A detective who investigated the disappearance of Shannon Matthews has spoken out about the case, revealing the missed signs that Shannon’s mum was behind her daughter’s kidnapping.
The case of Shannon Matthews gripped the UK in 2008 after the nine-year-old girl went missing in West Yorkshire.
This led to a massive, widespread search for her, which eventually revealed that Shannon’s mum, Karen, had arranged the plot alongside her boyfriend’s uncle, Michael Donovan.
She was found after a month at Donovan’s house alive and well, with the pair having come up with a criminal plot to make money from the publicity surrounding her disappearance.
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The case of Shannon’s disappearance is the focus of a new Prime Video documentary, The Hunt for Shannon Matthews, coming out this weekend.
Nick Townsend, one of the investigators assigned to the case, has already revealed the long-lasting effects of the case on his psyche, saying one thing still keeps him up at night 17 years later.
Looking back, however, Townsend has spoken about the signs that were missed which showed that Karen was not the concerned mother she appeared to be.
Shannon’s disappearance was reported by her mum on February 19 after she ‘didn’t come back’ from school.
The search for her spanned far and wide, leading to 10 percent of the Yorkshire Police force becoming involved in the biggest investigation in the region since the Yorkshire Ripper.
On March 14, after it had become a massive national story due in part to the class comparisons made in how much more attention was given to Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, she was found.
Shannon was found at Michael Donovan’s house in the base of a divan bed, and it was later discovered that Karen and Michael had planned to pretend he ‘found her’ and go on to claim reward money.
When speaking about the signs missed that Karen was in on the plot to kidnap her own daughter, Townsend said in an exclusive interview with LADbible: “In retrospect, and you know, everyone’s a psychologist after the event, there was just something about her demenaour that just didn’t sit quite right – little smiles to the camera and things like that.
“But people tried to explain that away as just a mother’s grief or ‘she didn’t know how to react’, she wasn’t media trained or anything like that. So, I think we tried to take account of that.
“It’s easy in hindsight to say: ‘That’s a giveaway’, ‘that’s a tell’, the psychologists will say, ‘Well, it was clear that she
was lying’ but it wasn’t clear at the time.
“Bearing in mind, this nine-year-old girl had gone missing without any trace, you had to give her the benefit of the doubt.”
Karen and Donovan were both sentenced to eight years in prison each for false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.
The Hunt for Shannon Matthews will be available on Prime Video in The UK & Ireland on August 17
Interview conducted by Jess Battison.
Topics: True Crime, TV and Film, TV, Documentaries, UK News, Crime
Michael Slavin