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7 months ago
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The kidnapper of Shannon Matthews has died from cancer after collapsing in a hospital courtyard, 16 years after the crime which shocked the country.
Michael Donovan, 54, had kept schoolgirl Shannon in his council flat for 24 days as part of a plot hatched by her mother Karen Matthews.
Police eventually found the nine-year-old in the drawer of a divan bed a few miles from her home estate of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where she went missing on February 19, 2008.
Donovan was diagnosed with Stage 3 throat cancer in February and was pronounced dead yesterday at Three Valleys Hospital in Keighley, West Yorkshire, after collapsing in a courtyard there, the Sun reported.
Mother-of-seven Karen and accomplice Donavan were found guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice in December 2008.
Michael Donovan, the uncle and kidnapper of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, has died aged 54
Shannon was nine when she went missing from her estate in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire
Shannon's mother Karen Matthews had organised the fake abduction plot in February 2008
Matthews had initially been seen crying on the news as she pleaded with the public to help her find her daughter.
Police launched a £3.2million search for missing Shannon, only to find that she had been tied up and drugged in Donovan's home for 24 days - hidden in his bedroom with a list of rules on how to behave.
He and Matthews planned to 'discover' Shannon after a while and claim a £50,000 reward for her safe return.
It was later revealed that Karen was going out with Donovan's nephew Craig Meehan.
She was exposed as one of the plotters behind Shannon's disappearance when co-conspirator Donovan told officers at Halifax police station: 'Go and arrest Karen.'
Footage of that moment was unearthed and shown in a Channel 5 documentary looking back on the case in February 2021.
Matthews is reported to live in a secret location in the south of England under a new identity, which cannot be disclosed for legal reasons.
It was revealed in 2020 she had found love with a paedophile handyman who had been doing up her house.
Paul Hunter, 58, was jailed for five years in 2010 for abusing his former stepdaughter, who bravely waived her anonymity last year.
He had been working as a driver taking the elderly to hospital and disabled teenagers to college.
Back in January 2010 Oxford Crown Court heard his offences took place between 2006 and 2009 when his victim was aged between 15 and 17.
Saunders, of Blackbird Leys, Oxfordshire, was only caught after he was jailed for eight weeks for benefit fraud in May the previous year.
He was jailed for five years and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for life.
Hunter and Matthews got engaged over Christmas 2019 but she had to buy her own Princess Diana-style ring herself.
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