Shannon Matthews’ kidnapper Michael Donovan, who hid the girl under the bed, has died of cancer
A man who kidnapped a nine-year-old girl 16 years ago has died of cancer in a hospital. The case shocked the nation.
Michael Donovan, 54, hid schoolgirl Shannon Matthews under a bed in his council flat for 24 days as part of a fake kidnapping plan hatched by her mother, Karen Matthews.
Hundreds of police officers and thousands of locals searched around the clock for Shannon after she disappeared on her way home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire on February 19, 2008.
In West Yorkshire Police’s largest investigation since the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, the police deployed 16 of Britain’s 27 “victim rescue dogs”.
Karen Matthews, a mother of seven, feigned tears as she appeared on television and asked the public for information about her daughter’s whereabouts.
Officers eventually found Shannon alive in the drawer of a divan bed a few miles from her home. She was reportedly under the influence of drugs.
Matthews and Donovan, who had hatched the plan together to collect a £50,000 reward for their safe return, were found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice in December 2008.
The following year they were each sentenced to eight years in prison.
Donovan, called Mick, was the uncle of Karen Matthews’ then boyfriend Craig Meehan.
He was diagnosed with stage 3 throat cancer two months ago and was pronounced dead on Tuesday at Three Valleys Hospital in Keighley, West Yorkshire, after collapsing in a courtyard there. The sun reported.
Donovan was in the closed psychiatric hospital after his release from prison in 2012 and changed his name to Aiden Johnson, the newspaper said.
A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “Police were contacted on Tuesday 16 April and informed of the death of a man in hospital in the Steeton area.
“The death is not considered suspicious and an investigation is being carried out on behalf of the coroner.”
Matthews was also released in 2012 after serving half her sentence and was given a new identity and home in the south of England.
She was forbidden from having contact with Shannon and her six other children, who were placed in foster care.
All siblings were granted lifetime anonymity following a Supreme Court injunction in 2020.
The Justice Department declined to comment, saying Donovan has been out of its jurisdiction since 2016.
The Independent has asked Three Valleys Hospital for a comment.
