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October 12, 2012updated 16 Oct 2012 3:28pm

41. British journalism’s greatest ever scoops: Canoe wife Anne Darwin (freelance David Leigh for Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, 2008)

By Richard Wilson

Splash news agency journalist David Leigh bagged simultaneous fronts for both the Mirror and Daily Mail after he tracked down Anne Darwin, the woman whose husband faked his own death a canoeing accident.

The papers agreed to cooperate after both giving Leigh part of the information he needed to find Darwin in Panama.

Explaining how he got the story, Leigh told Press Gazette: “I knocked on the main door and got nothing at all for ages, about an hour”.  Eventually a neighbour let him into the complex.  

“You could see there was no light on but we knocked and knocked. Then this little voice said, ‘What do you want?’”

Leigh persuaded Darwin to talk to him by explaining that before long reporters from almost every newspaper would be stalking her and camping outside her door.

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