I believed in the story of missing girl

WHEN I tell people I interviewed Karen Matthews during the disappearance of her daughter Shannon, they always ask if I believed her. I did. I was a young journalist on the Dewsbury Reporter, and the media circus was quite an eye-opener.

It didn’t take long for the national press to start dragging Dewsbury down. The town and its people were trashed.

Yet on the estate, friendly people welcomed me in and told me Moorside was a nice place to live. Everyone waiting for a council house hoped to find a home there.

They described the search for Shannon, putting up posters, roaming the streets, finding a way to support Karen and her family.

Two weeks after Shannon went missing, Karen and her then boyfriend Craig Meehan agreed to an interview.

As we went in, we saw children’s shoes lining the stairs.

The living room was painted sky blue with a wallpaper border I guessed the children had been picking at.

Family pictures covered the walls, and a portrait of Shannon and her brother and sister hung on the chimney breast.

Karen and Craig sat next to me, while a friend played games on the computer. Children sat on the sofa watching TV.

I was expecting Karen to break down, but her eyes were vacant and distant. She barely said a word. Craig answered almost every question.

It was strange, but I guessed Karen didn’t know how to cope. Perhaps the doctor had to sedate her.

Later, it was hard to write the story. Karen had said so little.

She’d told me she had barely been able to enter Shannon’s bedroom.

She said: “We know she’s alive. All we can keep thinking is she’s safe and well. I feel empty without her.

“The little ones don’t understand it but her older brother is finding it hard.”

When Shannon was found, journalists swamped the estate. We were all waiting for Karen to come home. Of course, that never happened.

Years have passed and I’ve often thought about that interview. Why did I believe them?

Karen’s behaviour was odd, but it wasn’t suspicious. She was hardly a criminal mastermind.

The national press used the actions of those involved to vilify an entire town.

But the BBC1 drama The Moorside has shone a light on the truth.

The good people who lived there wanted nothing more than to get Shannon home – and they did everything they could to find her.