Evil mum Karen Matthews’ money-making schemes while on taxpayer-funded new identity, exposed
SHAMELESS Karen Matthews is trying to make cash out of her crime – AGAIN.
The evil mum, who faked daughter Shannon’s kidnap in a bid to share in a £50,000 reward, has signed with a “celebrity” agent who is negotiating a fee of up to £12,000 for her first TV interview.
Matthews, 43, also, naturally, wants to appear on The Jeremy Kyle Show.
The Sun can also reveal she is even planning a tell-all book about the sickening 2008 crime, which she hopes could be turned into a film.
A source close to the mother-of-seven said: “Karen makes no secret that her dream is at some time in the future to manage Shannon’s ‘career’, doing book and film deals if her daughter ever wanted to tell her own story.
“People around the world know what Karen did, and to hear it from the horse’s mouth could make a fortune — and Karen wants her hands on that money.”
Matthews, who was released from jail six years ago, is obsessed with getting rich, according to one of her few friends, who also claimed she:
- Takes cash and gifts from a number of men who are obsessed with her notoriety. She uses a special email address purely for meeting men and openly boasts of being Karen Matthews despite enjoying a taxpayer-funded new identity.
- Shoplifts from stores in the posh town in the south of England where she now lives.
- Litters her dingy, two-bed basement flat with empty champagne bottles, all allegedly still bearing their security tags.
- Demanded money from photographers on Mothering Sunday who were hoping for a picture.
- Took unsold sandwiches from a Pret A Manger to give to the homeless, but instead sold them to tramps and pocketed the cash.
- Plans to take a percentage cut of any money earned from the media by her former neighbour Julie Bushby.
Julie is the only person from Matthews’ former home on the Moorside estate in Dewsbury, West Yorks, who has stood by her after the shocking crime.
Nine-year-old Shannon was on her way home to the estate when she “disappeared” on February 19, 2008.
In scenes later depicted on hit BBC1 drama The Moorside, starring Sheridan Smith as Julie Bushby, Matthews kept the girl bound, drugged and hidden for 24 days, while the world prayed for the lost child.
After finally confessing, Matthews was found guilty of hatching the hoax with Michael Donovan, 47, the uncle of her boyfriend Craig Meehan.
Together they had stashed the girl in his grotty flat while thousands of locals searched in vain for the youngster amid repeated tearful TV appeals from her family.
Matthews and Donovan were both jailed for eight years.
As she was being led away to prison, the man who led the hunt for the vanished schoolgirl, Supt Andy Brennan, said: “Where Karen Matthews is concerned, if it was the money or Shannon the money would always have won.”
Matthews was released in 2012 after serving half her sentence.
Earlier this week the mum moaned about the abuse she has received for her crime since her release, saying: “I didn’t kill anyone.”
She added that neither the mother of Baby P nor Soham accomplice Maxine Carr “get the abuse I do”.
After she was freed, Matthews was given a new identity, along with a basement flat in a bustling Home Counties town.
She qualifies for £120 a fortnight in state benefits as long as she keeps up her 14 hours a week volunteering in a shop.
Yet according to those close to her, Matthews has also been tirelessly working towards her goal of exploiting her crime in schemes such as the proposed £12k TV chat.
One said: “When she kidnapped Shannon, Karen wanted £25,000. That’s 50 per cent of the fifty grand reward, with Donovan getting the other half.
“If she gets this TV deal she’ll be halfway there. It’s a disgrace that she’s now portraying herself as a victim.”
The source added: “She’s going around saying, ‘My time has now come. The time I’ve been waiting for has arrived’. The authorities have told her that she shouldn’t be giving interviews but Karen thinks they are standing in her way of having a good life and making a success of herself.”
Matthews has also had a makeover, wearing hair extensions and spending a small fortune on make-up.
And like many of our most notorious criminals, she has a host of eccentric admirers obsessed with her infamy. Some of these men give her envelopes of cash.
She has a profile on a dating site where she advertises herself as “aged 43, no children”.
The shameless mum replied to one man seeking a date: “You look like Grant off EastEnders and I like him.”
Meanwhile, a family member from West Yorkshire says Matthews still sees her ex-lover, paedophile Craig Meehan, who was sentenced to five months for viewing indecent images of children. He had nothing to do with the faked kidnapping.
She said: “Craig says Karen has a new boyfriend every month.”
One of her more notable admirers is pensioner Eric Anderson, 72, who she met at a Christian group which she no longer attends.
He reportedly bought her an £800 Samsung Galaxy 8 smartphone, paid for a new large-screen TV and is believed to be footing the bill for the £55-a-month broadband being installed next week at Matthews’ home. Sugar daddy Eric, who went on a date with Matthews to a local KFC, told The Sun this week: “The lass has done her time.
“The reason that I care about Karen? She’s a victim. Have you seen what people are like when they come out of prison?
“Have you seen the conditions they live in?”
Back in Yorkshire, Matthews’ family are appalled at her blatant attempts to re-write history.
Her cousin Susan Howgate, 49, of Heckmondwike, says: “If I bumped into her I’d smack her for what she did. She’s not innocent. She still did it. It was her own fault.
“In my eyes it should have just been left in the past. Why speak out now?
“Karen says she’s not the ‘worst mother’ but if she is feeling this way now why did she ever do it in the first place? It’s her fault. She has brought it all on herself.”
If the British public react in the same way and turn against Matthews’ master plan to cash in, she may already be organising a way out — funded by the taxpayer.
An insider suggests she has now begun creating threatening messages to herself on her smartphone, claiming they are from her old kidnap accomplice Michael Donovan.
He says: “Then she sends them to her Tesco mobile, which the state pays for, so she can show the authorities.
“Knowing that the public might turn against her, is she trying to get police protection or to be moved yet again — and the state will pay?”
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