Armed police arrest canoe 'widow' on plane packed with passengers as she lands in UK

Shortly after landing at Manchester yesterday morning, the wife of the "back-from-the-dead" canoeist was arrested, read her rights and led off the packed Boeing 767.

Last night she was being held at Hartlepool police station facing the strong likelihood of a prison sentence - even on the evidence of what she has already admitted to the Daily Mail.

Scroll down for more...

Her husband John, 57, will face magistrates today charged with making an untrue statement to procure a passport and obtaining a money transfer by deception in relation to a life insurance policy.

He is said to be "fit and well", and an application will be made for him to remain in custody.

As the Daily Mail brought her back to Britain, 55-year-old Mrs Darwin gave a wry smile at the beginning of the flight and said: "Well, it was a nice dream while it lasted."

It was only in the minutes before landing that the scale of her problems appeared to hit her and she suddenly looked pale and terrified.

"I feel sick to the stomach," she said minutes before the plane landed.

The couple's grown-up sons Mark and Anthony yesterday gathered for crisis talks at a relative's house along the coast from the seafront home at Seaton Carew, where husband and wife secretly lived together after Darwin faked his own death in a canoe "accident" five years ago.

Mrs Darwin says she has not spoken to her sons - or her husband - since his arrest last Tuesday when the couple's incredible story rapidly began to unravel.

She flew into Manchester at 9.05am on the final leg of a journey from the Panama flat where she and her "missing" husband had planned their new life.

Before the plane took off from Atlanta, Mrs Darwin - who takes medication for blood pressure problems and poor circulation - put on her flight socks.

As the packed Delta aircraft taxied towards the arrivals gate at Terminal 2 she fought back tears as she looked out on a bleak, grey Manchester morning.

But she expressed relief that nearly six years of "living a lie, watching over my shoulder and dreading every knock on the door" was now over and she could "get it over with".

"Yes, I'm frightened," said Mrs Darwin, a former doctor's receptionist. "I know it's not going to be at all easy. It's terrifying."

Scroll down for more ...

She had been warned that she would be arrested on suspicion of fraud on arrival back in Britain and, within moments of the jet coming to a standstill, the aircraft door swung open.

A Greater Manchester police sergeant, uniformed and armed - like the five officers behind him - came into the cabin.

After a brief chat between the officers and cabin crew, an air hostess picked up the tannoy and said: "Could Mrs Darwin please come forward?"

Many travellers had probably read of the astonishing story of the "missing" canoeist that flashed around the globe. But few could have been aware that the woman at the centre of the mystery was flying with them.

In the full gaze of the 250 passengers, grey-haired Mrs Darwin rose from her seat, walked a few steps forward and made herself known to the posse of police.

She stared blankly ahead, saying nothing, as she was read her rights after being formally told she was being arrested on suspicion of fraud.

The armed officers then led Mrs Darwin, her head bowed, along the airbridge to a lift from where she was taken to the airport police station.

Scroll down for more ...

She was there for nearly three hours and was seen by a doctor who declared her fit to travel although, according to one source, she was "very distressed".

Shortly after midday she emerged from the police station and she was driven to Cleveland in an unmarked police car escorted by two more police vehicles.

Last night her solicitor Nicola Finnerty said: "She is fine, but very tired. I shall be seeing her again shortly."

It is nine days since John Darwin walked into a London police station claiming to be suffering from amnesia and announced: "I think I'm a missing person".

Cleveland police will now question his wife over precisely when she knew that he had faked his death in the North Sea in 2002.

She has already admitted to the Daily Mail that she secretly lived with her "dead" husband and cashed in life insurance and mortgage insurance policies totalling £155,000 knowing he was alive.

Mrs Darwin insists neither of her sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, was aware of their father's fake disappearance.

Police plan to talk to both brothers but at present as "victims or witnesses" and not suspects.

Asked if she believed she had any future with her husband of 28 years, she replied: "I just don't know what will happen, or whether we'll be able to pick up the threads after this."

Mrs Darwin did not seek, or receive, any payment for her interviews with the Daily Mail.