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SHANNON MATTHEWS
by Katherine Smith
© Copyright 2020 Katherine Smith
Contents
AUTHOR'S NOTE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
REFERENCES
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This book is, I hope, a balanced and sensitive account of the Shannon Matthews case. The account that follows of the investigation into Shannon's disappearance draws on a number of sources which can be found at the conclusion of the book.
INTRODUCTION
The disappearance of Shannon Matthews in 2008 was genuinely one of the strangest crime cases in fairly recent memory. Missing child cases like this are awfully grim because they rarely have a happy ending. The police, media, and everyone who was anxiously looking on and following this case all feared the worst during the search for Shannon. The police were privately expecting the search to end with the discovery of a body. They had braced themselves for a tragic outcome. When the police actually found Shannon alive there was indescribable relief and jubilation. It was that rarest of missing child cases in that there was actually a happy (as far as one can use the word in these circumstances) outcome. As soon as the search for Shannon ended though a new criminal case began. To the surprise and genuine bafflement of the watching public, Karen Matthews, who had been a weepy fixture on the nightly news appealing for information about her missing daughter, was now implicated in Shannon's abduction.
In the chapters that follow we will examine how much of a surprise this development (that Karen Matthews may have been involved in Shannon's disappearance) really was - or indeed was not - to the police, media, and the friends and family of Karen Matthews. The clues, in hindsight, certainly seemed to be there. One of the most puzzling moments came after it was announced that Shannon had been found and was now safe. Karen came out of her house to pose for the expectant media pack. They wanted a nice picture of the happy relieved mother for the morning newspapers but Karen had a face like thunder. She didn't look relieved at all. The photographers and her friends had to ask Karen Matthews to smile - which was remarkable given the circumstances.
The reason why Karen Matthews didn't look very happy soon became clear. Despite her endless childlike attempts to blame others and refusal to confess to anything, Karen had been part of a crackpot money making scam so heartless and illogical it was scarcely credible. The stupidity and lack of responsibility displayed by Karen Matthews buggered belief. Karen became one of the most despised people in the country - a fate usually reserved for paedophiles and serial killers. She was not alone in her actions though. Her accomplice Michael Donovan was strange indeed and a vague relative - of sorts. These two bungling hoaxers made a very odd couple. They didn't even seem to like each other - which made their partnership in this strange crime all the more perplexing.
Karen's friend Julie Bushby always believed that there were more people involved in Shannon's 'disappearance' than the police investigation and trial managed to deduce. We will look at the evidence for this theory in the book that follows. The plan put into action by Karen Matthews and Michael Donovan had zero chance of success. The plan was so flawed and stupid that it made no sense whatsoever. The story of Karen Matthews was rather like a dark comic farce but this was no laughing matter for anyone. West Yorkshire Police also failed to see any funny side in this case. Karen Matthews cost the tax payer millions of pounds by sending the police on a wild goose chase. Vast police resources from all around the country were involved in the search for Shannon.
The case had profound consequences for both Shannon Matthews and her mother. Karen Matthews was left permanently estranged from her children and Shannon and her siblings were given new identities and new lives. These new lives, happily, were bound to be an improvement on life with Karen Matthews but the mental trauma of being taken from one's family as a child could not have been easy. Later on, in the last chapters of this book, we will attempt to bring the Karen Mathews story up to date and see what she is doing now and how the last few years have treated her. We will also consider the life of Shannon Matthews after the events of 2008.
The case of Shannon Matthews was also a sobering reminder of the class divisions which exist in our society. Karen Matthews and her family seemed to live on a different planet to Kate and Gerry McCann - the central protagonists of the other famous missing child case in recent memory. The media coverage of the Shannon Matthews case was not the finest hour of the newspapers. They depicted Dewsbury Moor and its inhabitants in the same fashion one might write about a third world warzone or refugee camp.
It is a fact (one simply has to compare and count the number of articles each respective case generated) that the British newspapers displayed much more interest and sympathy in the Madeleine McCann case than they did with Shannon Matthews. There are a number of theories as to why this was the case and we will examine them in the book. The newspapers often seemed more interested in the feuding and finger pointing going on in the extended Matthews family. Shannon, a working-class girl from a forgotten estate, did not get the celebrity appeals, density of newspaper coverage, and generous fundraising donations enjoyed by the McCann family.
At the heart of this strange drama was Karen Matthews - a naive and childlike woman who had waded well out of her depth with this bizarre criminal hoax. The fact that Karen had used her own daughter as a pawn in this hoax was completely unforgivable. Karen Matthews had her fifteen minutes of fame in 2008. It was something that she seemed to crave. Now though that fame (which lingers on in the form of sporadic tabloid intrusion into her life) is something she would dearly love to wish away. Maybe that was the real punishment of Karen Matthews. To forever pay the price for the strange and bewildering events which unfolded in West Yorkshire in the early months of 2008.
CHAPTER ONE
Nine-year old Shannon Matthews was first reported missing on the 19th of February 2008. She was last seen at around three in the afternoon. Shannon had not gone home after a Westmoor Junior School swimming trip (which took place half a mile from the school at the local sports centre). After swimming, Shannon was dropped off back at the school on the bus and was supposed to walk home (which usually took less than half an hour). She never arrived though. At 6-48pm, about three and a half hours later, her 32 year-old mother Karen Matthews decided to telephone the police. This was the beginning of what would become a very strange and very long police investigation with some bewildering twists up its sleeve.
The Matthews family lived on Dewsbury Moor in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Dewsbury lies by the River Calder and is located west of Wakefield, east of Huddersfield and south of Leeds. Dewsbury is a former mill town with a population of 50,000. Patrick Brontë, father of the Brontë sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, once lived in Dewsbury as curate to Dewsbury Church. The Luddites and their protests against rapid mechanisation of the local factories in Dewsbury were the inspiration for Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley. Known as the Moorside, the small community and estate where Shannon was raised is a red brick development that originated as part of a social housing programme in the 1930s to supply homes to those in the textile mills. The residents of the Moorside didn't have much in the way of wealth but it was a proud community. The local Dewsbury Moor Amateur Rugby League Football Club was famous as the place where Rugby League superstar Sam Burgess played his junior rugby.
The response of the police to the reported disappearance of Shannon was swift and left nothing to chance. When children go missing the first few days are obviously of vital importance. It is during the short window of these first hours where the best chance of successfully finding the child alive resides. "I don't think people understood the significance of what we were dealing with," said Barry South, divisional commander of policing in Dewsbury at the time. "It was a schoolgirl who had gone missing, we've had it before and they're usually home by bed time. But it quickly became clear this was totally different."
The Matthews home was a small semi-detached red brick council house. It was made to look all the more gloomy and threadbare by the lack of hedges, bushes, trees, or much sign of nature at all in the small front garden save for a tiny flower bed. The garden was fenced off by green iron railings. Dewsbury Moor was considered to be one of the most deprived places in the country. The media (who were mostly rich, often from London, and inevitably snobbish) painted a picture of the Moorside as some desolate forgotten place where rubbish was piled up in gardens and the locals went to the shop in their pyjamas because they couldn't be bothered to get dressed. The people on the Moorside thought this was a trifle over the top. "It was a really, really good estate," said Karen's friend Natalie Brown. "I lived on there for 21 years, from when I was six, and until this, with Shannon, I’d never wanted anywhere else to bring my kids up. Everybody knew everybody else and everybody watched out for everybody else. They watched out for your cars, for your homes, your children. If a new family moved in, they were made to feel welcome. It was just lovely."
The small house where the Matthews family lived was searched by the police - as were the houses of the immediate neighbours. The relatives of Karen Matthews on the Moorside also had their houses searched. This was a necessary and routine part of any missing child investigation. The first task is to check out the family and relatives of the missing child. Shannon's friends from school were also contacted and questioned. There wasn't too much for the police to go on although Shannon's friend Megan Aldridge said she had suffered some bullying at school recently. "The girl called her fat, ugly and stupid. Now Shannon's gone, I've no one to play with. We got on the bus home and Megan was really, really quiet. She is normally noisy and chatty. A girl came up to her and started bullying her (that day) and I told her to go away or I would tell the teacher, so she walked off. She said she was going home and I last saw her on the school bus. She was behind me and I didn’t see where she went when she got off the bus." Despite the cruel jibes of the school bully, Shannon was a popular and friendly girl. Her friends all loved her.
Any local relevant CCTV footage was also collected and scanned through assiduously. None of this immediate police activity dredged up any sign of Shannon nor any clues as to what might have prevented her from coming home after school. The freezing winter weather was a tremendous hindrance and obstacle to the unfolding police search on that first crucial day. It soon became a frozen mist shrouded night after darkness fell on Dewsbury. Frustratingly, the foggy conditions meant the police helicopter was of no use at this time and could not be deployed in the air. The authorities were understandably worried that a little girl might potentially be lost outside on this bitter and frosted February night. They desperately wanted to stay out and carry on searching but the elements were well and truly against them. At 2:30 am, the police reluctantly called off the search and decided to resume again at first light. Friends and neighbours of Karen Matthews though continued to search for Shannon that night until until 4am.
While the police and volunteers were out searching for Shannon in the mist and perishing cold of that first evening, Karen Matthews went to the supermarket to buy some groceries and a sat nav system for her neighbour Neil Hyett (who was the uncle of Shannon). It seemed like a rather strange thing to do considering her daughter had just gone missing. Why would you care about the sat nav or shopping at this worrying time? Karen would later explain this shopping trip by saying that she wanted to make sure Shannon hadn't gone to the supermarket. It wasn't the most convincing answer. A nine year-old child who was due home hours ago was hardly likely to be idly hanging around a supermarket in freezing weather on a school night.
Before the search was halted, the police had managed to search fourteen buildings and premises that first night in addition to the houses they had searched in the street where Shannon lived. The police had traced Shannon's regular journey home from Westmoor Junior School to her house on the Moorside. The fourteen places the police searched were on the route that marked Shannon's usual journey home each day. The police knew this was only the beginning. There would be a vast number of properties to be searched in the coming hours and days. What they really needed was an eyewitness or some CCTV which could shed light on where Shannon might have been heading or been with after she was supposed to be arriving home from school. The police were naturally keen to identify anyone who might have been in the area and acting suspiciously the afternoon that Shannon went missing.
Detective Constable Christine Freeman had taken the call earlier that afternoon from Karen Matthews which reported the disappearance of Shannon. The call lasted for around seventy seconds. Karen Matthews was fairly calm but agitated. She sounded genuinely worried and concerned. In the exchange, Karen Matthews said she had last seen Shannon that morning. In reply to questions by Christine Freeman on the telephone, Karen Matthews said that Shannon was usually home by half past three and there had been no arguments nor any reason why Shannon should have run away. Shannon had never gone missing before and Karen Matthews had already checked with friends and family at all the places Shannon might potentially be.
Karen Matthews told Detective Constable Christine Freeman that Shannon had a mobile phone but it was at home and she hadn't taken it to school. Karen had, of course, checked with the school too but they had no idea where Shannon was either. Christine Freeman would soon be appointed the family's FLO - family liaison officer. Freeman was privately pessimistic about the chances of finding Shannon safe and sound. "It was thick fog, the temperature was minus four and if this little girl had got lost and spent the night outside she couldn’t have survived. So my first thought was that we were looking for a child who was probably dead." The police were even more concerned when they learned that a man had attempted to abduct a 12-year-old girl ten miles away in Wakefield the day that Shannon went missing. The girl the man tried to abduct was also named Shannon.
A fidgety Karen Matthews was interviewed many times by the police in the coming days. Wearing a baggy grey top and clutching a hot drink, Karen Matthews seemed slightly rambling and unsure of exact details in an initial interview but her child had just gone missing. How was she supposed to act? Wouldn't anyone be frazzled and discombobulated in this situation? Christine Freeman was not the first family liaison officer assigned to the case. The first FLO - Alexander Grummitt - brought Freeman in because he was suspicious of certain inconsistencies in the statements of Karen Matthews. Freeman and Grummitt would work together through the long search for Shannon and spend many hours with Karen Matthews on the Moorside. Grummitt wanted a second opinion - so to speak. He wanted Freeman's input to see if it chimed with his own instincts.
The day after Shannon was reported missing, Karen Matthews emerged from her house at 7:30 pm and walked to the garden gate where a group of frozen journalists and camera crews were waiting. The media presence on the street was starting to ramp up already. Karen Matthews read out a short statement. "If anyone's got my daughter, my beautiful princess daughter, bring her home, please." Karen Matthews was red-eyed and her hands were shaking. Her red hair was untidy and the dark rings around her eyes made her look like she was peering through a mask. The voice of Karen Matthews was mumbly and anguished.
The police and Karen's friends were very surprised (and even a little dismayed) to see her on television as she had been specifically instructed not to make a public media statement until a press conference could be properly organised and she was fully briefed on what to say. The police had even told Karen that it might put Shannon in danger if she spoke to the media without consulting detectives first. Karen Matthews had obviously not heeded this professional counsel. The police could see straight away that it was not going to be easy dealing with Karen Matthews during the investigation into Shannon's disappearance.
The decision of Karen Matthews to appeal directly to the media in her back garden actually made her more convincing though. Wouldn't a mother desperate to find her missing child seek the first chance to ask the public for information? Wouldn't love and desperation always bypass protocol? While Karen's behaviour soon led to some private suspicion among those who spent time with her on the Moorside, it was difficult to have much suspicion that night about the woman who appealed to the cameras in her front garden. Karen Matthews looked suitably distraught and wrecked in this initial media spotlight.
The police had to quickly deduce what had happened to Shannon. Or, at the very least, what they thought had MOST likely happened. That was the common ground when it came to missing child investigations. Time was not a luxury. The police knew that if the days turned to weeks then it would be unlikely that Shannon was still alive. Had she run away? Been abducted? There was an obvious and necessary task the police needed to do as quickly as possible - one that is all the more important in cases like this. The police would have to learn more about the family involved in this investigation. A comprehensive family tree of Karen Matthews and Shannon would have to be subject to scrutiny and study for any possible lines of enquiry. Not only a family tree of blood relatives but also step-relations, former friends and partners, and associates.
Establishing a clear picture of the family connections of Karen Matthews turned out to be a Byzantine, migraine inducing puzzle for the unfortunate detectives tasked with this duty. Over three hundred names ended up on this elongated mathematical conundrum. "The task of tracing everybody linked to this family was on a scale I have never witnessed before," said Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan, the officer in charge of the investigation. Karen Matthews had seven children with five different fathers. Of those seven children, four lived with Karen Matthews and three lived elsewhere. In the months that followed, in the aftermath of the Shannon Matthews affair, the media (basically the tabloids) would track down some of the fathers of the children of Karen Matthews. They all told the same story. Karen Matthews was a selfish woman who duped them. She equated children with more benefit money. It was stereotypical tabloid fodder.
The biography of Karen Matthews was not an especially happy story. Karen Matthews fell out with her mother when she was 14 and spent some time in a children's home. At the age of 16 she left home for good and stayed with a boyfriend. She had trouble reading and writing and apart from a brief stint as a cleaner hadn't been employed anywhere. It's safe to say that Karen Matthews did not win the lottery of life. Shannon's biological father was a 29 year-old man named Leon Rose who lived near Huddersfield - which was about ten miles away from Dewsbury. It was obviously assumed at first that Shannon's disappearance might be explained by her having gone to see her father but, sadly, this wasn't the case. Leon Rose would participate in the search for Shannon and was supportive of Karen Matthews when Shannon was missing.
Leon Rose was impressive in the solidarity he displayed and the dignified manner in which he conducted himself. He tirelessly walked the streets and countryside searching for Shannon and appealed for information as often as he could. There was never any doubt that Leon Rose was a decent man who loved his daughter. Leon Rose and Karen Matthews produced two children when they were together. The other child was Shannon's older brother Ian and lived in Kirkburton, Huddersfield with Mr Rose. Confusingly, Karen Matthews would often refer to Shannon and her older brother as twins. They were born a year apart so, presumably, Karen Matthews referred to them as twins simply because they had the same father (something which was rare amongst her children).
Karen Matthews was now living with a 22 year-old supermarket fishmonger named Craig Meehan in her house on the Moorside. It was said that they met because Meehan was part of a gang of youths who used to mill about on the street outside. Karen got talking to him and they eventually became a couple. Craig Meehan was the father of her youngest child (or so he thought, DNA tests during the police investigation revealed he wasn't the biological father) and the current stepfather of Shannon. Craig Meehan's mother was one of nine children - giving Meehan a huge extended family. Karen Matthews also had several siblings - adding to the vast web of connections and relatives linked to the couple.
Craig Meehan wore spectacles and always seemed to have a baseball cap perched on his head. He was usually clad in tracksuit gear and sports themed jackets that seemed far too big for him. In all the documentary and press footage from the case during search for Shannon, Craig Meehan comes across as a quiet and calm person - even slightly shy one might say. Meehan had a little shelf and chair in the corner of their tiny living room where he would often be seen sitting by the computer as Karen Matthews held court with friends and neighbours. They seemed like a slightly strange and mismatched couple - even without the ten year age disparity.
On the surface it appeared as if Karen Matthews was the dominant personality in this relationship. She certainly appeared more formidable and assertive than her meek looking soft-spoken boyfriend. Karen Matthews would eventually challenge this assumption. She would later say it was quite the opposite. The relatives of Karen Matthews, to put it mildly, didn't seem to like Craig Meehan very much. This would soon lead to press whispers about his allegedly poor relationship with Shannon - something which Craig Meehan insisted was complete nonsense.
The police privately judged Karen Matthews to have some learning difficulties, a possibility which (one might argue) made her behaviour and how natural (or otherwise) it was in the circumstances more difficult to judge accurately. "I remember thinking whether she was autistic because she was laughing and smiling," said Barry South. "Immediately I thought something's not right with this woman." The police were suspicious enough to take what - in retrospect - turned out to a shrewd and sensible course of action. They decided to videotape Karen's Matthews' police interviews regarding the disappearance of Shannon so they could study her body language and see if her story meshed. On day four of the case she was interviewed at the police station as a witness (but not a suspect). Karen Matthews would be interviewed seven times in four days. The most bizarre lapse in memory from Karen Matthews in these early police interviews came when she seemed to miscount how many children she had. She told the police she had six rather than seven.
Christine Freeman shared the instincts of Alexander Grummitt when it came to Karen Matthews. There was something very strange about this case. Grummitt interviewed Karen Matthews again and noted 'nine or ten' discrepancies from her previous interview. Although she would not become an official suspect while the search for Shannon was ongoing, Freeman and Grummitt would continue to harbour private doubts about Karen Matthews. There was just something 'off' about her behaviour at times. She seemed too normal given her exceptionally worrying and potentially tragic circumstances.
"Initially the role of a family liaison officer is to investigate, to get as much information as we can from that family," said Christine Freeman. "To help us determine their lifestyle, see what sort of things Shannon liked, what she didn’t like, try to find this child. I would say that early on we began to realise there were inconsistencies in what Karen was telling us. And yeah, this is a woman that is quite probably traumatised by the fact that her daughter is missing and we did make allowances, but there were quite significant things that didn’t seem to fit."
Operation Paris, the police search for Shannon, was soon in full flow. A massive search involving 200 police officers got underway. In the course of the investigation into Shannon's disappearance, the police would search an incredible 3,000 houses. Over 1000 motorists were stopped in their cars in the Dewsbury area and questioned. The police also stationed a large electronic board with an appeal for information at the junction of Heckmondwike Road and School Lane. 16 of the 27 specialist victim recovery dogs in the United Kingdom were involved in the case. The dogs (which had come from as far away as Glasgow and Hampshire to join the search) threatened a breakthrough at one point when they became interested in some furniture but it proved to be a false alarm. The furniture belonged to a man who had died recently and had nothing to do with the Shannon case. 250 police officers and 60 detectives would eventually become engaged in an investigation that cost over three million pounds. It was the biggest police operation in the county since the hunt for the infamous Yorkshire Ripper.
In the missing child poster created by the police, Shannon was described as 4'1 in height, with shoulder length brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles. When last seen she had on a puffer jacket, a blue jumper with her school logo, and pink/grey Bratz furry boots. The police released a recent photo of Shannon sitting on some grass with her dog. In all of the photographs of Shannon she is smiling shyly for the camera. Many of the detectives on the investigation were parents or grandparents themselves. They needed no motivation to work all hours on this case. They all desperately wanted to find this missing girl. A full DNA profile of Shannon Matthews was put together from her bedroom and schoolbooks.
This included a full set of fingerprints. "Both of these items will assist the investigation in the long term," said Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Andy Brennan. The police were worried though. They described Shannon as vulnerable and not very streetwise. The police, internally, doubted that this investigation would have a happy outcome.
The police calculated there were nearly three thousand premises in the half mile zone around what was called the Red Route - Shannon's usual walk home from Westmoor Junior School to the Moorside. It was a mighty task. By the time the case was closed they had searched 1,800 of these in a matter of weeks. All the rubbish and refuse from bins collected in the area was painstakingly trawled through for clues in what was a most unpleasant but necessary operation. Those on the sex offenders register in the Dewsbury area had their homes searched, and many garages, sheds, and vehicles in the radius of the Red Route were entered and investigated. At the height of the investigation, 10% of the entire manpower of the West Yorkshire Police was assigned solely to the search for Shannon.
The Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC), which is the UK's national strategic imagery intelligence provider, was deployed to fly over the Dewsbury Moor area and look for any signs of disturbance in the ground. Meanwhile, police divers searching a nearby lake had to break through thick ice to get into the water in the freezing winter conditions. "Co-ordinated searches of open areas and houses using mounted horses, specialist search and rescue, mountain rescue teams, specialist search dogs and aerial support have all been used," said Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan. "We are using all the technology and expertise that is available including national search co-ordinators and behavioural experts. We have a team of dedicated scientists to complete our forensic examinations."
It was a tremendously complex police operation because of the many potential search trail routes alone. Much time and planning had to go into making sure that the same routes were not being searched too many times and that fresh ground was also being covered. Each and every square inch had to be charted. Detectives had to map the area and make sure that nothing was left to chance. This task was both time consuming and complicated. And then there were the thousands of properties and buildings still to be investigated. Adding to the difficulty facing detectives was the vast number of people connected to Karen Matthews and the family - not to mention other potential persons of interest in the area.
The police had to investigate any possible line of enquiry - not merely registered sex offenders with criminal convictions. During their investigation, the police discovered there were 302 registered sex offenders in the area covered by the local authority (Kirklees Council). There were 105 registered sex offenders in Dewsbury itself. All of these people had to be investigated. The police also had to investigate any men in the area who might have been seen acting suspiciously the day that Shannon vanished. This was far from the end of the task facing the West Yorkshire Police. They also had to investigate men in the area who had just been released from prison or had arrived in Dewsbury recently. All of these people had to be researched and checked too as part of the police investigation. All the former boyfriends of Karen Matthews also had to be checked out. Some of these ex-boyfriends had their flats and houses searched by the police. The scope of the
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Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.11.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-6500-4
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