Canoe man's 'lover': 'Darwin the Druid is psychotic - and I was terrified of him'

Darwin, who reappeared five years after apparently drowning, had sent £25,000 to Kelly Steele in 2004 to purchase a ramshackle farmhouse in a rural part of Kansas.

The pair met on the Internet while playing a fantasy role-play game, as he lived secretly with his wife.

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Web friends: Kelly Steele met Darwin when he was posing as a druid in an online fantasy game

Darwin, 57, who was posing as a Druid for the game, had told 41-year-old Mrs Steele that he was planning to lead a quiet and anonymous life as a cattle farmer, she said.

He introduced himself as a businessman called John Jones and said his wife had died of cancer.

Within days of receiving the money, Mrs Steele bought a derelict ten-acre farm in Kincaid, south of Kansas City, for £14,000 and began renovating it.

When she finally met Darwin at the airport in Kansas, she immediately felt a sense of foreboding.

"I'll regret I ever became involved with John Darwin until the day I die," she told The News of the World.

She persuaded him to return to England until she had completed the renovations. But back in the UK, he began sending her abusive e-mails and death threats, it is said.

It is alleged that she thought the offer of doing business with Darwin would be the perfect solution to her mounting debt problems.

But Mrs Steele's brother Tony Gibson, who works with her third husband, Jamie, said she had no debt.

"She thought the guy was kind of weird. He stayed with my sister for about a week, but he was acting kind of creepy. She wasn't comfortable with him being in the house and wanted him to go and stay in a hotel.

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Kelly Steele and her family pictured in the Nineties

"Then about a month after Kelly bought the farm for him, he suddenly announced he wanted all of his money back and began sending her threats and a bunch of other stuff by email.

"At first we were all playing online together, we started talking and he seemed OK. I just thought he was kind of a fruitcake when he was talking about giving somebody he'd never met $20,000 to start a cattle farm. But it turned out he was a psycho."

One e-mail from Darwin to Mrs Steele reportedly said he would employ a New York firm that he hinted used Mafia tactics, to collect unpaid debts.

"Things will happen and continue to happen unless you repay me all the money," he allegedly wrote.

"They have photos of you, your daughter (they said she's cute) and your sister (better inform your dear sister too, as they will have to contact her if they can't find you)."

Mrs Steele has said that the e-mail made her so fearful of Darwin that she still keeps a loaded shotgun next to her bed,

Darwin who is charged with dishonestly obtaining £25,000 life insurance and making an untrue statement to procure a passport, is in custody awaiting his next court appearance on January 11.

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Kelly is said to have bought the Kansas ranch on behalf of Darwin

Mrs Steele told The News Of The World: "I was absolutely terrified. That night I put a loaded shotgun next to my bed, knives under my pillow and two years on, that has not changed. He's the creepiest, oddest and most frightening man I have ever met."

Mr Gibson said his sister never did repay the money. The rundown farmhouse and 20-acre plot in a hamlet 100 miles south-west of Kansas City, remains in her name, but is unoccupied.

"She has no plans to do anything with it," he said.

Darwin's 55-year-old wife Anne is also in jail facing charges of cashing in a £136,500 policy on her husband after having him declared legally dead.

She had suggested he might have had an affair with a "lady in Kansas".

But Mr Gibson said there was no romantic link and that his sister had a happy family life in Kansas City with her husband and their 11-year-old daughter.

Darwin, a former prison officer and teacher, was presumed dead when the remains of his canoe were found after he had paddled out to sea from his home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, in 2002.