year.
Speaker 1: It's two thousand and seven. A balding man in his
Speaker 1: late fifties approaches a store assistant.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, I can't find my wife or the dogs.
Speaker 3: The rock Violet.
Speaker 1: The man isn't making much sense. He claims to have
Speaker 1: no idea where he is or how he got there.
Speaker 2: Why are there Christmas lights? Isn't it June?
Speaker 1: No, it's December. But the man is sun tanned. Clearly
Speaker 1: he hasn't been in Britain or winter. Equally, clearly, there's
Speaker 1: something not quite right with him, and whatever the problem is,
Speaker 1: the store don't want it to be their problem. A
Speaker 1: security guard escorts him to the nearest police station. The
Speaker 1: man tells the duty sergeant.
Speaker 2: I think I'm a missing person.
Speaker 3: Why do you think you're a missing person? Well?
Speaker 2: If I knew that, I don't think i'd be here, now,
Speaker 2: would I.
Speaker 1: The man has no idea on him, but he says
Speaker 1: he thinks his name might be John John Darwin. Five
Speaker 1: years earlier, in two thousand and two, a middle aged
Speaker 1: man called John Darwin indeed went missing in a canoe.
Speaker 1: He'd paddled out to sea one morning from the beach
Speaker 1: in the town in the northeast of England where he
Speaker 1: lived with his wife Anne, and said Anne, he never
Speaker 1: came back. The battered canoe later washed up on a beach,
Speaker 1: but no body was ever found. At the time, it
Speaker 1: raised some eyebrows. The weather had been calm, the sea
Speaker 1: as smooth as a mill pond, not the kind of
Speaker 1: conditions in which should expect a canoeist to get into difficulties. Also,
Speaker 1: John Darwin, it turned out, was a man with many debts,
Speaker 1: But once the requisite time had passed, an inquest judged
Speaker 1: that the missing man must be presumed dead and claimed
Speaker 1: on John's life insurance and moved abroad to start a
Speaker 1: new life in Panama, a country with a reputation for
Speaker 1: sunshine and not asking too many questions about where your
Speaker 1: money comes from. And now he is a sun tanned
Speaker 1: John Darwin a London police station, saying he's got amnesia.
Speaker 1: He can't remember anything of the last five years, nothing
Speaker 1: at all. It's nonsense, isn't it. It must be nonsense,
Speaker 1: But how to prove it? The police have no grounds
Speaker 1: to detain John Darwin, so they call his adult sons,
Speaker 1: who are stunned. For five years they've assumed their dad
Speaker 1: was dead, and now he's back. Britain's newspapers leap on
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 3: And what a.
Speaker 1: Deliciously intriguing story it is. Where was I for five years?
Speaker 1: Amazing mystery of missing canoeists? What's his game? He must
Speaker 1: be lying, but how to prove it? The year, remember,
Speaker 1: is two thousand and seven. The Internet is less pervasive
Speaker 1: than today. A young mum, reading the news and feeling curious,
Speaker 1: does something very simple, but something that hadn't occurred to
Speaker 1: the police or to journalists. She visits Google. She clicks
Speaker 1: the images tab. She types three words John and Panama.
Speaker 1: She presses search. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to
Speaker 1: cautionary tales. John Darwin worked as a teacher, then retrained
Speaker 1: as a prison officer, and looked after their two sons
Speaker 1: until they went to school. Then got a job as
Speaker 1: a receptionist at a doctor's surgery. Ordinary jobs that bought
Speaker 1: an ordinary house in an ordinary village. It wasn't enough
Speaker 1: for John.
Speaker 2: I'll be a millionaire by the time I'm fifty.
Speaker 1: John borrowed money to buy run down houses to rent out,
Speaker 1: but tenants were hard to find that alone tenants who
Speaker 1: paid rent on time. The houses needed constant repairs, which
Speaker 1: John lacked the skills to make. The couples struggled to
Speaker 1: make their loan repayments on the houses or on John's
Speaker 1: luxury range rover with the personalized license plate. They ran
Speaker 1: up debt on credit cards. John decided the solution to
Speaker 1: their problems was to borrow more money to buy more houses,
Speaker 1: two houses, specifically next door to each other, four story
Speaker 1: nineteenth century townhouses overlooking the beach in the faded seaside
Speaker 1: resort of seedn Kreou. The architecture was grand pointed gables
Speaker 1: and ornate balustrades, but one of the houses had been
Speaker 1: converted into thirteen bedsets, tiny dingy studio apartments for renting
Speaker 1: out to low income tenants. John and Anne would live
Speaker 1: in the other house. Oddly, it had a secret passageway
Speaker 1: into one of the bed sits next door, a hole
Speaker 1: in the wall hidden in a wardrobe like the entrance
Speaker 1: to Narnia. John had worked out all the sums on
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet. The rent from the bedsits would surely cover
Speaker 1: all their debts. Anne was not convinced.
Speaker 2: John told her stop worrying, It'll be fine.
Speaker 1: It was not fine. The house was far bigger than
Speaker 1: they needed. Their two sons had now grown up and
Speaker 1: moved south near London. Heating was expensive, the house had
Speaker 1: high ceilings, no insulation, and drafty single glazed windows. They
Speaker 1: couldn't find tenants for all of the bedsits and didn't
Speaker 1: get on with the tenants they did have, mostly unemployed
Speaker 1: single men. They were glad they owned two Rockvilers. By
Speaker 1: the time John Darwin turned fifty, not only was he
Speaker 1: not a millionaire, his financial situation had become desperate. Penalty
Speaker 1: charges for late repayments were piling up. The Darwins faced bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: John dreaded the stigma of being declared a failure. But
Speaker 1: they'd run out of other options, or had they.
Speaker 2: I think I should crush the ranger over on the
Speaker 2: way home from work. We could claim the insurance.
Speaker 3: Money, John thought some more. But I might.
Speaker 2: Actually kill myself doing it. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: What if he faked his own death instead?
Speaker 2: You could claim the life insurance money?
Speaker 1: And was not immediately sold on this plan. She later
Speaker 1: told the journalist David Lee.
Speaker 4: For God's sake, John, you'll be phoned out and locked up.
Speaker 4: We both will.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, she agreed to go along with it. One morning
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, John lugs his bright red
Speaker 1: canoe over the road from his house to the beach.
Speaker 1: He makes sure there are people around to see him.
Speaker 1: He paddles out to sea bend down on the coast
Speaker 1: to another deserted beach, where Anne meets him with her car.
Speaker 1: He fills the canoe with rocks and shoves it into
Speaker 1: the water and drives him to a railway station, where
Speaker 1: he takes a train into the countryside. John planned to
Speaker 1: lie low for a while by camping, but for some reason,
Speaker 1: he'd taken his sleeping bag with him in the canoe
Speaker 1: instead of leaving it in Anne's car. It's now sopping wet.
Speaker 1: He checks into a bed and breakfast under a false name,
Speaker 1: and goes home and calls the emergency services.
Speaker 4: This isn't like John at all. He's a very experienced canoeist,
Speaker 4: but I'm starting to worry something dreadful might have happened.
Speaker 1: The Coast Guard Agency leaps into action. Dozens of volunteers
Speaker 1: from the Royal National Lifeboat institution a charity, drop what
Speaker 1: they're doing and take to the sea to search for
Speaker 1: the missing canoeist. The search goes on all through the
Speaker 1: night and the next day six boats, a plane, a helicopter,
Speaker 1: and watches from the window of her home. John watches
Speaker 1: on the television news in his bed and breakfast. The
Speaker 1: missing man has been named locally as John Darwin, and
Speaker 1: calls her two sons to break the news that their
Speaker 1: father is missing at sea. One son is on holiday
Speaker 1: in Canada, where he had been planning to propose to
Speaker 1: his girlfriend. They cut short their trip and rush to
Speaker 1: Seed in carew where they find Anne surrounded by people family, friends, work,
Speaker 1: colleagues offering support, and the police, who seem to suspect
Speaker 1: that all may not be as it seems. They're methodically
Speaker 1: searching the house and asking Anne question after question.
Speaker 4: I've told you everything I know.
Speaker 1: After a week, Anne's phone rings, what's happening?
Speaker 2: Has everyone gone home yet?
Speaker 4: Are you mad? Of course they haven't gone home yet.
Speaker 1: John has bought a new sleeping bag. Camping is cheaper
Speaker 1: than the bed and breakfast, but every night his air
Speaker 1: mattress slowly defects and he wakes uncomfortably on the ground.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have the cash to buy a new one,
Speaker 1: and he obviously can't use a card. He pesters Anne.
Speaker 1: Have their sons still not left. I've got to come back.
Speaker 1: You don't know what it's like for me.
Speaker 4: It's not exactly easy for me either.
Speaker 1: After three weeks, the sons go home, the coast is
Speaker 1: and John Darwin returns to Seaton carew Cunningly disguised he's
Speaker 1: grown a beard. He makes use of that odd secret
Speaker 1: passageway When visitors call on Ann, John darts through the
Speaker 1: wardrobe and hides out in the bedsit But soon he
Speaker 1: starts to take a chance on going out and about.
Speaker 1: The police have seized his computer, so he visits the
Speaker 1: library to get online. He starts doing repairs on his
Speaker 1: rental properties, introducing himself as Tom the Handyman, though his
Speaker 1: skills are as limited as ever. One tenant later recalls
Speaker 1: how Tom tried to fix her toilet by tying a
Speaker 1: plastic bag to the ballcock. Incredibly, he's recognized only once
Speaker 1: a tenant sees through the beard and says, aren't you
Speaker 1: supposed to be dead? John isn't quick at thinking on
Speaker 1: his feet. Don't tell anyone about this, and he doesn't.
Speaker 1: The man later shrugs that he thought it was none
Speaker 1: of his business. John looks through newspaper archives from the
Speaker 1: year he was born. The death notices a baby called
Speaker 1: John Jones died in infancy. If he'd lived, he'd have
Speaker 1: been about Darwin's age. Another John that's convenient, and Jones
Speaker 1: is a common surname. Darwin goes to the local registry
Speaker 1: office and applies for a copy of John Jones's birth certificate.
Speaker 1: He sends it off to the passport office with a
Speaker 1: photograph of himself. It can't be this easy to get
Speaker 1: a passport in a fake name, can it? Cautionary tales
Speaker 1: will be back after the break. John Darwin was hardly
Speaker 1: a criminal mastermind, So how did he know how to
Speaker 1: get a passport with a fake identity? He learned it
Speaker 1: from a book. A novel, The Day of the Jackal,
Speaker 1: was published in the nineteen seventies. The central character, a
Speaker 1: shadowy assassin, applies for a copy of a dead baby's
Speaker 1: birth certificate and uses it to get a passport. The
Speaker 1: novelist learned of this trick from contacts in the criminal underworld.
Speaker 3: Could it really be that easy?
Speaker 1: He tried it out for himself before writing about it.
Speaker 3: It worked.
Speaker 1: When the Day of the Jackal became a best the
Speaker 1: author assumed that the government would quickly find a way
Speaker 1: to close the loophole, but no. Thirty years later, the
Speaker 1: trick still worked. The government's problem was making links between
Speaker 1: data held in different places. There was a paper based
Speaker 1: register of births and a paper based register of deaths,
Speaker 1: but these records weren't connected. Give the Passport office a
Speaker 1: birth certificate for a John Jones, and they had no
Speaker 1: easy way to verify whether or not he died already.
Speaker 1: The world is very different now, of course, records are
Speaker 1: computerized and searchable. Information from one source can easily link
Speaker 1: to another. Back in the early two thousands, that shift
Speaker 1: to the modern era was taking shape, but slowly and piecemeal.
Speaker 1: The Day of the Jackal trick wouldn't work for much longer.
Speaker 1: John Jones got his passport just in time. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, on the first anniversary of John Darwin's disappearance,
Speaker 1: his two sons visited their mother for a somber act
Speaker 1: of remembrance from the end of seatan Karoop. Here they
Speaker 1: threw commemorative wreaths into the sea. John watched from the window.
Speaker 1: When the coroner held an inquest into John's disappearance, the
Speaker 1: sons visited again, much to John's annoyance. Whenever they came
Speaker 1: to support their mother, he had to vanish through the wardrobe.
Speaker 1: The inquest heard the police had found no evidence that
Speaker 1: Darwin staged his disappearance. A death certificate was issued, which
Speaker 1: gave the cause of death as probably encountered difficulties as
Speaker 1: a result of which he died. The sons went home,
Speaker 1: finally allowing John to emerge through the secret doorway Congratulations,
Speaker 1: you're dead. Armed with the death certificate, and set about
Speaker 1: claiming John's various life insurance policies and pensions. John celebrated
Speaker 1: by playing Abba Money.
Speaker 2: Money Kits of money in.
Speaker 1: The payouts came to maybe three quarters of a million
Speaker 1: dollars in today's terms. Later, their net about the same
Speaker 1: again from selling properties that would otherwise have been foreclosed.
Speaker 2: On I'm a Genius.
Speaker 1: The police had given back John's computer. He spent hours
Speaker 1: playing online games such as Asheron's Call, a fantasy role
Speaker 1: playing adventure, which his two sons also enjoyed.
Speaker 2: You'll never guess so I've been playing with today the boys,
Speaker 2: but don't worry. They have no idea.
Speaker 3: It's me.
Speaker 1: In another online game, John befriended a woman who told
Speaker 1: him she was lonely and bored. He told her his
Speaker 1: wife was dead and he had no children. She sent
Speaker 1: him topless photos. He sent her fifty thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: invest in a business opportunity. He sheepishly confessed to Anne
Speaker 1: when he realized that the investment was gone, and brushed
Speaker 1: it off. There was plenty more money, after all. They
Speaker 1: traveled to Cyprus with the John Jones passport. Perhaps that
Speaker 1: would be a good place to start a new life
Speaker 1: in the sun, but the bureaucracy seemed stifling. They agreed
Speaker 1: to buy a catamaran, thinking they could sail around the world,
Speaker 1: not that either of them knew how to sail. That
Speaker 1: fell through when John argued with the cellar. One thing
Speaker 1: was clear. They couldn't stay in seat and carew and
Speaker 1: risk someone else. Recognizing bearded Tom the handyman, what about Panama?
Speaker 1: John began to post in forums for expats. He liked
Speaker 1: what he was told.
Speaker 2: It's going to be perfect for us. A wonderful climate,
Speaker 2: beautiful countryside, absolutely perfect in every respect.
Speaker 1: John arranged for them to meet a real estate agent
Speaker 1: and booked flights, and still worried every time John presented
Speaker 1: his passport.
Speaker 2: Stay calm, everything will be fine.
Speaker 4: I'm trying my best.
Speaker 1: Panama was beautiful. Indeed, they got on well with the
Speaker 1: real estate agent and his wife. At one point, the
Speaker 1: wife produced a digital camera a photo of the happy clients.
Speaker 1: John and Anne stood next to the agent and beamed.
Speaker 1: The agent's wife gave the photo a file name that
Speaker 1: included John and Anne and uploaded it to the agency website.
Speaker 1: The Darwins bought an apartment in Panama City. Anne returned
Speaker 1: to Seden carew to sell the last of their property,
Speaker 1: their two big old houses. They bought a plot of
Speaker 1: land in Panama, nearly five hundred acres of unspoiled jungle
Speaker 1: next to Lake Gartoon, a huge artificial reservoir created as
Speaker 1: part of the Panama Canal. The plot had no electricity
Speaker 1: or running water, but they planned to build a luxury
Speaker 1: villa and open an eco tourism resort. They didn't speak Spanish.
Speaker 1: They'd ruined themselves trying to run a much simpler property
Speaker 1: rental business back home. John couldn't even fix a toilet,
Speaker 1: but sure build a villa and run an eco tourism resort.
Speaker 1: Why not, As Anne later reflected.
Speaker 4: The idea was, I have to admit in seeing.
Speaker 3: They bought a machete.
Speaker 1: But before they could get to work on their jungle,
Speaker 1: they had a problem to solve. They'd come to Panama
Speaker 1: on tourist visas to live their long term they'd need
Speaker 1: a different kind of visa, and to get it, they
Speaker 1: had to present a letter from their local police force
Speaker 1: back home attesting to their god character. Easy for Anne,
Speaker 1: who led an apparently blameless life as a doctor's receptionist.
Speaker 1: Tricky for John Jones, who didn't exist.
Speaker 3: What to do?
Speaker 1: It might have been wise to grapple with this problem
Speaker 1: before they bought an apartment in Panama City and five
Speaker 1: hundred acres of jungle. But they were where they were.
Speaker 1: John came up with a plan. He'd fly back to Britain,
Speaker 1: abandoned the John Jones identity, reestablish himself as John Darwin,
Speaker 1: and claim he had amnesia. If no one could prove
Speaker 1: where he had been for the last five years, there'd
Speaker 1: be no reason for the police not to give him
Speaker 1: the letter he needed.
Speaker 2: It's perfectly feasible that I could have banged my head
Speaker 2: and lost my memory. It does happen sometimes, I'd say,
Speaker 2: I can't remember how I got to wherever I am, or.
Speaker 4: How do you account for the suntan?
Speaker 2: I could have been on holiday?
Speaker 4: This is crazy. No one will believe you.
Speaker 2: You think of something better then.
Speaker 1: And could not think of anything better. John reassured her
Speaker 1: that thousands of people go missing every year and then
Speaker 1: turn up again.
Speaker 2: Nobody will be that bothered about me. Don't worry, It'll
Speaker 2: be fine.
Speaker 1: Three days after John flew back to London, the buzzer
Speaker 1: rang at the apartment in Panama City and ignored it.
Speaker 1: Then came a knocking on the door. She ignored that too.
Speaker 1: A voice with an English accent.
Speaker 3: Said, missus, I see you.
Speaker 4: What do you want?
Speaker 1: The man explained he was a journalist, David Lee. What
Speaker 1: was her reaction to the news that her husband wasn't
Speaker 1: dead after all?
Speaker 4: I'm finding it pretty hard to take in.
Speaker 1: Anne agreed to give David Lee an interview. She had
Speaker 1: no idea where John had been for the last five years.
Speaker 4: I'm as amazed as anyone. There are so many unanswered questions.
Speaker 1: David Lee wrote up his story and emailed it to
Speaker 1: his editors with a covering note. She's obviously lying through
Speaker 1: her teeth, but how to prove it. Later that evening, David,
Speaker 1: Lee and Anne are having dinner when Lee's phone rings.
Speaker 1: It's an editor at his paper. It's nearly midnight in
Speaker 1: the UK, but they're hurriedly rewriting the front page after
Speaker 1: a tip off from a reader. A young woman up
Speaker 1: late with her baby, who says she's a bit of
Speaker 1: a geek, go to Google, click on images and typing
Speaker 1: John and Panama. Lee is astonished by what pops up.
Speaker 1: He says to Anne, I've got something to show you,
Speaker 1: and I'm afraid it's not going to be very easy
Speaker 1: for you. Cautionary tales will be back in a moment.
Speaker 1: In the mid to late two thousands, with the rise
Speaker 1: of social media technology, researchers such as Dana Boyd began
Speaker 1: to observe an interesting new phenomenon. It became known as
Speaker 1: context collapse. A classic example from the time your friend
Speaker 1: posts on Facebook a photo of you drunk at a party,
Speaker 1: your employers on Facebook, your gran Just a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have been able to imagine how a photo
Speaker 1: taken at a drunken party might plausibly be seen by
Speaker 1: your employer or your gran It was easy to keep
Speaker 1: a separation between these different contexts in your life. There's
Speaker 1: now a body of research on how we've adapted to
Speaker 1: context collapse. We self censor, posting only bland content in
Speaker 1: feeds that are relatively public. We share sensitive content in
Speaker 1: spaces such as group chats, which are easier to curate.
Speaker 1: John and Anne Darwin couldn't imagine how a photo taken
Speaker 1: in Panama might plausibly be seen by the police in
Speaker 1: Northeast England. Today, it's hard to imagine how such a
Speaker 1: photo could ever stay hidden. Two thousand and seven was
Speaker 1: right on the cusp of that change in ears. The
Speaker 1: image was findable on Google, but it hadn't occurred to
Speaker 1: the police to search, or to the nation's top journalists.
Speaker 1: It crossed the mind only of a geeky young mum
Speaker 1: back in Panama, and Darwin looks at the image on
Speaker 1: David Lee's laptop, herself and John beaming at the camera
Speaker 1: in the office of their real estate agent in Panama City.
Speaker 1: She's just been telling the journalist how she's as amazed
Speaker 1: as anyone to learn that John Darwin is still alive.
Speaker 1: She pauses to consider the implications of that photo.
Speaker 4: My sons are never going to forgive me.
Speaker 1: The police in Northeast England had always suspected that John
Speaker 1: Darwin might have staged his disappear pearance, but they hadn't
Speaker 1: found any evidence at the time. When Darwin reappears in
Speaker 1: London and claims amnesia, they dust off the file. He
Speaker 1: must be lying, but how to prove it. They appealed
Speaker 1: to the public for any information about where the missing
Speaker 1: canoeist had been. A woman calls in a young mum,
Speaker 1: if you go to Google images. The chief investigating officer
Speaker 1: looks at the search results and bursts out laughing, stupid bastards.
Speaker 1: It's late in the evening. That photo's bound to be
Speaker 1: on the front page of tomorrow's papers. They'd better arrest
Speaker 1: John Darwin before he can do another runner. John has
Speaker 1: been staying at his son's house, feeling alarmed at the
Speaker 1: le of media interest. He'd assured Anne that nobody would
Speaker 1: be bothered. People go missing all the time. Instead, he's
Speaker 1: gone viral. The canoe Man. Journalists have tracked down his
Speaker 1: ninety year old father, who helpfully explained how John was
Speaker 1: always obsessed with money. An eighty year old aunt chimes in,
Speaker 1: I'm a cynic. I don't believe he ever got his
Speaker 1: feet wet. But at his son's house, John has been
Speaker 1: determinedly keeping up the pretense of amnesia, or what he
Speaker 1: guesses amnesia might look like. When his daughter in law
Speaker 1: serves dinner, he pretends not to know what it is.
Speaker 2: I've never had fish.
Speaker 1: At ten to midnight, the police knock on the door
Speaker 1: and arrest John Darwin for suspected fraud lord. The next morning,
Speaker 1: a newspaper front page splashes the photo of John, Anne,
Speaker 1: and the real estate agent under the headline canoes this
Speaker 1: in Panama? The two Darwin's sons put out a statement
Speaker 1: to the press. We are angry and confused. We will
Speaker 1: be helping the police in any way we can. Back
Speaker 1: in Panama, the journalist David Lee reads their statement to Anne.
Speaker 1: She bursts into tears.
Speaker 4: What have I done?
Speaker 3: What sort of mother am I?
Speaker 1: David Lee thinks to himself, not a very good one.
Speaker 1: As the details of the case come out, the jokes
Speaker 1: keep coming. A photo of the Narnia Life secret passageway
Speaker 1: in John and Anne's old house is published with the
Speaker 1: headline the Liar the Witch and the Wardrobe. When John's
Speaker 1: lawyer appeals for him to be allowed some time with Anne,
Speaker 1: it's reported with how about a canoodle? A local prankster
Speaker 1: puts up an official looking sign on the road into
Speaker 1: Seedon carew welcome to Seton Canoe twinned with Panama. The
Speaker 1: nation's pedants tirelessly point out that John's canoe was actually
Speaker 1: a kayak. There's a difference. You know. It's a losing battle.
Speaker 1: There are so many more jokes you can make with canoe.
Speaker 1: But when details emerge of how John got his fake
Speaker 1: passport using a trick from a famous novel, there's a
Speaker 1: chance for the headline writers to please the pedants. The
Speaker 1: day of the kayakle But amid the hilarity, there's human hurt.
Speaker 1: The two Darwin's sons give a raw interview about their parents.
Speaker 1: They trampled over our lives for the sake of money.
Speaker 1: They're as bad as each other. Their father had listened
Speaker 1: through the wall as they grieved for him, utterly cruel, selfish,
Speaker 1: and evil. Their mother had become such an accomplished liar
Speaker 1: she deserved an oscar.
Speaker 3: She never tripped up.
Speaker 1: Then there were the siblings of John Jones, the little
Speaker 1: baby whose identity John Darwin had stolen. My parents always
Speaker 1: used to speak about John, said a sister. The families disgusted.
Speaker 1: How low can you get? Remember why it was possible
Speaker 1: for John Darwin to get that fake passport? The Register
Speaker 1: of Births didn't talk to the Register of deaths. But
Speaker 1: that was about to change. Information everywhere was getting digitized, searchable,
Speaker 1: easier to cross reference from one place to another. In
Speaker 1: twenty ten, the philosopher Helen Nissenbaum published a book, Privacy
Speaker 1: in Context, that explored the implications of that trend. When
Speaker 1: we care about privacy, she says, what we care about
Speaker 1: is contextual integrity, rules and norms about how information flows
Speaker 1: from one context to another. We might not want our
Speaker 1: medical information to come up in an employment check, or
Speaker 1: our bank to know our browser history, or marketers to
Speaker 1: see our location data. But the smarter technology becomes, the
Speaker 1: more effort it takes to stay in control of who
Speaker 1: can find out what the idea is a cousin of
Speaker 1: context collapse. How social media makes us work harder to
Speaker 1: separate our audiences. Once again, the Darwins stand on the
Speaker 1: cusp of a change in eras Nowadays, you couldn't get
Speaker 1: a fake identity with a dead child's birth certificate. That's
Speaker 1: a good thing. But it's not only life insurance frauds
Speaker 1: us who might want to leave parts of their identity behind.
Speaker 1: It's people who said stupid things when they were young,
Speaker 1: or sort of fresh start in a new city after
Speaker 1: a messy breakup.
Speaker 3: The easier it gets.
Speaker 1: For others to join the dots about our lives, the
Speaker 1: more challenging it is to reinvent ourselves. John Darwin bowed
Speaker 1: to the inevitable. How did he plead to the various
Speaker 1: charges of fraud?
Speaker 2: Guilty?
Speaker 1: Anne, however, surprised everyone not guilty. She wasn't denying that
Speaker 1: she did it. She was saying that John made her
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 4: My thoughts never seemed to carry any weight. He had
Speaker 4: a domineering effect on me, and I had no choice
Speaker 4: but to do what he wanted.
Speaker 1: Anne's lawyers dug up a little known legal defense called
Speaker 1: marital coercion. It sank like a canoe full of stones.
Speaker 1: The prosecution argued that Anne had played an equal and
Speaker 1: vital role in the fraud, and she'd played it with
Speaker 1: superb aplom The jury evidently agreed, finding Anne guilty.
Speaker 3: As charged.
Speaker 1: The judge declared that her involvement had been in not
Speaker 1: only efficient, but wholehearted. Anne and John served just over
Speaker 1: three years in prison. Soon after being parolled, John flew
Speaker 1: to Ukraine to meet a woman from an online dating site.
Speaker 1: He didn't yet have permission to leave the country, so
Speaker 1: he went back to jail again. He now lives in
Speaker 1: the Philippines with a new, much younger wife, and tried
Speaker 1: to reinvent herself. She dyed her hair and reverted to
Speaker 1: her maiden name. She wrote a book with the journalist
Speaker 1: David Lee and donated the proceeds to the Royal National
Speaker 1: Lifeboat Institution, A small way to make amends.
Speaker 4: Although I'm sure many people will wonder whether I really
Speaker 4: deserve a second.
Speaker 1: Chance, her sons eventually decided that she did. She sees
Speaker 1: them again and her grandchild. On a solo coach trip.
Speaker 1: She struck up a friendship with some other holidaymakers, though
Speaker 1: one kept looking at her, trying to figure out where
Speaker 1: he knew her from. Perhaps he quietly did an image search.
Speaker 4: I was fairly sure he twigged who I was, and
Speaker 4: I was grateful he was kind enough not to mention it.
Speaker 1: There are times when we don't want life to be
Speaker 1: an open book. Key sources for this episode include two
Speaker 1: books co written by David Lee, one with Tony Hutchinson,
Speaker 1: The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, and one with
Speaker 1: Anne Darwin Out of My Depth. For a full list
Speaker 1: of our sources, see the show notes that Tim Harford
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright,
Speaker 1: Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills
Speaker 1: and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are
Speaker 1: the work of Pascal wise Bender. Daffaffrey edited the scripts.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Guttridge,
Speaker 1: Ed Gohan Stella, Harford, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The
Speaker 1: show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Corin Gilliard, Fisher Bend The daff Haffrey,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. It
Speaker 1: really does make a difference to us and if you
Speaker 1: want to hear it, add free and receive a bonus
Speaker 1: audio episode, video episode, and members only newsletter every month.
Speaker 1: Why not join the Cautionary Club. To sign up, head
Speaker 1: to patreon dot com slash Cautionary Club. That's Patreon, p
Speaker 1: A t R e o N dot com Slash Cautionary
Speaker 1: Club