The Liar, the Switch and the Wardrobe

— -- British police have released a photo of John Darwin today in an effort to determine where the "dead canoeist" has been for the last five years. His wife told a British newspaper the couple had hoped to slip away and start a tropical tourist resort in Panama.

"It was a nice dream while it lasted," Anne Darwin told The Daily Mirror in editions published today.

Darwin, who stunned the world by showing up at a police station five years after he was declared dead in a canoe accident, was remanded in custody today until his hearing at Hartlepool Magistrates Court, Friday. He is charged with obtaining money by deception and making a false declaration to procure a passport. If convicted, he could spend up to 10 years in jail.

Police in Cleveland, England, said they also had started questioning Anne for claiming $50,000 from his life insurance policy. They arrested her Sunday on suspicion of fraud, as soon as her plane touched down in the United Kingdom from Miami.

Initially Anne claimed that she was delighted and surprised to learn her husband was alive, but then a photo emerged showing the Darwins together in Panama a year ago. She later admitted to concocting a tangled web of lies.

The British tabloid paper the News of the World reported this weekend that it was the first paper to see the bricked-up, coffin-shaped doorway that led from the home Darwin shared with wife Anne to his secret hideaway bedsit next door. He entered the bedsit by a wardrobe with a false back. When family or friends called on the "widow" Anne in Hartlepool in northern England, Darwin would hotfoot it next door.

During their search, the police were led to the suspicious cupboard in Anne's bedroom by the house's new owner, John Duffield.

He told the News of the World: "The police asked if there were any passageways between the houses so I looked at the master bedroom. There were gasps as I eased away a piece of shaped hardboard, painted to look like the back of the cupboard."

"But when it came off it was just glued to the breeze blocks, which had been hastily put up with cement all over the place."