BY the summer of 2003, the Darwins had paid off their debts and killed off John without apparently arousing any suspicion from the financial institutions or the legal authorities.

The financial institutions seemed happy enough with the death certificate and the "strong evidence" of the battered canoe; the police seemed convinced by the display Anne put on when they broke the news to her that a body washed up on the beach was not John. How she weeped and wailed that she wished it were, because then, with a body, she would be able to grieve properly and reach some closure.

Even the Darwins' two sons believed their father was dead.

But all the time, of course, he was living next door.

Having created a new identity, he devoted his time to exploring the internet and playing an interactive roleplaying game called Asheron's Call.

According to the game's website, it is "where thousands of players inhabit a beautiful 3D fantasy world to make friends and seek out perilous adventure".

Anne told her fraud trial: "The people that played it became characters in this world.

They had money, they could buy and sell things, they could buy and sell property and they could cast spells on one another." John played a druid, and one of the people he came up against was Kelly Steele, a thrice-married woman, in her early 40s, living in Kansas City, in the US.

He communicated with her by email and then by internet telephone, jealously keeping his conversations from his wife by wearing headphones.

He transferred money to Mrs Steele and then, using a passport in the name of John Jones, flew out to meet her, telling Anne he needed a break.

Mrs Steele appears to have bought a derelict ten-acre farm to the south of Kansas City on John's behalf, but the relationship soon soured.

Anne told her trial that he slunk back to Seaton Carew having lost £30,000 on the venture and, once more, he was cooped up in the top bedsit in No 4, The Cliff.

But he liked to be active.

Colder weather was okay, as he could lurch around town on his stick with his hat pulled down and his face disguised by his beard.

The summer, though, was trying as he couldn't get out without looking suspicious.

He was spotted in 2003 by a former prison colleague, but Anne told police the colleague had made a mistake, having seen a "cousin who looked just like him".

Lee Wadrop, a tenant in No 4, also recognised him and asked him: "Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Mr Wadrop decided not to contact the police after John warned: "Don't tell anyone about this."

ONLY the Darwins knew whether their great canoe conspiracy had a greater goal than just paying off their debts.

Did they plan all along to fake the death and reinvent themselves in an exotic eldorado on the other side of the world, or did they only cast their eyes overseas when life became too hot for John holed up in No 4?

Their first attempt to escape came in 2004 when they visited Cyprus with the intention of buying some land.

"We only went for a week and we looked at quite a few properties, " Anne told a journalist once her cover had been blown. But it just seemed to take so long to do anything over there."

In 2005, John travelled to Spain and Gibraltar to view a 60ft catamaran worth £45,000 owned by dealer Robert Hopkin.

Mr Hopkin, 37, was astonished when police followed a paper trail to his office. He remembered a "Mr Jones" had approached him and had appeared willing to pay up to £50,000 to buy the boat using money held in his wife's name.

"The sort of boat he was looking at was definitely a boat you could happily go long-term cruising on – possibly round the world – and certainly disappear from society if you wanted to," said Mr Hopkin. "It's quite easy to do on a large boat like that. "

By the end of 2005, the Darwins appear to have decided that a life on the ocean waves was not for them, and they began preparing to buy some dry land abroad. Anne told the Daily Mirror in December as she flew home to face the music: "He was forever looking at new things and new places on the internet and one day he just came up with Panama."

He fired off emails in Anne's name to get property details and, in July 2006, they flew to Central America.

The fortnight was enough to convince them that Panama was the place to be – yet on this first trip, just as it must have seemed to them that their new life in paradise was within touching distance, they sowed the seeds of their downfall. They allowed a photograph to be taken of them standing smiling happily next to the owner and director of Move to Panama, Mario Vilar. Anne told her trial that they were horrified when Mario whipped out a camera to take a picture for his website.

"He probably told a joke at the time to make us smile," Anne said.

"I certainly wasn't happy having my picture taken. We had been particularly careful about such things." It was when Google yielded up this picture of "Anne, John, Panama" in December 2007 that the Darwins' goose was well and truly cooked.

"I know it has been suggested that this illustrates we were happy enjoying our riches – our illgotten gains," she said.

"That's what it may look like, but it wasn't the situation. "

Back home in 2006, they began preparing for their new life. The Seaton Carew properties were transferred into the name of their eldest son, Mark, telling him it was to avoid inheritance tax.

Then they were put up for sale – John even had the temerity to conduct a viewing.

Anne began setting up bank accounts in Hartlepool and then offshore in Jersey and finally Panama, persuading her best friend to sign an affidavit for a bank saying she was an "upright, trustworthy woman who conducted her affairs in a professional manner".

When police finally began unravelling the couple's financial affairs, they discovered two accounts in Panama containing £160,000 and £110,000, three in Hartlepool containing £230,000, £550 and £60, and two in Jersey, holding £900 and £50.

Then Anne set up a company called Jaguar Properties, into which she transferred her real estate, again telling her sons it would help them avoid inheritance tax.

She also told her boys she was going to permanently swap the North-East for Central America. She explained to Mark the attractions of Panama, saying it was "a nice, hot Catholic country", although, as prosecutor Andrew Robinson dryly noted during her trial, it was also beyond British legal jurisdiction.

The couple returned to the Central American republic in March 2007 to buy their property. They drove from Seaton Carew under the cover of darkness to Newcastle airport, from where they flew to Paris, caught an Air France flight to Caracas, Venezuela, before hopping on the Panamanian state airline, Copa, to fly to Panama City.

A relocation company set them up with a host family for a fortnight and by April, they had put in an offer on a two-bedroomed furnished apartment in the middle class El Dorado suburb of Panama City.

Their agent then drove them 80 miles from Panama City to show them "Finca No 1031". A finca is a farm or a country estate.

This finca was a 194 hectare estate of virgin forest, home to tapirs and toucans, on the banks of Lake Gatun.

Anne told the Daily Mail that it was a place where they could fish and ride horses.

"John and I drove out there a couple times," she said. "It was the most beautiful place imaginable, very green, an unspoilt wilderness."

They put in an offer, and began flitting from country to country and continent to continent. John was travelling on a six-month tourist visa that required him being outside Panama every so often, and Anne was needed back in England to wrap up their life in Seaton Carew.

On June 11, Jaguar Properties formally bought the El Dorado apartment and the Escobal finca. The apartment cost £44,390 and the finca cost £192,260.

Back home, Anne quit her job in Gilesgate – but not before a colleague on the reception at the doctors' surgery had become so suspicious of her regular phone calls with what sounded like her "dead" husband that she had informed the police – and returned to Panama for six weeks.

At the end of August 2007, Anne returned to Seaton Carew to tie up the loose ends. No 3, The Cliff sold for £295,000 and No 4 for £160,000. John was anxious to get her back to Panama.

He finished an email of August 25, sent from his address johnjones1850@ yahoo. com, by saying: "I love you lots. PS get your bum over here fast. I have got something for you and it's hot."

The emails, intercepted by police, give an insight into the Darwins' relationship.

He liked to feel in charge and bossed her about. Anne was either utterly under his spell or a willing player.

Early in November, Anne emigrated to El Dorado for ever.

Or so she thought.

She cut her ties with home, leaving her elderly parents and her sons a world away. She was joining the love of her life, the man who had been dead to the world for five-and-a-half years.

Together, they were going to start afresh. Together, as the couple they had been for 34 years, they were going to build a new life in a foreign country.

This most ordinary of North-East folk have lived the most extraordinary of stories. It is a fantasy. It would be unbelievable were it not true.

Even their planned ending could not be made up – what they had started with a kayak on a chilly North Sea beach in March 2002, they would conclude by creating the ultimate adventure canoeing centre on a freshwater lake in Panama.

It really was the great canoe conspiracy.

But the moment Anne touched down in Panama, there was something wrong in paradise.

John wanted to go home.

After a holiday in Cahuita in neighbouring Costa Rica in the third week of November.

He decided he was going to return and began concocting his story about suffering from amnesia.

On November 30, Anne bought him a ticket, drove him to the airport, put him on a plane and sent him one final email. "Hope you have a good flight and everything is OK with the family," she wrote.

"Don't leave me. Did you manage to write the last chapter for your book on the way there? Love you. Missing you already xxxxxx."

And so, on December 1, 2007, 2,081 days after drowning off North Gare, John Darwin, looking "tanned and relaxed", walked into a London police station and said: "I think I am a missing person."