Google Also Catches Criminals

A Google search helps find evidence of a fraud.

There are people who think that Google can do almost anything. But even the proudest of its supporters probably wouldn’t have thought it could help catch acriminal.   When John Darwin, who disappeared in a canoeing accident five years ago off the Northeast of England, presented himself at a British police station a few days ago, claiming to haveno memory of the last five years, it seemed to many like a return from the dead.   But the year after he vanished without trace, his wife Anne had him declared dead and received an insurancesettlement. Last year she moved to Panama City in Central America.   You might think that’s the end of the story, but it’s not, according to the Daily Mirror.   A curious woman typed “John, Anne and Panama” into Google and came up with a picture on the Moveto Panama” site. It was quite recognizably John and Anne Darwin – together in Panama City in July 2006.   "I would like to nominate them for the ‘World’s Dumbest’awards," the woman told the newspaper. "Not only were they photographed, but the date was on the picture. It was just too good to be true. I just blinked and there they were. I rang policein Cleveland. The man on the other end said: ‘You’re joking.’"   Anne Darwin has agreed that the picture is real and is said to be flying back to Britain. John Darwin has been arrested bypolice. The couple kept the secret that John Darwin was alive from their two adult sons.