Five years after he disappeared in a canoe 'accident' John Darwin walks into a police station, claiming to be an amnesiac but his wife Anne knows better and recounts the events of the disappearance. A prison officer whose fanciful money-making schemes leaves him facing bankruptcy - John plans to fake his death and persuades a reluctant Anne to collude with him. Anne feels guilty but plays her part well, leading her two twenty-something sons to believe their father is dead whilst he holes up in a bedsit he owns. After he is declared officially dead he gets a passport in a false name and, with half a million pounds in life insurance pay-out, moves to Panama with Anne, whose sons believe she has gone there alone. When John finds he needs the British police to verify his identity to get a resident's visa he concocts the amnesiac story but in the meantime the couple have been rumbled by a journalist and both are eventually sentenced to six years in prison.