Shannon Matthews hoax abduction

Not sure if you want a new thread for this one...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4266966/Karen-Matthews-scathing-attack-Kate-McCann-Dreadful-Mum.html

'At least my daughter was never left alone!' Kate McCann is branded 'a dreadful mother' by Karen Matthews (who drugged, tied up and hid nine-year-old Shannon in a divan bed)
Karen Matthews, 41, faked the abduction of her nine-year-old daughter Shannon
She branded missing Madeleine McCann's mother Kate 'dreadful' while in prison
Maddie vanished from the family's apartment as the family holidayed in Portugal
Matthews, 41, told friend Julie Bushby: 'At least my daughter was never left alone'
Maddie mystery inspired Matthews' lie about her own daughter's disappearance

'At least my daughter was never left alone!' Kate McCann is branded 'a dreadful mother' by Karen Matthews (who drugged, tied up and hid nine-year-old Shannon in a divan bed)

• Karen Matthews, 41, faked the abduction of her nine-year-old daughter Shannon
  
• She branded missing Madeleine McCann's mother Kate 'dreadful' while in prison 
  
• Maddie vanished from the family's apartment as the family holidayed in Portugal
  
• Matthews said to friend Julie Bushby: 'At least my daughter was never left alone'
  
• Maddie mystery inspired Matthews' lie about her own daughter's disappearance 
  

By Tracey Kandohla For Mailonline
Published: 13:21, 28 February 2017 | Updated: 14:14, 28 February 2017



Karen Matthews has branded Kate McCann 'a dreadful mother' for leaving daughter Madeleine alone on the night she vanished, her best friend has revealed.
Matthews, who faked the kidnap of nine-year-old daughter Shannon, said: 'I've been judged and I'm paying for it but Maddie's mother was bad too.
'At least my daughter was never left alone!'
In a bizarre rant against Maddie's parents Kate and Gerry, Matthews told friend Julie Bushby: 'Don't get me onto the McCanns, we've all got something to say about them.


'We're too lower class for them but we can still have an opinion. There seems to be one rule for them and another for us but she was a dreadful mum.
'She left one, two, three babies alone while she was out eating and drinking with her mates. My Shannon was kept away from her family but she was never left alone.'
Ironically, Matthews, 41 – now freed from jail – has ditched her first name and is known as Kate. The moniker is thought to have been inspired by one of her Hollywood idols and not by Maddie's mother.
Matthews' attack on Kate and husband Gerry is revealed for the first time as the couple have been criticised twice in three days on social media and national radio.
And her onslaught on the McCanns comes ahead of tonight's Channel 5 documentary which looks at whether the investigation into the plot to kidnap Shannon should be re-opened.
Julie claims friend Matthews is 'too stupid' to have invented the Shannon kidnap alone without colluding with others. 


Wealthy parents, former GP Kate and heart doctor Gerry, both 48, of Rothley, Leicestershire, had already won the nation's hearts and public funding when three-year-old Maddie was snatched from a Portuguese holiday apartment in May 2007. 
At the time they had left her and younger toddler twins siblings Sean and Amelie alone while dining in a nearby tapas bar with friends.
Schoolgirl Shannon vanished from her mother's home in Dewsbury, Yorks in February 2008.
She was discovered 24 days later following a £3.2million police search two miles away at the home of Michael Donovan, uncle of Matthews' boyfriend Craig Meehan having been drugged, tethered and hidden inside a divan bed.
Matthews, who had seven children with five fathers, and Donovan were sentenced to eight years over the kidnap plot.
The pair had allegedly been inspired by Maddie's disappearance and invented the kidnap plot to claim a reward for 'finding' her.
Matthews' best friend and former neighbour Julie, who has kept diaries of her prison visits, told MailOnline: 'Karen talked about Maddie and her family, the difference and unfairness of their social situations.  
'She's never understood why British and Portuguese police haven't taken it any further and asks in her simple almost child-like state if it's because 'they're rich and posh and she's poor and common'. '
Mother-of-three Julie, who led the painstaking search for Shannon and still supports her friend said: 'I want to sit her down and ask 'Why?' She's not got the highest IQ and I wonder if she was coerced into doing something she didn't want to do.


'If someone said to her, 'Look, I'm skint, I need some money, help me', I think she was that daft she would have done anything. 
'Karen was guilty and put her hands up but she wasn't the brains behind the plot to kidnap her daughter. 
'I'm not excusing her in any way but I and the rest of the neighbourhood want to know the real reason for what happened. We want answers. 
'I've kept a diary and have a record of all the times I visited her in jail but that one question remains unanswered.'
Matthews was thrown into the public glare earlier this month after controversial BBC1's The Moorside re-enacted the staged snatch. Campaigning shop assistant Julie was played by star Sheridan Smith.
But the hugely popular show came under attack, including from the Maddie's parents. And Matthews, now living at a secret location in the south of England, claims she has been bombarded with death threats.
She served just four years of her sentence, walking free in April 2012.
The McCanns, who are facing the agonising 10th anniversary of Maddie's disappearance in May, have been bombarded with social media and national radio rants in the past week



Host Katie Hopkins claimed on her Sunday show on LBC Radio that their daughter would never be discovered. She said: 'Maddie was lost because she was left to be found.'
Just three days earlier on Friday glamour model Jodie Marsh posted in a Twitter rant that Maddie's parents should be searching for their daughter 'on their hands and knees digging up the bare earth' rather than be side-tracked and busying themselves suing people.' 
Matthews criticised the McCanns, who were having tapas with friends close to their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on the night Maddie disappeared. She and twins Sean and Amelie had been left asleep at 8.30pm in the ground-floor apartment, while Kate and Gerry dined in a restaurant 180ft away. The parents checked on the children throughout the evening, until Madeleine's mother discovered she was missing at 10pm.
A source close to the couple said: 'If it wasn't such a serious matter of a missing child it would almost be laughable. Two very minor celebrities and a person jailed for a crime against her own daughter dare to comment about a case they know nothing about.
'Kate and Gerry won't be saying anything to fuel this whirlwind of nonsense. They don't want to give these peoples' egos even more exposure.'
Today Britain's top police officer Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe will stand down having failed to fulfil his pledge to find Maddie to 'end her parents' torture'.
As the Scotland Yard chief steps down his force is still no closer to knowing what happened her despite vowing he was 'confident of resolving' the world's biggest missing child mystery.

Operation Grange, the inquiry launched in May 2011 to the spiralling £13million cost to the taxpayer, has failed to unearth any significant new clues.
A Met Police spokesperson said: 'We are cracking on.' But she refused to divulge if a final 'last throw of the dice' lead which Sir Bernard said would be investigated last summer has produced a shred of evidence.
The high-profile case is now being wound down. The Home Office has not allocated any extra cash after next month. A spokesperson said: 'Funding will continue until the end of this financial year. The resources required will be reviewed again at this point.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4266966/Karen-Matthews-scathing-attack-Kate-McCann-Dreadful-Mum.html

There appears to be a campaign to make us all believe in neglect / abduction.... a very very energetic campaign. Hopefully not everyone will be so naive as to believe it..

Helenmeg wrote:There appears to be a campaign to make us all believe in neglect / abduction.... a very very energetic campaign.  Hopefully not everyone will be so naive as to believe it..

I'm not sure about that myself. More of a campaign associating the 2 which is all about a 'fake abduction'. However they're still restricted on the McCann side in terms of what they can really say.

I think there's also been a campaign for sometime now to really get people to dislike the McCanns. They (the MSM) could've kept schtum  about the supreme verdict and the 'not been cleared, or at least minimise it but no. They couldn't get enough of feeding all that to the masses and the McCanns wouldn't have liked that one bit.

They've also been subtlety directing folk to the files and G.A's book as well.

The MSM despise the McCanns as do the majority of the general public these days. All they're doing is circling around like a school of sharks waiting for their target to tire before the real frenzy begins. And it will.

It's just a big game for them. And it's all been a big game to a lot of people. However every game has to end at some point and this one is not far away now.

IMO etc.

I dont share your optimism on this - the effort is HUGE....  We will see how it continues

ETA I do miss Blacksmith's posts - but I think he doesn't want to jeopardise in any way anything that might happen - but his commentary was often insightful -

I was encouraged by The Moorside drama though as I did think that it linked in people's minds one dodgy case with another.

Why would the McCanns have been upset about it otherwise? There was nothing in it that insulted them.

Were they worried about Shannon's feelings? It would be a first if they had thought of someone else other than themselves!

Helenmeg wrote:I dont share your optimism on this - the effort is HUGE....  We will see how it continues

ETA I do miss Blacksmith's posts - but I think he doesn't want to jeopardise in any way anything that might happen - but his commentary was often insightful -  

Hi Helen.

What do you mean the effort is huge?

It's been a huge effort thus far in terms of changing and shaping the perception of the McCanns. (Again)

Very much like it was back in the old days in terms as portraying them as 'saints'. They're just gradually changing it all back again now.

Andrew wrote:
It's just a big game for them.

Top Trumps - Notoriety edition?

unreorganised wrote:

Andrew wrote:
It's just a big game for them.

Top Trumps - Notoriety edition?

Yeah something like that.

I remember playing that game as a nipper.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/karen-matthews-slammed-madeleine-mccanns-9936035

Karen Matthews slammed Madeleine McCann's parents after she was jailed for abducting her own daughter Shannon
The 41-year-old who was jailed for her role in the ‘kidnap’ of nine year old Shannon, is said to have blasted Gerry and Kate McCann from her prison cell

... From her prison cell?

She's been released nearly 5 years.

It does say at the end that she was released in 2012 so it's either the usual sloppy journalism or it's something she said years ago and which hasn't surfaced until now.

P.S. The Mail link says that the remark was made when she was in prison.

Freedom wrote:It does say at the end that she was released in 2012 so it's either the usual sloppy journalism or it's something she said years ago and which hasn't surfaced until now.

P.S. The Mail link says that the remark was made when she was in prison.

I'm now massively sceptical of the role played by the Missing People charity in this whole debacle.

Might be slightly controversial here, but if The Moorside was an accurate depiction of events then I think Matthews was a little unfortunate to be given a custodial sentence. She was of obviously limited capacity; a decent defence lawyer and some clinical diagnosis could have provided effective mitigation, IMO.

Also what was with the weird throwaway comment about the suspected involvement of an unnamed third party?

Yes, sorry - my mistake regarding of when these comments were made.

This bezzie mate, Julie is certainly making a name for herself on the back of all this. Pictures in the papers and even been on the sofas. I wonder how much she herself is creaming from all this input she's dishing out?

@Unreorganised - I see where you're coming from but not sure I agree on that one. I suppose it depends on your beliefs on how many people were actually involved in the scam and whatever bezzie mate is saying has some substance?

Personally, I think it was just the 2 of them that cooked it up and both of them rightfully went to prison for it.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2976069/karen-matthews-shannon-rant-kate-gerry-mccann/

Neighbours insist Karen and her accomplice Michael Donovan were not savvy enough to have hatched the scheme on their own.

.... I don't think Kate and Gerry were savvy enough to hatch their scheme on their own.

"Others have got to be involved, because like I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, Karen didn’t have the intelligence, and Donovan, from what the cops have said, he didn’t have the intelligence."

.... Others have definitely got to be involved. Kate certainly didn't have the intelligence and neither did Gerry.

Julie thinks people must be keeping secrets to "protect themselves"

.... The Tapas lot must be keeping secrets to 'protect themselves' as well.

This 'dreadful mum stuff' is on the front pages of both the Star and Mirror tomorrow.

Anybody watch the programme that's just been on then?

An interesting watch although still not convinced 'others' were involved though.

Just a brief mention to Madeleine and the McCanns in this one.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2834197/shannon-matthews-kidnap-karen-list-rules-kidnapping/

I'm assuming Karen wrote this list?

The list was also mentioned in the doc but no reference to who actually wrote it..

I heard of the list of rules at the time when Shannon was found.

We have to assume that either she or Donovan wrote it but the writing and spelling aren't that bad; I would expect them to be a lot worse.

I'll be watching the programme tomorrow.

http://www.channel5.com/show/shannon-matthews-what-happened-next/

.... Greed to cough up!

.... Misery until May!

Andrew wrote:https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2834197/shannon-matthews-kidnap-karen-list-rules-kidnapping/

I'm assuming Karen wrote this list?

The list was also mentioned in the doc but no reference to who actually wrote it..

It is as usual another cr@p piece of journalism...in their effort to get this list out they have tagged it on to a pile of mince. Towards the end they pose the question when can i see(bbcMoorside) answer 14/02/2017.....this in an article written allegedly on 28/02/2017 wtf is that about!?

Andrew wrote:


.... Greed to cough up!

.... Misery until May!

More games games games.....does anyone think this is normal even by our press standards and some other hand is directing the traffic!

A pile of mince

Yeah, I noticed there was some conflation going on there.

That's what you get when these journo's try and rush a piece out. Useless.

I was saying before about the MSM playing games. And that's exactly what they're doing.

Whether there is any direct instruction from other quarters or just the editors wanting to take the p!ss, then IMO it's the latter.

The article to accompany the headlines:

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/592473/Karen-Matthews-kidnap-own-daughter-Shannon-Madeleine-McCann-mum-Kate

Hmm,one thing for sure the McCann spokesman cannot claim that the part about leaving their child alone is rubbish because by their own admittance that is what is said what happened.Sub plot here some one is promoting a hoax abduction IMO.

It seems to me that there's a big propaganda push going on, perhaps in response to Jodie marsh's off-message twitter rant. First we get MW-T pushing the abduction myth, first on TV then on the radio, then we get Katie Hopkins promoting abduction and now the print media are trying to create the impression that only horrible people question the McCanns. It looks to me like they're trying to get us to forget what GA and the PT Supreme court have said and put the truth genie back in the bottle