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Evil Karen Matthews keeps a ‘Best Mum’ ornament on her bedside table
EVIL Karen Matthews keeps a Best Mum ornament on her bedside table.
Matthews, jailed for faking the abduction of daughter Shannon, then nine, has told pal it was bought for her by an official assigned to help her rehabilitation.
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She keeps it along with a scrapbook and other knick-knacks at the state-funded home where she now lives under a new identity.
There, she watches cable TV, Facetimes family and friends on her Samsung Galaxy 8 phone and enjoys regular shopping trips.
Sources said she tops up her £120-a-fortnight benefits with money from mystery benefactors.
She has shown no remorse for her crime which saw her jailed for child neglect and perverting the course of justice in 2008.
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Instead Matthews, now 43, told a friend: “It wasn’t my fault. I was set up.”
Our pics show her, with dyed black locks, extensions and hairnet, strolling in an affluent town in the South of England, where she has been rehoused following her release in 2012.
The mum of seven smoked and chatted to a pal and tapped messages into her phone.
An onlooker said: “Matthews was quite covered up and dressed all in black, so as to look inconspicuous. But there was no mistaking that it was her, as her face is so recognisable — and she’s also very well known in the town.”
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A source familiar with Matthews’ new routine, said: “She gets everything paid for and her life is sweet now.
“She lives in a garden flat in a nice town, with a bus stop nearby. She gets her bus pass paid for and doesn’t even have to pay her own phone bills.
“It’s all laid on for her. She spends her life on her new Samsung Galaxy 8 phone.
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“She Facetimes family and friends all the time and barely a day goes by when she doesn’t go shopping.
“It’s like she has no shame, and has blocked out what she actually did.”
Karen Matthews admits lying about Shannon's disappearance in chilling police interview
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Police launched a huge manhunt when Shannon was reported missing from Matthews’ home in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
She was found 24 days later — bound and drugged in the base of a divan bed at a flat belonging to her boyfriend’s uncle, 47-year-old Michael Donovan. The pair had planned to split the £50,000 reward money but were both jailed for eight years.
Matthews, who works at a shop in the town, has watched TV shows about the case. They included Moorside, starring Sheridan Smith as a friend who led the hunt for Shannon.
But our source said: “She looks at footage and just says, ‘Look at my hair — it’s awful’.
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Karen Matthews confesses to kidnapping daughter Shannon in The Moorside
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“She thinks she looks much better now and has had a make-over.”
Some locals have taken pity on her, with one elderly man popping an envelope stuffed with cash through the letterbox of her flat, where she also keeps a pet budgerigar, Bobby.
Others, however, have been less forgiving. Our source said: “One woman kept targeting her, coming into the shop. Karen was terrified of her and even considered giving her money. If someone confronts her, she crumbles”
Julie Bushby talks candidly about sham abduction on Shannon Matthews: The Mother’s Story
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