THE ABDUCTION OF SHANNON MATTHEWS | *SOLVED*

so today we are going to be talking about another true crime case and today's video we're gonna be talking about a case that is very close to home for me like literally close to my home like this case literally happened like 10 minutes from my house and I recognized a lot of the people that were doing like interviews and like I've seen them in town before and it was just it was so weird researching this one today we're gonna be talking about the abduction the solved abduction of Shannon Matthews so before I get into this video I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this video this is all just information that I have found on the internet and I'm compiling into one video on this case so Shannon Louise Matthews was born on September the 9th 1998 she lived in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire in England and she was nine years old at the time of her disappearance she lived on a council estate in Dewsbury called the moss side which is very famous now because of this case she lived with her mother Karen Matthews and her mother's boyfriend Craig Meehan our Craig Mian I don't know the correct pronunciation of that last name so I might be saying both throughout this video sorry she also lived with four of her seven siblings pretty much all of her siblings had different dads and so some of them were living with their own dads some of them are living with Karen and but we'll get more into the kind of family tree later on the my side estate was a very kind of poorer area of Jewsbury there were all council houses if you don't know what a council houses is a house given to someone by the government if the car like a father owned but area had a particularly high crime rate as well as the particularly high unemployment rates and not a lot of people were working and a lot of people on that estate were claiming benefits for different things again if you don't know what benefits are if you're not from the UK it's just like money from the government for different things so like so you're a single parent you can claim for single parents benefits because you've only got one wage to look after your child I don't know why I had to explain it in such detail but people were claiming money from the government for different reasons Shannon Matthews went missing literally like nine months after Madeleine McCann and that's that's the theme that we're going to keep coming back to in this video quite a bit because the Matthews family and McCann family were pretty much under the same circumstances a little girl goes missing absolutely no trace they need help from the public they need funding but both the macam family and the Matthews family even though they had the exact same circumstances pretty much they were treated very differently the McCann family were middle-class they were wealthy both parents were doctors they had this gorgeous little girl with blond hair and blue eyes whereas the Matthews they were claiming benefits they were living on a council estate they were I don't know they were just treated so much differently than the Mekons where and it's believed to have been because of social class especially in the media which is arguably the most important part of a disappearance case because that's how the majority of people are going to be able to try and identify a missing person but the media were just awful about the Matthews the whole time they were portraying them as lazy scruffy these people that claimed all this money off the government and like they pointed out that all the kids are different dads and it was just like you never saw that same treatment with the McCanns even though it was the exact same situation and a lot of people do believe it was social class but despite the family not being quite as well-off and despite them not being as conventional with all these different dads and stuff the kids still seem to have quite a like a happy life a normal life guys else is just like any normal family else the kids have been on the game station or whatever and that's how it what the normal Shannon herself was a very quiet girl she was kind of introverted kind of shy she didn't really put herself out there too much quite quiet Shannon I'm withdrawn she just put red down and get on with things should go in a bedroom one player and do it on a car set and play games on computer because she was sir shy she only really had a couple of close friends nice if tight bells would be always what those people are to go play field Shannon's birth father Leon Rose was pretty much out of the picture ever since Shannon's mother Karen met Craig Mian who was 22 years old 10 years younger than her like I said Shannon was one of seven siblings to five different men and so this was a huge family a very like big family tree Shannon had one full brother but other than that the other five were all half-brothers and sisters and all of their identities are protected for obvious reasons and although it seems kind of unusual for one person to have seven children to five different people it's thought that Karen is very vulnerable and she looks for acceptance in a lot of people karen Matthews does have a learning disability which is thought to be why she acts kind of like she needs acceptance from a lot of people she acts kind of childish a little bit immature farid she's very vulnerable and so it's thought that she looks for love in all these different men and she kind of confuses their intentions another theory as to why she had so many children with so many different men is because of benefits obviously the more children you have the more benefits you get for these children and so it's kind of like Karen was also unemployed so all these different benefits from all these different children kind of was her job I think it kind of was her job to be a mom unofficially but the amount of benefits she was getting it was like a wage where his benefits are supposed to be just like he's supposed to have a job and then he's supposed to have benefits on top of that to kind of help you out but if you've got seven children all these tiny amounts of money to help you out are going to add up to a full wage out there and zom friends and family have said that they believe that like children equal benefits to Karen and they believe that that was what was going on so the day of Shannon Matthews disappearance was Tuesday February 9th 2008 and it was a school day for Shannon just like any other Shannon got ready for school she put on her school uniform as well as her winter cooked and this court had fur around the hood and she lived in England it was February she lived up north in England like around that time of year you can expect minus degrees and and so she was getting ready for school making sure that she was warm Kevin got Shannon opposed animals rest sick kids shamon had sweet we walked down to school which she did every single day in the UK well in the north of England I don't know if it's the same everywhere I don't mind me but schools do free swimming lessons as part of the curriculum when you're around nine or ten years old and to like try and teach you how to swim for free and it was Shannon's turn to do these free swimming lessons and so her and the rest of her class all went to the local swimming baths that day and after that she came up books and well we got off it I saw her walking ball just get a gal my mother Karen normally walked up to the top of the road to meet Shannon as she was coming out of school but on this particular day Karen had been out shopping with Craig's sister and she didn't get home until four o'clock that evening Shannon stepdad Craig Mian was supposed to go to work that day at around dinnertime but he was feeling a little bit unwell and so I decided not to go in so he was at home when Karen got home that day at about 4 o'clock and he was the one to tell her that Shannon still wasn't home schools in the UK well in my area at least Shannon's area tend to finish at around 2 to 3 o'clock especially around Shannon's age she was only nine years old and so I'd said that school finished at about 2:30 for her so at this point at 4 o'clock it had been over an hour since Shannon was expected home first Kraig and Karen didn't panic too much they thought that maybe she'd just gone to a friend's house to the park and not told them it was about I don't know four o'clock went down to Kevin's I just said to Cal inertial shall we playing at pack so we don'twe over from school but she'll be on Kevin she was okay so quite calm but I could tell she was panicking because Shannon had never been late from school before but by 4:30 it had been around two hours since Shannon had finished school and no one had zina and so Karen started going around to like her friends houses and the neighbor's houses knocking on doors to see if anyone had seen her or if she was at anyone's house soon got dark pretty early because it was wintertime and it was freezing it was February and so they were starting to get quite worried and Karan's friend Petra is sure to call the police within minutes of Karen's 999 call the police were then at her home and inquiries were started police officers went out and did all the usual knocking on doors check the friends check the neighbors check the relatives and she's nowhere to be found so quickly the news got around to like immediate family and friends most of which also lived on the Masai - [ __ ] so they all just went straight over to the Mathews house and the house literally filled up with in like an hour when I went to see our Karen I kept putting my arms around ass up with that she will cuddle in me I will cry and she will clay in she'll really upset family and friends that night went out on like a manual fingertip search all searching themselves for literally hours like some of them driving around streets some of them walking like searching fields and bushes and just looking at anywhere for Shannon the next morning the rest of family and friends were informed because at this point it was looking very serious like she'd been gone overnight in the freezing cold it was the middle of winter so it was no longer looking like a runaway now it was looking like an abduction and so the story was ran on the local news hundreds of police officers in West Yorkshire are searching for a nine-year-old girl who's been missing since last night Chandler Matthews from Jesus Bree didn't come home from school morning two police officers known as family liaison officers were assigned to the Matthews family one of them being Christine Freeman which was like the main one and I'll be putting her interviews in here and stuff I suppose one of the first things that hit me was the fact that Craig is on his xbox concentrating on playing a game and Karen's just sat beside him and there seem to be side by side whatever they did one of the officers was downstairs questioning Karen and Craig and everything while the other officer took a look around the house and when they did they went into Sharon's room and they looked above her bunk bed and they found the words I want to live with my dad written on the wall meanwhile Cameron was being questioned downstairs like I said and she actually originally told this police officer that she had six children when we know that she had seven the police knew she had seven but they just have to try and get her to stay all these things like offer on back they can't give leading questions so instead of saying like you have seven children is that correct they'd have to say how many children do you have and she said six so they pulled a rope on it they were like well it says here that you've got seven and she were like yeah do what sorry we're a mystic she just kind of brushed it off but I thought that was kind of interesting to mention she also ran through the events of that morning with the family liaison offices she said that they all got ready for school as normal they all hurt and all four kids all sat down at the table for breakfast and then Shannon's last words to her we're bye mommy love you but just think about it for a second is that really like realistic like she had four kids to fully get ready age from like I think the youngest one was like four or something I don't know I don't know exact ages but getting all these children ready at the same time and then all sitting down for breakfast at the same time it's not impossible but how many families actually live like that you know like I know my family never lived like that which is not a bad thing it's just realistic like you're not all gonna be ready at the same time to be able to sit and eat breakfast together so police were immediately kind of not suspicious but a little bit worried because it just seemed unrealistic like I don't know how many families actually live like that I don't I don't think I know any top of that the that day when the family liaison officers went there for the first time and she told them these events one of the liaison officers recalled that the table in the kitchen was covered in a lot of stuff just like clutter all over it which how are you gonna eat your breakfast to a table if this stuff all over it like fair enough this was the day after so like this stuff could have been put there that night it was chaotic yes but the Mafia was maintained that they were trying to keep life as normal as possible for the rest of the kids so if that was part of your normal daily routine to all sit and eat together at this table you wouldn't let it get full of stuff would you you know if you try to keep things normal for the rest of the kids I don't know that within the first certainly five ten minutes my phone rang and I've got one of things Dodger tunes on it and Karen got up and she said she started dancing didn't she just in front of the telly I remember thinking this is the first time I've met yet and there's something just not quite right here yeah 24 hours into the investigation and over 300 officers had been drafted in to try and help search for Shannon and the community also started their own little search when they were doing searches me and my dad went off can get out with them one parent a girl or two kids up from school whilst the other parents no out searching people work the days off people gave up the spare time people in effect neglected their own families to search for Shannon people from literally all over West Yorkshire were travelling introduced Barry to try and help find this little girl like even my own auntie that is how closely affected everyone like my auntie was gonna go out and do like the manual searching with everyone like the looking in bushes and stuff but my aunt's he had just had a baby and she can't find anyone to look after the baby so she didn't no one cares but my auntie had no idea who the Matthews were before there's like people that had no idea who this family was never heard of them were traveling like half an hour 45 minutes to come in and try and help find this little girl that is how affected everyone was people were donating time money resources people were literally doing anything they possibly could to try and help find this little girl but at this point Shannon had been missing for over 24 hours and it was looking unlikely that she was gonna be found safe or alive and so the Matthews family we're wanted to try and like stay inside the house and not take part in the manual search well a lot of people where like the whole community was just told stop you searching because if someone stumbled on a crime scene one they would see something they didn't want to see they would see something unpleasant two they would probably contaminate the crime scene if they just accidentally stumbled on it they would affect something and it'd just be safer for police to do the search because they're experienced they'd know how to handle a crime scene and so people would just kind of want to take a step back from the search the Matthews family especially like the police warned everyone to just try and take a step back from the search a little bit but the Matthews family were pretty much like prisoners in their own home they couldn't really do anything I understand why the world they don't want us to go out searching just in case there is anything out there if the strike base which we remember the police are more experienced and fingertips searching basically so instead of the manual searching like looking in bushes looking in fields like the community was doing before they started their own kind of different methods I myself went twice down got some t-shirts for nothing and Shannon's picture printed on them and I took some a poster up top will not local shops and therefore a copied me and under copies because this estate was a council estate they had a building on site called the tenants and residents association house which is I don't I don't know what it's used for something to do with the fact that it's all council houses they need this building on the site I don't know but anyway that building was converted into like a base for people to report back to people to get information from people to hand out leaflets and like collect leaflets to go and hand out elsewhere the TRA house of the main stop off if you needed more leaflets about strangers would seen on the news about Shannon that just come there leaf what's up the way the community came together in this case is one of the most memorable things in the whole case it was just amazing to see this kind of community that the media had labeled is like lazy and scruffy and good-for-nothings they were all coming together and then we're all working so hard to find this little girl they were just showing the spirit and the heart of the working class and I'm getting really passionate about this it makes me really happy taxis well donating rides to leeds/bradford Otisfield that's how far we were going round I mean leaflets out and the media was so invasive the whole time this family had just lost a little girl she's gone missing and they were just so like rude and just constantly wanting flowers and interviews and pictures which I can understand but at the same time the little girl's gone missing like so in the UK we have this thing called poverty porn which is not what it sounds like is a horrible name I know but it's the nickname used for shores that kind of follow the working-class and just follow them live in their lives really it's literally like watching goldfish in a ball it's it's awful it's a horrible concept and these TV crews pretty much just follow around working-class people but alike on benefits struggling to live and it's put on TV for these like middle-class families to watch in their big warm homes and it just I don't know I hate the idea of it but that's a that's quite a big thing in the UK and that's one of the reasons that this case was so big in the media like yes a little girl went missing but children go missing all the time but this one was kind of like poverty porn mixed with a child disappearance like it was TV gold which is just a horrible concept to think about but at the same time these reporters were thinking like oh this'll be like really good TV like the middle-class are gonna love watching this whether it was good coverage or not they were still getting Shannon's face out there they were still getting the story out there they had a better chance of of being found on the second day of the investigation over 48 hours since Shannon was last seen Karen made a public appeal on the news despite police and friends telling a doctor she'd been advised against it by police because they know what they're talking about in abduction cases it's the person that had Shannon if she was abducted if the person that had Shannon saw this public appeal on the TV they would then know how big this search was how big this appeal was to get Shannon back and it puts Shannon's life at risk they might want to hurt her they might want to try and get rid of it you know and but Karen didn't listen to that and she put her daughter's life at risk and did this public appeal anyway Shannon if you're out there please darling come home I love you so much many daddy brothers sisters everybody loves you he doubted missing you so much Shannon he's even out looking for you he's come home Sunday if you don't come home if anybody's got my daughter and my beautiful princess please bring her home safe throughout this whole investigation Karen had just been acting really weird and just doing things that he probably shouldn't be doing like the public appeal like dancing along to wring turns she was just wasn't the image that you would expect of a woman that was fearing for her daughter's safety it was I don't know she was joking a lot she was laughing a lot it was just kind of inappropriate don't get me wrong I know it's important to stay positive during times like this I know it's important for mental health and stuff but she was just I don't know she was doing it a lot like on camera and inappropriate times and it was just like I don't know really strange I don't know she was just really strange like dancing to ringtones during the search for your nine-year-old daughter like in what world is that appropriate a lot of people said that she would just like turn the tears on in front of the camera and then as soon as she'd like get back into the house after making a public appeal she'd be all smiles and jokes again which I don't know like your brain can sometimes do that like if you put into a very emotional situation like begging feed after to come home the tears will just turn on and but the walk just turns straight back off as soon as you go back into the house like you'd still be quite affected when you when you finished if that makes sense and but Karen went straight back to like joking and laughing people think that Karen just really likes this new kind of attention that she was getting everyone was being so nice where everyone in the UK a new name new office wanted to help her and and there'd be times when they'd be out in public and someone would be staring at them because they'd like recognized him or someone had come up to them and she'd be like oh do you think they recognize me from the news like I don't know just weird things like that like you dog has gone missing and your priorities are kind of like oh who recognizes me not where is my daughter how is my daughter remember one instance where there was a bulletin on the news and she's moving the net curtain for the cameras outside to be able to watch the net curtain moving on the television and it just to be game there were a lot of enjoyment about the attention that they were getting she was also like a hundred percent sure that Shannon would be found alive like she was never fearful about the length of time that Shannon had gone missing like the longer the time is that a child is missing they say like after 24 hour 48 hours there's basically no chance of getting them back alive um and Karen just never really thought about that she was just she just knew that they were gonna get Shannon back alive she didn't think about Shannon being dead and that's what got me she never thought of Shannon being harmed or being dead and she'd never didn't attain the fact of it whatever you'd say that's why she tell me you do realize him activist about she might come back which might somewhat might have happened to her and she said no aunty aunt there in police investigations like this where they have to interview like all the members of a family they make a little like family tree diagram as you can imagine Shannon Matthews like family tree was huge seven siblings five different fathers and then like all their different families it was just there were so many people to interview and a noble inquiry I would probably use one one slice of a4 paper would achieve what we want to do in relation to the immediate family and friends however with this particular family blue out of all proportion relations quite unlike anything I've ever been involved in as police began interviewing the family of the Matthews that was when they discovered that karen Matthews had learning disabilities she often acted more immature she was a very vulnerable person and the Matthews family often got into fights that's the house I used to live in and the house joining on was where Karen used to live there was one occasion where they'd been a big fight in the house I'm a friend and I went actually we heard it from next door and went in and actually took Shannon out of the house police came and took Karen to the station while the neighbor Claire looked after Shannon who was in pretty bad condition when she got to Claire's I mean while we'd had her feet were absolutely Elfi when we got the men and will actually have to roll the dirt off the soles of a fate she also covered in head lice she was a very difficult child to get to smile as well and she flinch with sort of movements and loud noises blaring social services so many times while she lived next to the Matthews because she was so worried about the children's well-being we just kept reporting and nothing seemed to be getting done and we were saying that something's gonna happen to these children how can you leave them in these conditions because the house was filthy its stank it really just you won't want a pet dog in there let alone children social services had been receiving reports since the birth of Karen's first child in 1996 saying that she was a bad mother she neglected her children on an inspection of the family social services found that the children should signs of neglect which I don't know what that means exactly but obviously it's not good I just don't know what those exact signs where and at one point Shannon and another sibling were put on the Child Protection register and at one point another sibling got taken away and put into the care of a foster family social services also reported that the house was dirty it was full of rubbish often lacking electricity so Karen wouldn't pay the bills and they just wouldn't have liked lights and heating and just not good living conditions for children especially on top of that neighbors were a part in that the children was sometimes left to learn in the house sometimes even at night they weren't attending school regularly and there was alcohol and drug abuse in the home but none of this really proves anything other than the fact that Karen's just not a very good mother it doesn't link her to Shannon's disappearance in any way I just think it's like valuable information for you to know the forensic teams were brought into the house at this point it was like three days in two and a half three days in and forensic teams were brought in over sixty detectives were assigned to the case and if you're not familiar with like true crime disappearance murder counter cases normally only one to three detectives is assigned to a case so four six eight detectives to be assigned to one case it was just it was huge 10% of West Yorkshire saucers were used in this investigation and 10% sounds like a very small number but if you think about how many police there must be in the whole of West Yorkshire 10% of that is gonna be a huge number and obviously because they've got to pay all these different police officers all these different people working on the cases they've gotta pay for all the resources just everything like there was so much going into this case it cost a lot of flippin money it cost over 3 million pounds police question 1,500 motorists and searched over 3,000 houses in this investigation from start to finish three thousand houses think of like the span of land that that would be like think about the radius of 3,000 houses that is a huge area the Shannon Matthews case quickly became the biggest police investigation in 30 years since the Yorkshire Ripper at the time in the UK there were 27 victim recovery dogs like in service in the whole of the UK and 16 of these which is like three quarter's were brought to Jewsbury for this one case over three quarters of all of the victim recovery dogs in the whole of the UK were used and less than a week after Shannon Matthews disappearance police began underwater searches like divers were going underwater to see if her body had been put into lakes and stuff meanwhile the swimming baths where Shannon Matthews went that day with school released the CCTV footage of her entering and leaving the kind of Sports Centre and those were like the last images of Shannon and these were so famous where no witnesses it's just that Shannon had been placed in the car where no witnesses saying that she um has been taken it's a particular house we have no idea where our house Shannon have been safe and on that particular afternoon I remember seeing these clips of this CCTV footage of Shannon literally every single time we turned the TV on these were so famous in this investigation because it should what she was wearing should the exact last location that she was at and it was just like the the main piece of evidence in this story a few days into the search and people were noticing some inconsistencies in current story and I mean nobody wants to doubt and mother that has lost their child but people were starting to pick up on a couple of things she couldn't even be consistent about where she was when she reported Shannon missing when you've got those lies you can only lie for so long before you know you start forgetting what you've said in the first place and I think that's what certainly happened in relation to Karen Karen Matthews and on top of that people started to notice that she was always laughing and always smiling like I said before and people were starting to notice that it was kind of inappropriate it wasn't like a nervous thing it wasn't I don't know people were just starting to realize how strange this was four days into the investigation karen Matthews was taken in for police questioning not as a suspect just as a witness as Shannon's mother yes to beat a girl without work this is not why Shannon which is not just to me she's got a dark and everything after a week of searching dogs divers fingertip searches from police forensics in the house literally nothing was found like absolutely no trace if Shannon was found after a whole week I was okay the first week stayed really optimistic but I think in a second my views were changing because I thought no way can any nine-year-old survive from it being so cold police took all the Matthews like computers notebooks just anything that could have any clues as to where Shannon had been like anything that Shannon had been on are written on or anything was taken to look through the inquiry involve lots of different lines which all needed investigating the first and walls none of them ever came so anything or none of them appear to come to anything but we kept on and on and knowing that it could be the tiny little bit of information that could actually lead us to find this child after two weeks a local business in Huddersfield just a few miles from Jewsbury offered a 5000 pound reward for anyone that could give any information to find Shannon and then a national newspaper called the Sun in the UK oops this 250 thousand pounds so there was now a 50,000 pound reward for Shannon but around this time the media was kind of starting to lose interest it was still a story in the media but I don't know that been no big breakthroughs like literally not even minor breakthroughs there was just nothing more to report the Matthew is once again appealed for Shannon's return but this only made it onto page 19 of the Sun which no one likes the Sun anyway it's a shitty newspaper but the fact that they only put it on page 19 showed that the public would really lose an interest break was given leave from his job as a fishmonger to help like keep the campaign alive and just look after his children while all of this were going on it was obviously very hectic Karen was always doing interviews and going to the police station and so Craig needed to be at home for the kids meanwhile the media was kind of starting to change their mind about the Matthews and they began painting them as villains almost because I'm the IKE lost in it like the Mekons from there I don't make an effort and stuff like that put back one of the writers Alan over people's eyes on that newspaper that upped the reward money by forty-five thousand pounds were particularly bad for this like I said absolutely shitty newspaper and but they were accusing Craig the stepfather of the girl that has gone missing for two weeks she hasn't been found for two weeks they were accusing her stepfather of abusing her assaults in her and she finally had enough of this she was scared of Craig and so she ran away and that was the story that they decided was a good idea to publish I think istic did that about her water and then they're going to put that deficit Kapolei back but there was absolutely no evidence of this like yes there was Karen's past but they were accusing Karen they were accusing Craig there was absolutely no evidence but Craig ever touched these kids in any bad way and however his mother did have a conversation with the Sun where she did allude to him maybe abusing them which I think was very shitty ever since hit her stones stepdaughter has gone missing for two weeks why would you do that and the night that that article was published in the Sun Craig me and actually took a mixture of paracetamol and alcohol and it's unclear what his intentions were but a lot of people believe that he was trying to attempt suicide but even during the publication of such slanderous articles about a man and a woman that have lost their child and haven't seen him for two weeks the media still had no problem harassing the Matthews family for interviews of the pictures with a pestle in yet again what are you covered excuse me I'm not being funny but can you just give it a break well that's I've just said if you give it a minute you might come out and do one for you you know the come down here for a little break let's give them one picture and they'll leave you alone around the third week of the investigation karen Matthews was contacted by a psychic claiming to be able to help a find Shannon not the psychic with them this morning doctor I've got to come so there were letters shirt and sandals the other truck is that locals yeah Ashby's yeah search it now and then the actress but you've been pulled it back today this is bad kick it was mentioned to police that the psychic had told them about the church and police searched it but again nothing came of this lead and I said it before in the bed Needham case and I'll say it again I think psychics have no business trying to help out in missing persons cases I think if they want to help then do it on their own terms just don't get in contact with the family because how heartbroken is that going to be to have that help and then in case the psychic is not correct which let's be honest they're not correct most of the time and like just imagine the heartbreak that Karen and her family went through then for Shannon not to be found at the church at this point the whole of the UK just felt so much for this family it had been three weeks since anyone had last seen Shannon and it was very unlikely that we're gonna get her back alive and everyone knew it people that had never met the family were sending the money gifts letters just anything like I said just people that didn't know the family just wanted to help in any way a local supermarket allowed Karen and Craig to go and get their weekly shopping for free to help them out and they actually filled one Charlie with food and another Charlie with beer but the media didn't show the same sympathy for the Matthews family as the whole of the UK was doing they were just constantly harassing the family while Karen was still telling jokes [Music] probably on Grahams Iceland from BBC Breakfast TV issues China Iran I'll say what we know meanwhile the only kind of breakthrough it well breakthrough it's not even a breakthrough and the only thing that came from police investigation was that they found that 1,400 sex offenders lived within a 20 mile radius of the estate which is not good I've been checking what is it Peter faucet of them yeah they were doing not yesterday about this five just long news for you Tom we met to get moving on the scene should film some man okay so I want you to pay close attention to the next clips I put in just like pay attention to who's talking what they say in kind of facial expressions body language stuff like that it'll become clear towards the end of the video so the last kind of big thing that the community all did together was a sponsored walk where the whole of the estate pretty much got together and they have this massive banner that they put along the front of them and they were singing they were chanting and they would just come pin in for Shannon's return and I remember seeing this on the news as well this is again one of them are famous images from this whole case like this massive sponsored walk this whole community of people that the media had just slacked off this whole time for being lazy for being scruffy for being good for nothing's and then they were all coming together all as a community to find this little girl and it was it was a really nice thing to see you know Karen there made of the public appearance she'd been making quite a few over the three weeks that her daughter had been missing but in this one particularly she decided to share a run theory Karen had never once shared these concerns with police all her family liaison officers which she spent all day every day with she'd never mentioned it friends our family and so it was just really weird that this was coming out in a public appeal like an interview in front of all these different news stations for the first time like she'd never mentioned it to anyone and the first time she did decide to mention it it was in front of all these people what do you put to use fear well I think that some doubt that or not shannon proposed to probably know me as well and it's just that's what her arms they feel like i was shocked by the statement that karen was making because if you've got some information on you've got some thoughts that it's somebody that knows it surely you'd be telling the one person who was spending the most time with you are the two people that are spending the most time with you you took from them there's nothing says well did karen do it for a reason just two days later on the 14th of march a distant family member got in touch with the police to give some quite vital information in the case this family member got in touch with the police to tell them that craig means uncle michael donovan and he only lived about a mile away from the matthews from that estate and he haven't been in touch with any of the family since before Shannon's disappearance and i mean it's been three weeks that is a long time to just not be in touch with your family like fair enough he could have been busy but for three weeks it's starting to look suspicious so police began looking into Michael Donovan because this wasn't an end that they'd heard before like I said the family tree was flipping huge and they spent more time looking into Karen's side of the family rather than Craig's because Craig wasn't actually related to Shannon like by blood or anything so they didn't bother looking like open to his own calls and stuff that was just really far out so this was the first I'd heard of Donovan and as they started looking into him they actually found that he had two children of his own that had actually been taken from him and put into foster care Donovan actually had a previous abduction charge from going to his children's school and taking them and abducting them while they were under the care of a foster family and obviously police found this very suspicious this was now a kind of lead in the case almost and so that same day on the 14th of March police decided to give Donovan a visit for some questioning we knocked on the door give a good ad wrapper policeman's knock as they say so much so that alerted the lady next door at number 24 who came out to see what was what what we're doing during which she said well we can understand why we've heard a toddler's footsteps and those were the words for toddlers footsteps the neighbor said that the last time she'd heard these footsteps was literally that morning and she didn't hurt them a few times when Donovan wasn't even in the flat this whole time no one had answered the door while they've been outside and after speaking to this neighbor they felt that they needed to get into this apartment and so these two detectives just hit the door down and badge straight in and one of them went upstairs to search and one of them searched the downstairs lot of the dogs upstairs were actually locked and so the police had to hit doors down as well I thought I'd know it wrong and then I heard Shannon's voice from within this bedroom wailing hard to say stop it you're frightening me now so he walked into the bedroom where he heard the voice from but he couldn't see Shannon anywhere and then I became aware of movement within the bed and as I went across the far side of the bed Shannon's head appeared on that side and reached over pick Shannon Oh after 24 years missing Shannon Matthews was found safe and well so other police were then called in to search the apartment because now it was a crime scene they just found a missing person there after 24 days I asked her where my course that's his ways where's Mike she says he's where I was where I was a sister and now she said under the bed one of the uniformed ones who were still searching behind itself squealed if you like tried out here 39 year old Michael Donovan was arrested at the scene and him and Shannon were taken to separate police stations meanwhile Shannon's family were given the good news that Shannon had been found safe and well Kevin and Claire came out of the living room and looked um just smiled biggest smile at seen on the face for 24 days and and we all bounded into with him long jumping about and cuddling we were all absolutely over the moon as you can imagine in this community that had worked so hard to get Shannon back they were given everything to try and get this girl back everyone was just elated there was street parties there were fireworks literally everyone on the estate came out to celebrate people gay drinkers helped celebrate him extreme spontaneous party Chris overjoyed and no grateful that she'd been found alive back at the police station Shannon was being held under emergency police protection and they can hold someone for up to 72 hours if they believe that they're possibly in danger are that they just need to assess a situation further and that is what they needed to do because they had no idea what I've just gone on Donovan wasn't even in his first questioning yet before he started making some shocking revelations Donovan then got a solicitor and made an official statement which his solicitor then read out to a detective she said I was to keep Shannon and look after her and she Karen would report her missing I said I wasn't happy about this and she then threatened if I didn't do it to get three lads onto me this statement was three pages long and it detailed the whole planning of the abduction from the beginning to the end and I was frightened that if I didn't do it they would come after me I said okay I'll do it and she said there was money for me in it something that I find interesting but doesn't really have much to do with the case is that as soon as Donovan got to the police - and he suddenly couldn't walk he needed a wheelchair he could have read he could have write he was always cold and he needed a blanket around him I don't know he was just painting himself to be this really kind of weak vulnerable individual but obviously police didn't believe it he'd walked absolutely fine out of his house like he knew he wasn't that needed McDonagh 'then is described as being a loner and one who didn't mix very well probably not very bright but not quite the sad and pathetic individual that it lights the police to believe he was but four days after Shannon's recovery she still wasn't home and bear in mind the whole like community didn't know the circumstances the estate people on the estate had no idea what happened friends family didn't know what happened like only immediate family knew well they didn't even know what happened they just knew who she was with where she was found and they didn't know anything of what had gone on and so people on the estate and like friends of the Matthews were starting to wonder why she wasn't being brought home to her mother had just been separated for 25 days like shali bed want and back together as soon as possible first we cast a shadow war so they would guess of when she could be home it's just a everybody asked is what the most should be all about asked her about a week it was staticky something is not quite right Perrin Matthews herself Shannon's loving and desperate mother was then taken into police questioning after Donovan's claims you asked him to look after Shannon and that'll be some blame for it myself millennium IQ on his own older still she wasn't questioned as a suspect she was just being questioned as a witness although she didn't quite understand this and she started being very uncooperative because she felt that they were being a bit like blunt with that oh the best thing we can do so that we're all clear about this he's telling you what Michaels saying no way I lived at home in the search of Michael Donovan's house police found so much evidence against this man in the roof over the center of the flat they found an elasticated leash hanging from a beam though there's no evidence it was ever used found a bunch of prescription medications in Donovan's kitchen including travel sickness pills antidepressants they even found a lot of like just a little single tablets like on the floor and on the side and that I don't really know why Donovan had left a list of rules telling Shannon to keep quiet and stay away from the windows IPU stood for I promise you finally there was the bed converted by Donovan into a hiding place for him and to lay low the bed was taken from Donovan's flat as evidence of him actually trying to hide Shannon like proving that he knew that he was doing something wrong we tried to conceal Shannon from the police and why did you choose that particular hiding place for DES Shannon had been in police care and in foster care just while police we're trying to figure out what the hell just went on for 24 days and it was finally time for Karen to come and identify Shannon she was taken into the police station into a room with a two-way mirror so like she could see into this room where Shannon was but Shannon old Shannon could see was a mirror she couldn't see Karen and Karen successfully identified ish said yeah that's my daughter but she showed like no emotion like absolutely no emotion especially for a mother who hasn't seen a daughter for coming up on four weeks now and she thought she could have possibly been dead for three of those weeks like she just she didn't show any emotion she didn't cry she didn't she wasn't overly elated it was just it was a kind of weird reaction a formal meeting was then set up to reunite Shannon and her mother and this meeting was going to be recorded and supervised like just for general procedure we got in there and Shannon came running to a mom threw her arms round her can almost shrugged it off she came to sit down on the sexy we've made it Karen and Shannon stood up and I can't go play with her and I have to encourage you to be with a daughter the family liaison officers recall Karen like looking at a watch looking at the clock putting a car on just looking like she was ready to leave looking like she was over the whole thing Karen was particularly cold and she'd no interest sooner and even suggesting she was actually saying you know we'll be going soon she didn't want to be there I think ten minutes would have been enough for Karen meanwhile if you remember like right at the beginning of the investigation police took all the Matthews kind of computers phones things like that trained search for evidence for where Shannon might be well German that search on Shannon set dad Craig means hard drive they found 49 child porn images so Craig Miam was arrested for this and even though none of the pictures were of Shannon or any of Karen's or the children this really changed how people viewed the whole case when Craig Meehan was arrested and later charged with possessing indecent images of children the mood of the state was one of disgust Karen's friends Julie and Nathalie also kind of started doubting Karen starry Natalie had had her suspicions like pretty much from the beginning of the investigation but she never really wanted to say anything to anyone because you don't want to doubt a mom who's just lost her child like she didn't want to think that about her friend but obviously you can't help like a gut instinct now when Shannon was found in the announce do she was found with hadn't got questioned on this by me and Julie now she turned around and told us that she didn't have any knowledge of who we were but the rid been rumors going around the estate from Craig's family that Karen did actually know Donovan they'd met a couple of months previous at Craig's dad's funeral and the two of them got on really well and Karen was even sat on Donovan's knee at one point during the night I raised my suspicions which early she raised as with me and we kind of said there's something wrong here and we need to get together we need to meet up with Karen and we need to question it on these things Natalie was really trying to make Karen feel comfortable enough to tell them what has been happening she was saying things like you've known me for so long you can trust me you can tell us like will love you no matter what you've done that's what I had said to Karen you know I know that you hiding something and Karen at first saw a first apparition all else was I can't tell anybody where I'm hiding so naturally put forward a theory about what she believed might have happened she put this forward to Karen and says I think I said Jim Craig I've gone through a bad patch yet again I says you've got you've had enough I says you've packed back thought right I'll leave him I've had enough I'll go away for a few days letting package stuff get rid of him and then I'll come back and everything'll be fine after Lee's theory was that Karen wanted to leave her boyfriend Craig and Donovan had actually offered Karen and all of her children a place to stay until she could find a road so Karen and Donovan planned that Donovan would go to Shannon's school that day and pick her up after school and take a straight to his house meanwhile Karen would wait until Craig left for work that afternoon she would gather up the rest of the kids and she would join them all at Donovan's house later but if you remember the day of Shannon's disappearance Craig didn't go to work because he wasn't feeling very well and so when Karen got home to pick up the rest of the kids and take them there well she couldn't because Craig was there Shannon was already at Donovan's and to Craig she should have been home from school two hours ago and so he was panicking he thought that she'd gone missing and so Karen being the kind of vulnerable easily kind of let person she couldn't think of a smart reason as to why Shannon wasn't there she couldn't give an excuse as to where she could have been and so she just kind of went along with Craig's panic and when Craig suggested calling the police she just did it and then the lives just all kind of spiraled out of control from there and she turned around and went yeah it's true Amy and you only looked eaten went what's true and she went what you said I said no so you tell me how it happened I says we need to hear it from you how it happened for you and I said as gently as I could Karen because of what you've told me we're going to have to do this far why you're gonna have to be arrested and interviewed so I've got to tell you that you are under arrest for abducting Shannon Matthews I can remember Karen saying everybody's gonna hate me now and all three of us ignoble is gonna hurt you but the truth needs to come out so Chiron admitted straight away in a formal police setting that she knew that Shannon wasn't really missing but that was all she'd say at first for a while but again a little meanwhile the news Brooke of Karen's arrest and the whole estate learned that this abduction that they just spent time money resources that had just been so emotionally involved in the lent that it was all a lie when we found out much got arrested over day I will discussed it you know I mean I would have shocked felt rates sick but after she'd all that people were very angry some of them had lost jobs because they spent time searching for Shannon that donated money effort emotion in Karen's questioning police couldn't quite believe that she had phoned the police she'd done all these searches all these public appeals all because of a misunderstanding that it spiraled out of control they just didn't believe that they thought that there must have been another motive behind this whole thing so they continued to grill her on it obviously Michael Donovan had accused her of wanting the reward money and so they questioned her on that as well originally it starts off with McClure gonna take Shannon because you were having domestics with Craig and then when the poison press took over you realize you can make some money out of this but that's what you do but Donovan child police have a plan that he and Karen had devised together to try and get this reward money for Shannon's safe return I was told that if through August 50,000 pounds she would ring me I would love to take Shannon to do Rumaki she was to walk around the market I was to come from the top of the market and say yeah and the cameras will record this but Karin Matthews still denied it as your [ __ ] which bit every single bit of what he said is rubbish I'm not involved in any of this he's talked a lot people love lies German Donovan's questioning he was asked about like how he'd been keeping Shannon how had been treating Shannon for this last twenty four days and it turned out that he had been drugging her with those prescription medications that were found in his flats sample of Shannon's urine was sent off for testing and the results came back much worse than police expected Shannon had not only been drugged with travel sickness tablets but also with antidepressants the urine test tells us that Shannon ingested these drugs within the 48 hours before her rescue but that's all and so police now that they knew that Shannon was definitely drugged they wanted to know for how long and what kind of drugs because there could have been more before this 48 hours and so a sample of Shannon's hair was sent off for analyzing the hair was cut into small sections approximately three centimeters in length when that would roughly equates to approximately three months of hair growth there on average girls around about a centimeter a month Berman's hair sample revealed that not only had she been drugged within the 24 day abduction but also in the 12 months running up to that the drugs detected in Shannon's hair were temazepam reports of him they'll take a benzodiazepine drug meclizine the active ingredients in the travel sickness pill amitriptyline which is a potent antidepressant tramadol which is an analgesic or pain-killing drug and dihydrocodeine which is also an analgesic pain killing drug which amongst the opiates now I don't understand much about medications but I do know that such a cocktail of drugs for a nine-year-old little girl is not gonna be very safe in December of 2008 karen Matthews and Michael Donovan were both found guilty of kidnapping false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice they were both sentenced to eight years each by a judge called Mr Justice McComb and I never said the names of judges in my videos but Mr Justice like I had to hurt Craig Mian was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison so like four or five months for his child pornography charges and his mother and two of his sisters were also arrested for perverting the course of justice with both his crimes and his uncle Michael Donovan's crimes one of Craig's sisters Amanda Hyatt was also arrested for assisting an offender which is obviously critic um and I dropped I don't even want to know I don't even want to know obviously Karen went to prison and all of her children were taken off of her and they were all put into foster families the whole time that Karen was imprisoned her farmer friend Julie Bushby was the only person to ever go and visit her you were the only person to do that why was that I wanted answers and did you get did you get answers no what was it you wanted answers to I just wanted the truth up when when the of why she why she would have done it well no it's not just that she kept saying that of other people you know the people were involved I wanted to truth I wanted to know who why what she never told you and every time that Julie went and visited Karen she'd been assaulted by another prison mayor like she was always coming out with like a black eye and bruises and bloody fists like the prisoners were given her what she deserved Karen was released early in April of 2012 after serving just four years after putting her daughter through all of that she served just four years and Michael Donovan was released even earlier than Karen Karen was given a new public identity but the courts deemed that she was incapable of mentioning a whole new identity so basically she uses this new name that they've given her in like public situations like you know when you're like reserving a table and whatever just little things like that but she'll still use karen Matthews like with the doctors and police and stuff like that like official documents shannon herself was also given a completely new identity she was put into foster care and she now lives somewhere else in the country and I'm hopefully she's having a better life than she did before however it's been reported that Shannon did suffer with nightmares and she had to have a lot of counseling I don't know if she's still going through that if she is then that is really sad because it's been like 10 years almost it's been over ten years and I really hope she's doing okay now you know Aaron's friends and family mention Chile's did that Donovan and Karen could not have done this alone like neither of them were intelligent enough to devised this plan and come up with this plan if you remember Karen was very vulnerable very childlike very easy to manipulate and so experts that have looked at this case believed that someone else must have been helping them because neither of them were smart enough and Karen was really easily led they believed that someone was encouraging Karen to go through with it and telling her it's not as bad as it actually was because like I said she's very childlike and if someone is telling you like no it's not it's not bad you're not doing a bad thing then Karen would have believed that and that is what kept her going for so long for 25 years so just a side note before we finish this case this is just a little bit of information that I found quite interesting it was found that a month before Shannon's abduction there was an episode of the TV show shameless aired on TV that had a very familiar sorry line it was a show about a family that lived on a council estate where a young boy got fik kidnapped and held in a house just a few doors down from his own in an attempt at getting a half a million pound reward although the theory that Karen and Donovan got inspiration from this episode was dismissed by police and it's not believed that they did I just thought that was kind of interesting you know and that is it for this case and if you just hear for the case and you don't want to hear my own like opinions and inputs and stuff then thank you so so much for watching I hope you enjoyed make sure you leave a like subscribe all that and but yeah if you want to hear my opinions on it let's go so like I've said like a million times in this video my family was very affected by this case I feel like a stuck record but honestly me and Shannon Matthews were literally like three or four months apart in age we were the exact same age when she went missing we were both nine and obviously I live like two towns away from her like literally ten minutes away from her well not anymore but I did at the time and when you can let the kiss to someone in your family so like for example the been needin kiss particularly really affects me because then Needham was one-and-a-half when he went missing and my nephew right now is one-and-a-half so when you can imagine someone close to you someone that you love in that exact same position it affects you just all the more and I just remember being so scared for the whole twenty five days because Madeleine McCann had just happened and that was such a huge case that that was in the news for literally the whole nine months up until Shannon's disappearance and so it just felt like one after another like Madeleine McCann went missing Shannan Matthews went missing and I was like how many like people is they're out there abducting people like I was terrified I remember and obviously it was a twenty four day long thing and like I said so many times in this video I saw the clips on the news every single time I turned the TV on and so it was a constant fear in my brain and I remember the day that they found Shannon my grandma came to pick me up from school I literally walked out of the door to the school got to my grandma the first thing she said to me was they found that little girl and I remember thinking oh my god yes but yeah I don't really know what I'm saying my camera just died and like I don't know it's I'm tired it's like what it's 10:00 to 12:00 at night I need a nap but yeah I just remember like teachers talking about it at school we had assemblies on it at school because obviously it was so close to home and for all we knew there was like a serial kidnapper on the loose who knew we were doing assemblies on how to walk home from school safe and like always keep you fooling on yeah always do this always do that and I just remember like everyone like everyone my age was so scared because we didn't quite understand the concept that it could possibly be someone that knew Shannon we just thought it was like a random thing like someone saw her coming out of school and kidnapped her put them in a car and left or whatever and and so we were terrified we thought that we could have been kidnapped I just I feel like this case is literally something out of a soap opera or like a film or something she goes missing it's all tearful like the community all come together she's found in the old girl's house and there's a there's a big lead attached to the ceiling and there's drugs in the house and it's all terrifying and then the mom gets arrested and then the dad gets arrested for child porn and then his sister gets arrested for helping him and it's just like one thing after another it's literally like a movie it's oh I felt like I was getting really like during that just doesn't sound like real life and it's these kind of cases that I love to cover because it just doesn't like it's just like that's not real like how is that real but yeah I have talked for a very long time so I'm going to shut up now thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed it make sure you leave a big thumbs up on the video because down below what you thought about this case and I'm sure a lot of you have a lot of thoughts on this ones I would love to hear them subscribe if you want to see some more like this I do videos like this every Wednesday and every Sunday I'm tired I'm gonna go to bed bye thank you for watching bye we go [ __ ] [ __ ] [Music]

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 3,703,127

Keywords: makeup, tutorial, eleanor, neale, beauty, ginger, redhead, 2018, mystery, unsolved, solved, abduction, missing, disappearance, true crime, kendall rae, danelle hallan, unsolved mystery, unsolved disappearance, found, shannon matthews, matthews, karen matthews, donovan, 2017, the moorside, moorside, panorama, cutting edge, dewsbury, madeleine mccann, mccann, mother, mum, now, today, murder, killer, killed, kidnapped, serial killer, rob dyke, crime watch daily, danelle hallan solved, documentary, bbc, drama

Id: KPgSUYbl7zY

Length: 68min 50sec (4130 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 08 2018