The wife of John Darwin told a court yesterday that she no longer loved her husband. Anne Darwin said her husband had dominated her since they married, even after he was officially declared dead.

Tom Wilkinson and Rod Minchin

The wife of John Darwin told a court yesterday that she no longer loved her back-from-the-dead husband.

Anne Darwin said her husband had dominated her since they married in 1973 even after he was officially declared dead in a staged canoe accident in the North Sea in 2002.

Mrs Darwin told Teesside Crown Court she had considered suicide and wished he really had drowned when she was struggling to cope with the pressure of keeping up the deception.

David Waters QC, defending, asked if she still loved her husband, she replied: "At this moment in time, no."

But at the time of the deceptions she said she did love him - despite her revealing earlier her husband had an extra-marital affair some years after they wed.

She told the jury: "I was quite obviously upset when I found out about the relationship.

"I did consider leaving him but I just couldn't see a life without him.

"I didn't know how I would cope on my own so I forgave him."

Yesterday e-mails read out in court revealed she begged Darwin not to leave her as he flew back to London from Panama - where he had been hiding out - and hand himself into police.

She wrote: "Hope you had a good flight and everything okay with the family. Don't leave me. Love you, missing you already XXXXXX."

Asked yesterday why she did not walk away from the marriage when Darwin planned to fake his own death and cash in insurance policies and pensions, she said: "Because it was difficult to live with him at times; it would be even more difficult without him."

The court has heard her domineering husband forced her to take part in the deception, which involved tricking their two sons Mark, 32, and Anthony, 29, who were present at the £250,000 fraud trial.

She wept as she recalled how she pleaded with him not to carry out the scam to stage a canoe accident in the North Sea near their home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool.

She told the court she begged him: "Don't do it. Not now. Do you have to do it at all?

"He said there was no choice. He said he thought he would be able to come back in two to three months' time."

The former doctor's receptionist said: "He planned the family finances," including amassing a portfolio of properties despite her misgivings, she told the court.

When Mr Waters asked her specifically about dishonestly obtaining a £2000 from a pension scheme she blamed her husband for this and all other deceptions.

The court heard Darwin, 57, has admitted making the fraudulent claims to clear the family debts and start a new life under the assumed name of John Jones. Mrs Darwin denies six counts of deception and nine of money laundering, claiming the defence of marital coercion, meaning he forced her to break the law against her will.

Mr Waters asked Mrs Darwin about prosecution claims that she was playing the "grieving widow".

She replied: "I honestly felt like a grieving widow. I had lost my husband, not in the sense he was lost, but he had left me.

"I felt desperate, I felt ashamed about what was happening. The emotions I showed were genuine emotions."

Mrs Darwin was then asked about the time when her son Mark travelled from his home in Basingstoke, Hampshire, to comfort his mother, when she flung her arms around him and said "he's gone, I think, I have lost him".

She admitted to the jury that she did remember doing that and conceded: "I had to make it look realistic and I was upset. I wanted everyone to think it was real."

The couple planned a new life in Panama but last November Darwin flew back to the UK to hand himself in to police, claiming he was suffering from amnesia.

"I really thought it was going to be a difficult story for anyone to believe," she said.

"He said he couldn't think of anything better."

The trial was adjourned and continues today.