A person who kidnapped a nine-year-old lady in a case that gripped the nation 16 years in the past has died from most cancers in hospital.
Michael Donovan, 54, stored schoolgirl Shannon Matthews hidden beneath a mattress in his council flat for twenty-four days as a part of a faux kidnap plot hatched by her mom, Karen Matthews.
A whole bunch of cops and hundreds of locals looked for Shannon round the clock after she vanished as she made her manner dwelling in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire on 19 February 2008.
Police used 16 out of the UK’s 27 “sufferer restoration canines” for what was the most important West Yorkshire Police investigation for the reason that Yorkshire Ripper inquiry.
Karen Matthews, a mom of seven, had placed on a present of turning into tearful as she went on tv to plea with the general public for info on the place her daughter was.
Officers ultimately discovered Shannon alive within the drawer of a divan mattress just a few miles from her dwelling. She had reportedly been drugged.
Matthews and Donovan, who collectively hatched the plan in an effort to assert a £50,000 reward for her protected return, have been discovered responsible of kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice in December 2008.
They have been every sentenced to eight years in jail the next yr.
Donovan, often called Mick, was the uncle of Karen Matthews’s then boyfriend Craig Meehan.
He was identified with stage 3 throat most cancers two months in the past, and was pronounced lifeless on Tuesday at Three Valleys Hospital in Keighley, West Yorkshire, after collapsing in a courtyard there, The Solar reported.
Donovan had been on the safe psychological well being hospital following his launch from jail in 2012, and had modified his identify to Aiden Johnson, the paper stated.
A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police stated: “Police have been contacted on Tuesday 16 April and made conscious of the demise of a person in hospital within the Steeton space.
“The demise shouldn’t be being handled as suspicious, and enquiries can be performed on behalf of the coroner.”
Matthews was additionally launched in 2012 after serving half her sentence and given a brand new identification and new dwelling within the south of England.
She was banned from contacting Shannon and her six different youngsters, who have been put into care.
All of the siblings have been granted lifelong anonymity following a Excessive Courtroom injunction in 2020.
The Ministry of Justice declined to remark, saying Donovan was now not beneath its jurisdiction after 2016.
The Unbiased has requested the Three Valleys Hospital to remark.
