The wife of a British man who was presumed to have drowned five years ago in a canoeing accident has said a photo of them taken in Panama last year is genuine.
John Darwin was arrested this week on suspicion of fraud after walking into a London police station and telling officers he believed they might be looking for him.
Mr Darwin (57) vanished in March 2002 from his home in northeast England.
Mark and Anthony Darwin
Since reappearing, tanned and in good health, the former prison officer's family has said he has no memory of events since 2000.
Attention has now switched to his wife Anne (55) who sold her home and left Britain for central America with £450,000 shortly before his shock reappearance.
British tabloid reporters descended on Panama en masse, and the Daily Mirrorpublished a photo that apparently showed Mrs Darwin with her "dead" husband in a Panama apartment last year.
When the tabloid confronted her with the picture, she was quoted as saying "Yes, that's him. My sons will never forgive me. They knew nothing. They thought John was dead. Now they are going to hate me."
The allegations provoked an angry response from the couple's sons, Anthony and Mark. "How could our mam [mother] continue to let us believe our dad had died when he was very much alive?" they asked in a statement to the media.
"If the papers' allegations of a confession from our mam are true, then we very much feel that we have been the victims in a large scam."
Yesterday's Mirror front page
"We have not spoken to either of our parents since our dad's arrest, and at this present time we want no further contact with them," they said.
The mystery began in 2002 when Anne Darwin reported her husband missing and said she feared he had suffered an accident while kayaking in the North Sea near their home in Hartlepool, northern England.
A few weeks later the remains of his red kayak were discovered, and following a police inquiry in 2003 a coroner declared him dead.
Officers said they had received a tip-off three months ago that indicated there might be "something suspicious" about his disappearance.