Karen Matthews’ Haunting Words to Neighbor Before Daughter’s Mysterious Vanishing Revealed
So, picture this: it’s 2008 in West Yorkshire, and a little girl named Shannon Matthews mysteriously vanishes—poof! From right outside her school, setting off one of the wildest missing person hunts you could imagine. But here’s the kicker: Shannon was never really missing. Nope. Turns out, her own mother, Karen Matthews, hatched a plan to fake the kidnapping. Yep, you read that right! The entire town of Dewsbury got swept up in the chaos, with police scouring thousands of homes and spending a cool £3.2 million trying to find her. What kind of twisted plot twists are we talking about here? Think drugged-up hiding spots and staged “rescues” that looked straight out of a crime thriller. And if you’re wondering how someone could pull off such a stunt—well, grab some popcorn, because this story’s been immortalized in a new Prime Video documentary that spills all the tea—from neighbors’ jaw-dropping tales to the police detective’s suspicions. Trust me, it’s an eye-opener on how sometimes, the biggest mysteries come from the least expected places… and people. LEARN MORE
Back in 2008, Karen Matthews conspired to ‘kidnap’ her nine-year-old daughter Shannon in one of the most twisted missing child investigations of all time.
In February, Shannon seemingly vanished from outside her school, which was approximately half a mile from her home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
Unsurprisingly, the girl’s disappearance started a wide-scale missing persons investigation which involved police officers searching thousands of houses and questioning hundreds of motorists in the West Yorkshire area.
The community of Dewbury also worked with police following appeals from law enforcement and Karen herself, in what would become one of the largest ever searches conducted by West Yorkshire Police, costing about £3.2 million.
However, three weeks after Shannon’s disappearance, it was discovered that she was safe the whole time – and that her mother had known all along.
Karen Matthews had initially appealed to the public to help her find her missing daughter (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
The mother-of-seven collaborated with her boyfriend Craig Meehan’s uncle, Michael Donovan, to deceive the British public into believing that her daughter had vanished on her way home from school.
In a stunt that was said to have been an opportunity inspired by the attention of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, Shannon was drugged and kept in Donovan’s flat, where she was later discovered hiding in the bottom of a bed frame.
It would be revealed in court that the pair would plan to let her go at Dewsbury Market so they could ‘find’ her and claim the reward.
The case is the focus of a new Prime Video documentary, The Hunt for Shannon Matthews, which came out over the weekend. In the two-part documentary, Karen’s neighbour, Petra Jamieson, recalled how the mum would speak about her daughter’s disappearance before she was arrested.
According to Petra, she and Matthews went to a local fish and chip shop, where the person at the counter offered her a meal on the house on account of her situation.
Shannon Matthews’ disappearance in 2008 was all over the British media (West Yorkshire Police via Getty Images)
“She looked at me and just said she should ‘get rid of one of my kids more often’. At the time, I just slapped her on the side of the arm… ‘Why would you say that?'” she recalled.
She wasn’t the only person who thought something was up, as a detective who worked on the case also mentioned some unusual behaviour displayed by Matthews at the time.
When Shannon was discovered, Petra said the community was ‘bouncing around’ as a result. She added that Karen ‘liked the attention’ of being in the media, explaining: “She liked the fact that she could go into town, and everyone recognised her. People had sympathy for her and compassion, giving her hugs.”
While she never believed Karen could have been a suspect, she struggled to believe that her ‘friend’ had tricked her.
Karen’s involvement with her daughter’s disappearance soon came to light (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
“Even though she admitted it, I wanted to see if she would sit and admit it in the court. At the end, she still couldn’t be honest,” Petra said. “She lied and lied and lied. Is that because she thought she could get away it? Who knows?”
Both Karen and Donovan – who died last year – were jailed for eight years at Leeds Crown Court in January, though both served four years before being released in 2012.
Matthews continued to maintain her innocence and claimed to The Mirror in 2018 that she’d made a ‘scapegoat’ while further alleging that she ‘didn’t know where’ Shannon was ‘from the start’.
Following her release from prison, Matthews was relocated to the south of England, while Shannon and her siblings were granted anonymity and new identities following a High Court injunction in 2020, as they live apart from their mother.
