Still not dead

This woman again!

A woman who once pretended to be dead to avoid a speeding case has now been jailed for receiving benefit after falsely claiming her husband had died.

Glenda Askew, 48, of Swansea, who got over £11,000 in council tax and housing benefit, was jailed for four months. She told the council in 2001 he had died, but checks showed they still lived together, city magistrates heard.

... between October 1999 and March 2007 she had failed to declare that her partner Ian Bootyman had been living with her. When checks revealed they lived at the same address, Askew repeatedly denied that was the case.

As well as claiming Mr Bootyman was her brother, in December 2001 she wrote to the council to say he was dead. [BBC]

Meanwhile, there’s the case of the missing canoeist. I can only imagine that this story is being funded by a major studio in order that it can all be made into a film, probably a family crime caper:

A canoeist who reappeared five years after it was thought he had drowned has been arrested on suspicion of fraud.

John Darwin, 57, was presumed dead after the remains of his canoe were found on a beach in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool, Teesside, in March 2002. He walked into a London police station at the weekend saying he did not remember where he had been.

His arrest came as the Daily Mirror published a photo allegedly showing Mr Darwin and his wife, Anne, in Panama.

Mr Darwin’s 80-year-old aunt Margaret Burns, from Blackhall Colliery, County Durham, said: “We don’t know the truth of the story, but I think we will if we wait a bit. But what’s the point in speculating, when we don’t know? I’m as intrigued as anybody about what happens next.

“Most of the family believe the trauma of nearly drowning in the canoe was enough to make him lose his memory, but I’m not so sure.”

[BBC]