The kidnapping of Shannon Matthews: ‘I believed her mother – then helped arrest her'
Karen Matthews, 32, phoned the police to say that her nine-year-old 'beautiful princess daughter' had failed to return home from school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, on Feb 19 2008.
It was the start of what would become West Yorkshire Police's largest operation since the Yorkshire Ripper: a 24-day, £3.2m search that gripped the nation, before sparking a debate on class, welfare and 'broken Britain'. Bushby is among friends, journalists and detectives who recall the fraught chapter in a new two-part Prime Video documentary, The Hunt for Shannon Matthews.
Then chairman of the Moorside tenants and residents association, she opened up the Community House, turning all the lights on in the hope it would act as a kind of beacon should Shannon see it.
It also became the hub of the round-the-clock campaign to search for the schoolgirl. Leaflets and T-shirts – 'Have you seen SHANNON MATTHEWS?' – were printed and vigils arranged. Within 48 hours, 200 volunteers had joined the hunt in freezing temperatures. Soon, there were so many, police had to ask them to step back for fear they would disturb evidence.
Bushby, now 55 and a grandmother of 10, was only a passing acquaintance with Matthews until they befriended each other on a parenting course, run by a local Youth Inclusion Programme. 'I had problems with one of my kids and she had problems with one of hers,' she says in the documentary, but won't be drawn on further details today.
Initially, Bushby had 'no thoughts at all' about the disappearance. 'Shannon could have just gone down to her mates or anything,' she tells The Telegraph. But slowly it dawned on her how grave the situation was. Especially when she opened her curtains to see the street 'just full of TV wagons'. Fellow neighbour Petra Jamieson says it 'looked like the circus had come to town'.
Some of the attention was welcome; many across Britain had been wondering why the missing working-class girl from Dewsbury had been getting so much less publicity than when the daughter of doctors – Madeleine McCann – had vanished nine months earlier.
But the media glare soon soured. Radio commentators wondered, was it relevant that Matthews had seven children by five different fathers in nine years? What about the fact Matthews was photographed carrying in a case of lager? 'Very deprived area, Dewsbury Moor, full of poor families, bad for car crime, lots of single mothers,' intoned one news reporter.
'The local towns, they showed [genuine] interest. The rest of the country, I think, judged us more than anything else,' remembers Bushby, who was played by Sheridan Smith in the starring role of 2017 BBC One series The Moorside. Smith has described Bushby as a friend. Bushby said the drama told the story truthfully, 'and it showed the community spirit, which is what it was about'.
But she still has a particular distaste for how The Sun reported the case, describing the estate as 'a real-life version of the smash-hit Channel 4 show Shameless' (an early, abandoned police theory was that a storyline in the Channel 4 show had actually inspired Shannon's kidnapping) and quoting a local road sweeper who quipped: 'It's like Beirut, only worse.'
'I mean, even your paper did a story and didn't judge us,' she tells me. 'And you're a posher paper than the one that did slate us.' She had welcomed the reporter into her home and allowed him to use her loo. Months later, Bushby confronted him, borrowing a copy of The Sun from a man nearby and tapping him on the shoulder with it. 'I said, 'Next time you want to use my toilet, that's your toilet paper.''
On March 14, Bushby received a phone call from a local saying Shannon had been rescued by police. 'I think for all of us, it was a big relief,' she says. So focused had she been on rallying support that she had not allowed herself to spend any time analysing the behaviour of Matthews. However: 'When she was found, that's when the ball game changed.' The community was reeling from the news that the girl had been discovered hidden in the base of a bed at a flat in nearby Batley Carr belonging to Michael Donovan – the uncle of Matthews's partner.
Another friend and neighbour, Natalie Wood, became more suspicious of Matthews, more quickly. Three weeks after Shannon's return, Wood and Bushby organised a meeting with her. It took place in the car of Detective Constable Christine Freeman, the family liaison officer, with Matthews in the front seat. But Freeman let the two women, who earned the nickname 'Cagney & Lacey' after the 1980s TV crimebusters, do all the talking.
'Me and Natalie got our heads together,' says Bushby, 'and we played this, if you like, good cop, bad cop in the back of the car. My thoughts were, 'God, I hope it's over today. I hope she comes out with the truth.' We both said she'll deny it all the way through. But we thought it was worth a bash.'
Wood put it to Matthews that she had cooked up a plan with Donovan before 'bottling it'. Silence filled the car before Matthews finally said, 'Yes, that's right' and burst into tears. Freeman arrested her on the spot.
Matthews still seemed unaware of what lay ahead. 'She did say, 'Can I go home now?', but that's like a child saying: 'I've told [the] truth now, can I go home?' I don't think people realise just how childlike Karen actually was.'
The trial of Matthews and Donovan was told that Shannon had been drugged and tethered to a beam in his attic. The pair were found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice, and sentenced to eight years in prison, serving four. All of Matthews's children were taken into care and Shannon was given a new identity. Donovan died last year.
After the interrogation in the car, Bushby made a promise to Matthews: 'I told her I'd always be her friend.' It was a pledge she kept for the duration of her incarceration, going to see her monthly – the only visitor after 'everybody abandoned her'.
I ask how Matthews changed over the four years. 'She didn't,' says Bushby. 'She was just very timid if certain women were in the same room. Whenever I said to her, 'Ooh, that's a nice shiner you've got', she'd tell me that she'd walked into a door. She walked into a fair few doors.'
Bushby believes that a version of the story Matthews first told (she later changed it four times) was what actually happened, and it was nothing to do with seeking a cash reward. Rather, she arranged for Donovan to take Shannon while she made plans to leave partner Craig Meehan – who later that year was convicted of possessing indecent images of children – but she felt forced to report her daughter missing as she became trapped in a web of lies.
In 2017, Bushby told The Mirror that she thought there were at least three other people – no longer living in the area – involved in the kidnapping. Indeed, in the documentary, she points out, 'even the judge turned round and said, 'There were more people involved in this''.
'Still to this day, I think that,' she says now. Although she has three specific people in mind, she adds, 'I'm not going to name them because I can't afford the lawsuit.' As for why they weren't ever investigated: 'Once Karen cracked, I don't think [the police] were interested any more.' On why 'Britain's most hated mum' would carry the can for others: 'She's told me that she's scared of family.' Will we ever get to the truth, I wonder. 'No,' says Bushby.
She hopes Shannon, now 26 and living under an assumed identity, is 'doing well, and she's reaching her dreams'. And that she is able to put this behind her? 'Well, she'll never be able to put it behind her, will she?'
Perhaps nor will Dewsbury Moor estate. Seventeen years on, when people hear where Bushby is from, they still ask if that's where 'that kid went missing under t'bed'. But she has never considered moving. Says Bushby: 'Because Moorside's safe. It's my home. It's still a friendly community.'
When David Cameron visited to make amends for having damned a locale 'whose pillars are crime, unemployment and addiction', Bushby put him in his place. She told him to deliver his apology from the heart, not a piece of paper, and chided him for turning up sans jacket and tie, unlike his interview with Penny Smith on that morning's GMTV. 'I asked him, if I changed my name to Penny, would he have made an effort?'
She only agreed to take part in this new programme to put a serious counterpoint to Shannon Matthews: The Musical, an Edinburgh Fringe 'black comedy' released as a film last year. She has not seen it: 'I'm not going to watch some sort of s---e.'
But she fully expects another backlash, this time on social media, once the documentary airs. 'If people didn't have their opinion, it wouldn't be England, would it?'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
18 minutes ago
- The Independent
Sturgeon: ‘Witch-hunt' MSPs investigating me were being directed by Salmond
Nicola Sturgeon has said she believes some MSPs who investigated the Scottish Government's handling of sexual harassment allegations against Alex Salmond were 'taking direction' from him. The former Scotland first minister wrote in her autobiography, Frankly, that she thought either Mr Salmond or his allies were guiding some opposition MSPs on what to ask her. She accused her opponents in the special Holyrood committee of a 'witch-hunt' against her. The committee ultimately found Ms Sturgeon misled the Scottish Parliament over the Salmond inquiry. However, she said the probe that 'really mattered' was the independent investigation by senior Irish lawyer James Hamilton which cleared her of breaking the ministerial code. The former SNP leader said that while she was 'certain' she had not breached the code, 'I had been obviously deeply anxious that James Hamilton might take a different view', admitting that 'had he done so, I would have had to resign'. She said that she felt 'on trial' as part of a wider phenomenon that when men were accused of impropriety, 'some people's first instinct is to find a woman to blame'. Ms Sturgeon did admit to 'misplaced trust and poor judgment' in her autobiography, which was published early by Waterstones on Monday, having been slated for release this Thursday. She wrote: 'This feeling of being on trial was most intense when it came to the work of the Scottish Parliament committee set up to investigate the Scottish government's handling of the original complaints against Alex. 'From day one, it seemed clear that some of the opposition members of the committee were much less interested in establishing facts, or making sure lessons were learned, than they were in finding some way to blame it all on me. 'If it sometimes felt to me like a 'witch-hunt', it is probably because for some of them that is exactly what it was. 'I was told, and I believe it to be true, that some of the opposition MSPs were taking direction from Alex himself – though possibly through an intermediary – on the points to pursue and the questions to ask.' Ms Sturgeon described the inquiry, to which she gave eight hours of sworn evidence, as 'gruelling' but also 'cathartic'. MSPs voted five to four that she misled them. The politicians began their inquiry after a judicial review in 2019 found the Scottish Government's investigation into Mr Salmond's alleged misconduct was unlawful, unfair and tainted by apparent bias. Mr Salmond, who died last year, was awarded £500,000 in legal expenses. Ms Sturgeon wrote of the inquiry: 'It also gave the significant number of people who tuned in to watch the chance to see for themselves just how partisan some of the committee members were being. 'Not surprisingly, the opposition majority on the committee managed to find some way of asserting in their report that I had breached the ministerial code. 'However, it was the verdict of the independent Hamilton report that mattered.' She said her infamous falling out with her predecessor was a 'bruising episode' of her life as she accused Mr Salmond of creating a 'conspiracy theory' to defend himself from reckoning with misconduct allegations, of which he was cleared in court. Ms Sturgeon said her former mentor was 'never able to produce a shred of hard evidence that he was' the victim of a conspiracy. She went on: 'All of which begs the question: how did he manage to persuade some people that he was the wronged party, and lead others to at least entertain the possibility? 'In short, he used all of his considerable political and media skills to divert attention from what was, for him, the inconvenient fact of the whole business. 'He sought to establish his conspiracy narrative by weaving together a number of incidents and developments, all of which had rational explanations, into something that, with his powers of persuasion, he was able to cast as sinister.' Ms Sturgeon speaks about Mr Salmond several times in her autobiography, which also has a dedicated chapter to him, simply titled 'Alex Salmond'. In it, she speaks of an 'overwhelming sense of sadness and loss' when she found out about his death, which she said hit her harder than she had anticipated. Ms Sturgeon says the breakdown in their relationship happened long before Mr Salmond's misconduct allegations. She said it had begun to deteriorate when she became first minister in 2014 following his resignation in light of the independence referendum defeat. Ms Sturgeon claims her former boss still wanted to 'call the shots' outside of Bute House and appeared unhappy that she was no longer his inferior. She also accuses him of trying to 'distort' and 'weaponise' his alleged victims' 'trauma' through his allegations of conspiracy. Ms Sturgeon claims that Mr Salmond, who later quit the SNP to form the Alba Party, would rather have seen the SNP destroyed than be successful without him. Despite her myriad claims against her predecessor, though, Ms Sturgeon said: 'Part of me still misses him, or at least the man I thought he was and the relationship we once had. 'I know I will never quite escape the shadow he casts, even in death.'
The Guardian
18 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Lucy Letby: Who to Believe? review – just when you thought this case couldn't get any more confusing …
In May 2024, the New Yorker published an article with the headline 'A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it?' Access to the online version of Rachel Aviv's piece was banned in the UK due to reporting restrictions, with Letby's retrial on an additional count of attempted murder then imminent. Rules aside, asking whether Letby was in fact innocent also felt taboo at the time, a pursuit for social media conspiracy theorists. Fast forward 15 months, and 'did she do it?' is merely par for the course when it comes to the case, with even experts cited by the prosecution apparently unconvinced of Letby's guilt. This new Panorama comes hot on the heels of an ITV documentary that aired earlier this month, Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt?. That programme focused on holes in the evidence that was presented to the jury who found Letby guilty of killing seven babies and attempting to kill seven more at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016. Hers had been, said Neena Modi, a professor of neonatal medicine, a 'deeply disturbing' trial based on flawed evidence. Claims made in the trial were roundly rubbished by a panel of specialists who reviewed the case, and by experts found by the programme makers, making the evidence sound more like a series of sad anomalies than conclusive proof of wrongdoing by Letby. In any case, one would be unlikely to come away from that programme without at least a measure of doubt about her convictions. And yet, many other doubts do persist, leading – one fears – to a continued stream of programmes about the case. This is the third instalment of Panorama that Judith Moritz has made about Letby; the first, released in 2023, was subtitled The Nurse Who Killed, another last year was named Unanswered Questions, and now, in keeping with the rising sense of uncertainty, we have Who to Believe?. Like the ITV documentary, it considers the limitations of the evidence that put the 35-year-old behind bars. Unlike that documentary, though, it also considers whether the alternative version of events put forward by experts such as Modi and Shoo Lee – who rebutted the prosecution's interpretation of his work on air embolisms – holds water. It is a muddled hour of television, in which Moritz and producer-director Jonathan Coffey (who have also written a book about the case together) describe various things as conjecture, before supplying more conjecture of their own, and ultimately concluding that it's a right old mess. It certainly wouldn't be right to take the ITV documentary – or any other for that matter – as the ultimate authority on the case. But this Panorama seems to add very little in the way of conclusive information. Take, for example, this lightly heated exchange between Moritz and Coffey, who are discussing whether or not it is significant that the prosecution's expert witness, Dr Dewi Evans, changed his mind on one of the babies' cause of death, from air pumped into the stomach to an intravenous air embolism. Moritz: 'It's not like you had a situation where [someone was] saying, this person was shot … actually, no sorry, there's no gunshot wounds at all, I've decided instead they drowned.' Coffey: 'Some people would say that's exactly what we're dealing with here.' Moritz: 'It's certainly a difficult case to get your head around.' Coffey: 'Well, some people would say it's not a difficult case to get your head around, that actually they have got their head around it and the prosecution expert evidence is all over the place.' Moritz: 'Yeah – and other people would say they got their head around it and convicted her!' It's more like a drivetime phone-in than serious investigative journalism. Clearly, Moritz and Coffey care about the case, and about finding out whether Letby has indeed been wrongfully convicted. But in an investigation remarkable for the sheer number of theories involved – and now counter-theories – the addition of counter-counter-theories is hard to compute. A long tangent into the death of one child – Baby O – and how he may or may not have sustained injuries to his liver, only underscores the lack of consensus among experts, and the possibility of falling down rabbitholes at every turn. Similarly, inflated insulin levels in Baby F and Baby L lead to wildly different interpretations depending on who is explaining it all. We are told that the immunoassay tests that were used during the trial were highly unreliable, and shouldn't have been relied on in court. And yet, we also hear that those levels of insulin just cannot be explained away. Unless, of course, the tests were wrong …? And around and around we go. In determinedly not taking any claims at face value, Who to Believe? will surely confuse viewers even more, and brings us no closer to understanding whether there is indeed a compelling alternative to the events set out by the prosecution. It concludes that Letby was either 'spectacularly bad' at her job or this was a major miscarriage of justice. Taking us right back to where we started. Lucy Letby: Who to Believe? aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Scout group ‘racially abused' after being mistaken for migrants
A group of teenage Scouts were allegedly abused online with 'offensive and racist' language, after being mistaken for a group of illegal immigrants by Welsh locals. The group had been camping at the CRAI Scout Activity Park in Newbridge when a video began to circulate online on Facebook falsely claiming that Gwent police were guarding the site. The video, which showed the group of over 30 youngsters being collected by coach, has since been deleted. Police confirmed they were investigating the comments made on the video for racism offences. Temporary chief superintendent Jason White said the force wanted to correct 'mistruths' circulating on social media and were making inquiries about posts containing 'inappropriate and offensive language'. 'The group featured in the video were visiting from another part of the country to attend a frequently used Scout camp in Newbridge and many of the people in the video are children,' he said. 'The site is not used to house anyone on a permanent basis. The site is used by our dog handlers to train our police dogs when not used for visits and our officers are not guarding the location. 'So, with that in mind, we're asking everyone to consider the tone and sentiment of their language but also for people to think twice about what they might read online and look for trusted voices within our communities.' ScoutsCymru described the venue as 'an inclusive and welcoming campsite and activity centre' with a range of activities for youth and community groups. 'We are aware of a racially aggravated incident targeting under-18s who were leaving after visiting our activity centre and are working closely with the South Wales police to address this situation,' a spokesman said. They added: 'We are committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of everyone on site and will continue to take immediate and robust action against any behaviour that threatens this.' The CRAI Scout Activity Park is a campsite and activity centre near Caerphilly in the South Wales valleys. On their website, it states they offer camping, hammocking and indoor accommodation, as well as providing a conference room, kitchen, dormitories and toilet with shower.
