Anyone watching The Thief, The Wife & The Canoe?

Thanks Sparklefizz that explains it then .

I don’t feel sorry for the wife that was just about as cruel as you can get and she was very happy to go overseas and expect to live the life of Riley with creepy Joe
Putting her sons, and his family I believe his father was alive through that was as cruel as you can get how did she live with herself
He was a Walter Mitty character who could lie for England but she was just unbelievably cruel

We're watching it and can remember the case.

I can't understand why this spin has been put on it to make it seem as if the wife was coerced into the actions she took.
It's impossible to imagine how a woman could put her sons through that and go off beaming to Panama to join her rotten husband in a sunlit paradise.
It was calculated and callous.
She's very lucky that her sons have forgiven her.

She did get a longer sentence than him for whatever reason but it seemed unfair to put her in a prison with murderers.

He was a Walter Mitty character yes, a fantasist, but he believed his own lies and convinced himself (and her).

Did the insurance companies get their money back?

Both main actors are excellent, particularly Monica Dolan.

I know! It's so far-fetched. How she could keep lying, not once but for years, to her 2 lovely sons and the rest of her family, I will never know. She was as complicit as her husband

Her poor FIL, sitting at the dinner table, sobbing.
Only someone hard as nails and/or totally in thrall to her husband could keep up that pretence.

NannyJan53

I have only watched the first episode, but that was my first thought. A police officer did ask if there was any reason i.e an argument, or financial difficulties. The wife said no, and it seems they didn't investigate his finances. Odd to say the least.

Just a little bit more detective work would have discovered that they owned the house next door too and that there were no tenants, yet a man was seen coming and going from there.
Not to mention connecting doors - they did a house search!

I read Anne Darwin's book so wanted the watch the TV drama.

Why on earth the Police didn't follow up properly the story Anne gave them when an ex-collegue of John's saw him on the street and reported it. She said it was a cousin of John's who looked very like him. Also John became very brazen and did painting and maintenance work on the outside of his house.

You couldn't make it up and the book was certainly an interesting read and if I remember correctly she didn't take any profit from it. Felt sorry for her in some ways but No means No and she should have stuck to it.

I can’t seem to access this on ‘it hub’. Anyone know why this should be ?

Why on earth the Police didn't follow up properly the story Anne gave them when an ex-collegue of John's saw him on the street and reported it. She said it was a cousin of John's who looked very like him. Also John became very brazen and did painting and maintenance work on the outside of his house

The wife was very persuasive in getting a verdict of death y misadventure before the legal seen years were up.

Oh dear, not typos but stylos!

by and seven

I gave up on it as I found it boring and the main characters were so unbelievable ..

BBbevan

I can’t seem to access this on ‘it hub’. Anyone know why this should be ?

Just had a look, it’s on there, all the episodes showing.

It's 'ITV hub' BBbevan, not just IT hub.

Sorry fat fingers. I know it is ITV hub.

At the time this story first broke a friend of mine confessed she was John’s cousin. She said their grandmother used to call him a stupid boy.
While I watch the programme that phrase keeps ringing round my head.

Grammy666

I gave up on it as I found it boring and the main characters were so unbelievable ..

Yes, unbelievable, but it really happened. It's not fiction.

Truth is stranger than fiction, Grammy

I googled what happened after their prison sentence They only got 6 years plus a few months and were out in 3 they divorced in prison and he has remarried a phillipeano woman and lives there living off his U.K. pensions ?grr and says he is going to Ukraine to fight ( he’s 71!,)

She is back in the family bosom of her sons!!!

Apparently he was a teacher for 15 years,,, goodness help the children he taught

Enjoying it, but I think she is just as bad as him, worse in a way. I couldn’t have him do that to my children and parents. They had 12 rental homes just selling one would have cleared debts of £56k. How could the family,the sons and wives forgive their mother? She comes over as controlled and submissive but I don’t find that believable, considering they bought so many houses for investment, they were not stupid and very money motivated, enough was never enough, yet they never thought anything through, it doesn’t add up.

This story is so ridiculous that if it wasn’t true, I wouldn’t have gone further than the first half hour.

I can well believe she was coerced.
I married a controlling man and if I weren't a stronger person he'd have me jumping through all kinds of hoops at his bidding, though not necessarily illegal ones.
I remember the story well and was fascinated from the start by how badly it'd been thought out, and how pathetic the insurance company and the police were. But just how dreadful for that poor woman to spend all those years in such a state of tension as well as seeing her sons grieving like that must have broken her. She was weak and desperate, but I do feel for her.

what I thought was unbelievable was when she told the police that she didn't have a photo of him - I mean doesn't everybody have at least a wedding photo or why didn't they find his passport with a photo in it? and of course they didn't look into their finances?! I don;t have much sympathy for her, she is an intelligent woman and said early on that what was planned was immoral as well as illegal. I read in an article that she said at that point in time she had fallen out of love with him, so I don;t believe the coercive control plea

Yes - watched all of it. Unbelievable they got away with it as long as they did. I can't believe it was portrayed almost as a comedy - it was a crime that shoved all our insurance premiums up. They should have been billed for the cost of the emergency services time they guzzled up.
I don't believe she was coerced at all. She went along with everything just to avoid the shame of bankruptcy. Simpler to sell the houses, Range Rover and move into a 1 bed flat. Telling your sons their father has died is outrageously cruel. She had endless opportunities to jump off the bandwagon she was on - across two continents and many years and she took none of them.

You couldn't make it up and the book was certainly an interesting read and if I remember correctly she didn't take any profit from it

I don't believe you are allowed to profit from crime.

I'm afraid that I do havae sympathy for her, she first met him at 14, he was the only man she had been with at all, he had managed to separate her from her family and friends, or maybe just stopped her from making any friends, so she had more time to fulfil his every wish. He didn't give a sh1t about his father, when she said what about the family, he just said well the parents will die soon
I wholly agree that she shouldn't have done it but after 30 odd years in thrall to the man I can see how it was hard for her to stand up to him. And once in the situation, what better defence against killing her if she stood up to him than he couldn't have done it because he was dead
I did watch the programme with the true story, and couldn't believe how people had identified him and said they'd seen him and no one did anything about it, if the police had taken them seriously then yes she would have been in bother with the police but not in such bother, the extra bi of sentence for her was because it was a different charge, she was fraud, she was the one that fraudulently claimed
he was pretending to be dead or something [should have taken into account that the search for him and the police investigation would have cost ££££££.
As for those who say well she was smiling in those photos, well anyone who has been a victim of abuse knows that you have to smile because if you look miserable it reflects badly on you, and could cause further violence, my now ex used to ask people who he thought might have seen me around how I seemed, and would report back so and so saw you in the market yesterday and said you looked miserable, very dangerous to put yourself at risk
In The true story follow up, I did think that the living room was very odd-looking, nothing to personalise it, just sofas, didn't seem to be any photos or pictures or anything to make it look like most people's living rooms
He was a fantasist, entitled, buying expensive cars when they were on their uppers and presumably living on her income, presumably not letting her know about any of the finances. Obviously should have sold some of the properties and cleared the mortgages, sold the car, and got a sensible one, etc. MAybe sold the canoe. But he was too important for that sort of thing, didn't want to seem a failure
Interesting what the insurance man said about there had been other claims where it had been said someone had been lost off a boat, so he wasn't even original with his cunning plan

I can well believe she was coerced.
They TV version is sympathetic towards her but here she is in real life, with the estate agent in Panama. She doesn't look at all nervous or pressurised!