Still wallowing in self-pity, the mother who faked her own daughter’s kidnap
The crime that appalled Britain has just been vividly relived in a TV drama. But what, nine years on, became of the key players in the Shannon Matthews case?
THE despised mother who has turned to God — and, bizarrely, Bear Grylls’s motivational DVDs — to get over her guilt. The loyal friend who insists a conspiracy has yet to be uncovered. The father whose life fell apart.
And the heartbroken grandparents, who have only old photographs to remember their precious granddaughter by.
This is the real aftermath of the Shannon Matthews story, which was so grippingly portrayed in the BBC’s The Moorside dramatisation last week. Some ten million of us tuned into the tale of the search to find nine-year-old Shannon, who in 2008 went ‘missing’ from her home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Kidnapped by her own mother Karen, the girl was drugged, tethered to a wall and hidden inside a divan bed — all in a quest for the reward money, generated from the publicity, for her safe return.
But what the programme didn’t show is what happened after justice had been served on those behind the kidnapping. Here, we reveal how the scars of Karen Matthews’s crime have yet to heal — and just what happened to the young girl who was brutally betrayed by the one person she should have been able to trust…
NEW IDENTITY AND CELEBRITY NAME
The mother, Karen Matthews IT’S LITTLE wonder her crime earned Karen Matthews the sobriquet ‘the worst mother in Britain’ — and, today, she claims to be still struggling with her guilt.
The now teetotal 41-year- old has, apparently, found religion, with her only friends the members of her church, who regularly meet to watch motivational DVDs by the survival expert Bear Grylls.
In public, she has been keen to cultivate an image of a woman racked with guilt. ‘I asked for forgiveness through prayer,’ she said recently. ‘ I know I did something wrong, but I’m not the baddest person people are making out. I’m sorry for hurting people.’
However, while it may be that Matthews’s main motivation was money (and with a £50,000 reward offered for the return of her daughter, the sums involved were considerable), those who closely followed the case believe it was also about seeking attention.
Following her release from jail in 2012, after serving half an eightyear sentence, she’s had more tastes of ‘fame’. One involved being accosted outside a fish and chip shop by a woman who threw a pot of mushy peas at her, while shouting: ‘You evil b***h. I am a mother too!’
While Matthews has assumed a new identity, rather curiously for someone who claimed to want to flee the limelight, she’s taken the name Kate, after her favourite actress Kate Winslet.
Today, she lives in a seaside resort dubbed ‘Monstersby-the-Sea’ owing to Tracey Connelly, the mother of murdered Baby P, also being a resident. The mother- of- seven (whose children have at least five different fathers and have since been taken into care and given new identities) has struggled to create a new life.
Unable to secure work — she told a friend she blames her notoriety, rather than her having no history of working — she lives on benefits, but complains about having to get by on benefits of just £25 a week.
Physically, she’s all too familiar. Her famous red locks may now be jet black, and she’s put on weight, but Matthews is still instantly recognisable. So much so that she’s reportedly asked for cosmetic surgery.
The day after The Moorside first aired, she was pictured arranging a window display in a charity shop, sparking speculation that she has a job for the first time in her life (even if it is unpaid).
She complained that the BBC dragging up her history would make her new life untenable.
‘I cannot go out of the door. I’m frightened out of my life. I’m shaking like a leaf. I’m s*** scared to even get any shopping or anything,’ she said. ‘I know I can’t stop it, but why does it have to be dragged up again? Why don’t they just leave me alone and let me get on with my life?’
CONVINCED OF A BIGGER CONSPIRACY
The loyal friend, Julie Bushby WHAT an unlikely heroine Julie Bushby was. When her neighbour’s daughter went missing (they lived ten doors apart, but were acquaintances rather than close friends), Julie, who was involved with the local residents’ association, immediately rallied the community.
Little wonder the writers used no-nonsense Julie with her pottymouthed language but heart of gold, and played by Sheridan Smith, as their central figure.
Although she was horrified to find out that Matthews was involved in her own daughter’s abduction, the devastating discovery did not see her turn against her, like most of her neighbours.
Julie admits she felt ‘hurt and conned’, but to this day, her loyalty remains unwavering. She even believes Karen wasn’t the mastermind of the kidnap plot, saying there are other people who are keeping the real story of Shannon’s disappearance a secret.
Her friend, says Julie, was ‘weak’ and ‘manipulated’, more childlike than anything else: ‘I’m not saying she was totally innocent, but she’s not evil. Karen is a child in adult’s clothing and easily used and manipulated.’
The mum-of-three, who remains on the same Moorside estate and still keeps her ducks and geese as portrayed in the series, revealed she visited her friend in prison every month for four years, each time asking Karen why she did it. She stopped visiting when she didn’t get answers.
‘I just wanted the truth. She kept saying other people were involved,’ Julie said.
After Karen was released from prison all contact with Julie stopped as the terms of her release did not allow it.
‘Even to this day, I still class myself as a friend to Karen,’ she insists. She also champions the estate where all this unfolded, challenging claims it was — or is — a ‘real life Beirut’.
That’s no easy task, however. It transpires other residents on the estate have been offering guided tours of the streets where the ‘ famous’ Shannon Matthews lived, for £30 a pop.
HAUNTED AND UNABLE TO FORGIVE
The doubting friend, Natalie Brown NATALIE Brown lived next door to Karen Matthews, considered herself a close friend and was first to offer support after Shannon went missing. Natalie threw open the doors of her own home when Karen needed somewhere to stay while police were searching her property, and treated Karen’s other children as her own.
Yet she was the first of the inner circle to express doubts about Karen’s odd behaviour — and her growing sense that something was very wrong led to her joining Julie in a confrontation that prompted Karen’s confession.
While Julie still professes friendship, however, Natalie cannot forgive her former friend. She moved away from the estate in the immediate aftermath of the case and is still haunted by the events.
Her doubts started, she said this week, when Karen did the very first interview with reporters outside her house.
‘I was there when the family liaison officer told her not to do the interview until they had as much information as they could gather. It was owing to previous
cases when a child has gone missing and it could put their life in danger.
‘But Karen did the interview. To me, as a mum, why would you do that when you’ve been told it could put your child’s life at risk?’
STILL MISSING THEIR GRANDDAUGHTER
The heartbroken grandparents THE fact Shannon’s grandparents keep their treasured photos of her in a biscuit tin, carefully out of sight, speaks volumes about the gaping hole left in their lives.
June and Gordon Matthews say it is simply too painful to see the pictures every day.
Although the pair had a fractured relationship with their daughter (they did not approve of her lifestyle and were horrified by her parenting approach, even before the kidnap), they stepped into the breach early in Shannon’s life, helping to raise their granddaughter.
Her disappearance, and the subsequent discovery that their own daughter was behind it, shattered them.
‘What Karen did to Shannon is unforgivable,’ Gordon says. ‘That poor mite. That poor girl. And what she put us through almost killed us. I can’t forgive her. She is dead to me.’
Gordon is not a well man. He has lost almost 3 stone and been in and out of hospital with anxiety-related issues, something his wife blames on the trauma of the past nine years.
DAD WHOSE WORLD WAS SHATTERED
Shannon’s father, Leon Rose ONE of the most upsetting moments in the drama came when police find Shannon had scrawled on her bedroom wall that she wanted to live with her Dad.
Her father, Leon Rose, had been in a new relationship since 1998, but Shannon was a regular visitor to the Huddersfield home he shared with partner Tracey Goldsmith and their two children.
‘Shannon would stop over every other week,’ Tracey told us. ‘ He thought the world of her.’
When Shannon was reported missing, Leon drove to Dewsbury each day to help in the search, initially believing she had run away. Tracey, however, had her suspicions. ‘ Things didn’t add up. Karen was doing TV appearances, doing appeals and smirking. She was eating in front of the cameras. We couldn’t eat because we were sick to the stomach. We felt we were in a horrible dream.’
She says Leon was ‘over the moon’ when Shannon was found. ‘It was like he had won the lottery, but it was better than money. He had his daughter back.’
Then the truth emerged — shattering the happy ending. Leon was devastated. His ex-partner claims they split in 2008 and ‘it was the stress (over Shannon) that caused the break up. What Karen did led us to split up’. Leon, who now works as a photographer, remarried in 2014.
PARTNER IN CRIME WHO VANISHED
The accomplice, Michael Donovan MICHAEL Donovan, the uncle of Karen’s boyfriend Craig Meehan, was Matthews’s co- conspirator. Guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice, he was also sentenced to eight years in prison, but had already been released by the time Karen got out of jail.
Although Karen has always been presented as the main perpetrator, Donovan’s role was vital. It was in his home, trapped and drugged under a divan bed, that Shannon was found. Born Paul Drake, he changed his name to Michael Donovan after a character in Eighties sci-fi TV series V.
Neighbours called him a ‘weirdo’ and even his sister branded him a fantasist. He had been charged with abducting his eldest daughter prior to Shannon’s kidnap but the case was dropped.
His IQ is so low that he is classed as mentally impaired. When he was jailed, there were fears Donovan would take his own life andwas moved to a suicide watch unit at Wakefield Prison. He was also assaulted and at one point refused to eat, dropping to 8st.
In 2012, while on parole, his actions were called into question again when he was spotted acting suspiciously while sitting on a bench in Leeds. He was returned to prison for a period, and it’s not know what happened to him after that. Of all the key players, he alone has slid out of public view.
NOT FORGETTING POOR SHANNON
The victim, Shannon Matthews IRONICALLY, we know least about what’s become of Shannon, the girl at the centre of this astonishing saga. She never did come home, but was placed with a new family. She is 18 now and was not consulted on the drama about her life. Did she watch it, though? That is the most chilling question of all.