London, England (CNN) — John Darwin’s wife said her husband faked his own death to avoid mounting debts and holed up in the family home for years, hiding from his own sons, according to UK media reports.

Anne Darwin said her husband, believed by police and his sons to have been lost at sea five years ago, recently returned to the UK, faking amnesia, because he missed his now-adult children, according to The Daily Mirror.

“I didn’t think he would get away with it but he had had enough of being dead,” she is quoted as saying.

John Darwin, 57, is being questioned by police in northeastern England following his arrest on suspicion of fraud, a spokesman for Cleveland, England, police said.

Darwin walked into a police station in London last weekend — five years after he was thought to have died after the remains of a canoe he paddled into the North Sea, off northeastern England, washed up on shore.

Darwin was declared dead by a coroner in 2003, 13 months after his disappearance in March 2002.

His wife, the paper reported, described how the prison officer and former teacher discussed faking his death just before he disappeared because of mounting debts.

When John Darwin vanished she said she thought he was dead — until, she is reported to have said, he turned up on the doorstep of the family home at Seaton Carew, northeastern England, one year later.

“I didn’t even recognize him at first,” Anne Darwin told the newspaper, adding that her husband looked thin, dirty and smelled dreadful. “I was relieved he was alive, of course. But I was also very angry with him.”

She said that her husband stayed at the home on and off before he got a one-room apartment in another part of the large house so he could vanish if friends or family arrived, also disguising himself with a hat or limp when he went outside.

But hiding away began to take its toll, Anne Darwin reportedly said, and the pair decided to leave Britain.

Her husband traveled on a false passport to look at property in Cyprus and inquire about buying a catamaran in Gibraltar, she said, before they finally settled in Panama. She went to live there six weeks ago.

She is believed to be in the United States after leaving Panama on a flight late Thursday, a Panamanian immigration representative has told CNN.

Anne Darwin, the newspaper said, stated that it was always her plan to repay two insurance policies in her husband’s name: one, a life insurance policy, for £25,000 ($50,000); and another for £130,000 ($265,000), which was paid to their home loan company to pay off the mortgage in the event of her husband’s death.

The newspaper said she was not paid for her story and accepts she is likely to be arrested upon her return to Britain.

Following his reappearance last weekend, John Darwin was initially reunited with his two sons, who released a joint statement saying their father claimed to have amnesia dating back to June 2000.

But in a statement released by Cleveland police Thursday, the sons, Mark, 31, and Anthony, 29, said they were in an “angry and confused state of mind” and they wanted no further contact with their parents.

After media reports Thursday that Anne Darwin had confessed to knowing her husband was alive, the sons said: “If the papers’ allegations of a confession from our mam are true, then we very much feel that we have been the victims in a large scam.”

“In the short space of time following our dad’s appearance in London on Saturday, we have gone through a rollercoaster of emotion,” the statement said.

“From the height of elation at finding him to be alive to the depths of despair at the recent stories of fraud and these latest pictures,” it added.

“How could our mam continue to let us believe our dad had died when he was very much alive? We have not spoken to either of our parents since our dad’s arrest and at this present time we want no further contact with them,” the statement said.

The wife of a British man who disappeared more than five years ago but then turned up alive at the weekend has herself gone missing, media reports said Tuesday.

John Darwin, 57, who was thought to have died in a canoeing accident in the North Sea, walked in to a London police station and declared he was a missing person, but had no memory of where he had been.

As police try to piece together the mystery, newspapers said his wife, Anne, has now disappeared, with family and friends unaware of her whereabouts.

She emigrated about six weeks ago, possibly to Panama in central America, after selling the family home in Seaton Carew, northeast England, and not leaving a forwarding address.

Puzzled neighbours and the house’s new owners told reporters she left furniture in the house and Spanish language books.

Six months after her husband’s disappearance that she thought she was a widow. An inquest was also held into his death.

A number of newspapers said the wife had an active bank account in Panama. But other neighbours were convinced she was in Australia or the Caribbean.

Police questioned John Darwin, a former teacher and prison officer who was declared dead after the remains of his canoe were washed up on the beach at Seaton Carew in March 2002.

At the weekend he walked into a police station saying “I think I am a missing person” according to the Guardian.

“The guy can’t remember anything about what’s happened or why he’s come forward. He has no memory at all. He has obviously been somewhere for the last five years and a lot of questions need answering,” it cited a source as saying.

His father, Ronald, 91, was quoted as saying that a childhood accident in which his son was knocked over by a car and suffered a head injury could account for his amnesia.

The case has revived memories of others in which people have disappeared or apparently committed suicide, only to emerge years later very much alive.

Notable examples include that of Richard Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, who vanished in 1974 when his children’s nanny was found murdered at his estranged wife’s house in London and the former government minister John Stonehouse.

Over the years there have been a number of claimed sightings of Lucan, who was a notorious gambler with huge debts.

In 1974 Stonehouse left his clothes on a beach in Miami and fled to Australia with his secretary to start a new life, leaving his wife, another mistress, a daughter and mounting debts.

He was tracked down, coincidentally by police hunting Lord Lucan, and jailed in 1976 for theft and false pretences. After leaving jail he worked for charities and died in 1988.