to the UK to sell her home while Darwin remained in Panama. In May 2007, the couple purchased a £200,000 tropical estate in the village of Escobal, Colón, Panama, near the Panama Canal, with the intention of building a hotel from where canoeing holidays could be run. In a later interview with Darwin, published in Elizabeth Greenwood's book Playing Dead, he states that the canoe-rental aspect of this purchase was a story entirely fabricated by the media playing on the romanticism of his faked death. He and Anne visited Panama again in July 2007, staying for six weeks. A police investigation was started in September when a colleague of Anne became suspicious upon overhearing a phone conversation between the couple. The Darwin family home was sold for £295,000 in October 2007 and Anne subsequently left for Panama. In the third week of November, the couple holidayed in Costa Rica before returning to Panama. On 30 November 2007, Anne bought an airline ticket for her husband to England because "he was missing his sons". On the same day, Mark left his property firm after working his notice period. Return and arrest Following a change in Panama's visa laws, Darwin emailed Anne on 14 June 2007 to notify her that their identities would have to be verified by UK police in order for them to receive now-required Panamanian "investors' visas". Knowing that his "John Jones" alias would not pass this level of scrutiny, Darwin decided to return to the UK under his real name and fake amnesia. On 1 December 2007, Darwin walked into the West End Central police station in London, claiming to have no memory of the past five years. His wife Anne—who had sold up her British properties and moved to Panama three months before his re-appearance—expressed surprise, joy and elation at the return of her missing husband. The UK police by that time had already suspected that Darwin might not have been dead since Anne, despite portraying herself as a broken-hearted widow, took foreign holidays, planned to sell the family home in Hartlepool to move to Panama and transferred large sums of money abroad. A police financial investigation had already begun three months prior to Darwin's reappearance, following a tip from one of Anne's colleagues connecting her claim on her husband's life insurance and her subsequent emigration to Panama. The Darwins' cover story unravelled after the Daily Mirror