HARTLEPOOL, England, July 17 (UPI) -- Anne Darwin, whose husband staged his death in a canoe accident, claimed in an English court Thursday that he forced her to go along with the fraud.
Darwin is on trial in Teesside Crown Court for participating in the scheme to collect her husband's life insurance. Earlier this week, her two sons testified for the prosecution.
On the witness stand, Darwin depicted herself as a wife totally dominated by her husband, The Times of London reported.
"If there was something he wanted me to do, he would ask me initially to do it and, if I didn't do it, he would just go on and on at me until I did," she said. "All the major decisions were made by John."
John Darwin resurfaced last year when he walked into a London police station five years after he supposedly drowned in the North Sea near his home in Seaton Carew. At first he claimed to have suffered from amnesia but pleaded guilty to fraud earlier this year.
Anne Darwin said she was "distraught" when she had to make phone calls to report her husband's death.
