Panama’s “dead” canoeist was hacking victim

The name of John Darwin, a "dead" canoeist who had his fifteen minutes of infamy in Panama, is back in the news, this time as a victim.

Sky News, the British TV giant has admitted to phone hacking on two separate occasions including a man who hid in Panama.

The broadcaster, part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, said it had hacked the email accounts of canoeist  Darwin, who faked his own death, and a suspected pedophile.

 Sky News said both incidences of hacking were in the public interest. At the time the company was run by James Murdoch, son of Rupert, who was forced to resign as head of the UK print media empire, and recently stepped down as head of Sky  and is now, with this father, facing renewed grilling from a British legal inquiry.

Darwin  faked his death to enable his wife Anne to collect  on a $600,000  insurance policy.  The couple were undetected for  six years before  fleeing to Panama where they  purchased an apartment and a luxury 4×4. They were detected when a real estate agent posted their photo on his web site. Journalists from around the world flocked to Panama until the the couple was  extradited to  the UK and jailed.