‘Re-open Shannon plot case’
Others set up con says mum’s mate
THE police probe into the fake kidnapping of Shannon Matthews should be reopened, her mum’s friend Julie Bushby tells a Channel 5 documentary tonight.
THE police probe into the faked kidnapping of Shannon Matthews should be reopened, says a friend of her convicted mum.
Julie Bushby said she did not believe the nine-year-old’s mother Karen was clever enough to have dreamed up the scam.
She is convinced that others were involved in the plot.
Shannon was found in the base of a divan bed at the home of Michael Donovan, 24 days after she vanished in Dewsbury, West Yorks, in 2008.
Intelligence
Julie tells tonight’s Channel 5 documentary Shannon Matthews: What Happened Next, that Karen was “stupid – not evil”.
She said: “I think others were involved. Donovan didn’t have the intelligence and Karen certainly didn’t have the intelligence.
“And it certainly had nothing to do with money.
“The amount of envelopes she got through her door offering her money for her story, and she didn’t take one up.’’
Julie added: “What I’d love to do is get hold of everybody’s statements and sit there and scrutinise them, because yeah, there are qualified coppers, and they’ve probably all scrutinised these statements, but there’ll be something that I see that they don’t see. “But the chances of that happening are… uh-uh.’’ Julie was portrayed by actress Sheridan Smith in the recent BBC One two-part drama The Moorside. Shannon, who is now 18, has been raised by a new family. Julie has urged her to return to Dewsbury to see her old schoolpals.