Karen Matthews: I’m glad he’s dead
Kidnap mum’s message after cancer kills partner-in-crime
KAREN Matthews is said to be over the moon about the death of her accomplice in the kidnap of her daughter Shannon.
The 47-year-old shot to notoriety when Shannon was kidnapped and left with Michael Donovan, 54, who died of brain cancer this week. She made a number of brazen public appeals for information on her daughter’s whereabouts during the month she was missing in 2008, despite knowing where she was all along. Yesterday Matthews emerged from her flat in a long beige puffer coat and with her face hidden behind a pink scarf, and shouted: “I’m innocent, leave me alone.”
Her boyfriend Paul Saunders said on her behalf:
“She’s over the moon that
Donovan is dead. It’s the best news she’s had in ages.
“Karen hopes that he rots in hell, we both do. Donovan is scum – we hope that he had a painful death.”
The Daily Mirror reported yesterday how Donovan was still trying to put all the blame for the evil act on Karen Matthews right up until his death. Hundreds of neighbours had joined the 24-day search for Shannon, nine, in Dewsbury, West Yorks, before she was found tied up and drugged in the base of a double bed at Donovan’s flat. Matthews was going out with his nephew Craig Meehan at the time. She and Donovan devised the plot to claim the £50,000 reward for finding Shannon. They were found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting justice, and jailed for eight years. Matthews was freed in 2012. Sex offender Saunders, who now lives with her in the south of England, said: “She’s innocent. Donovan did the crime.”