UK NEWS

I HARDLY SAW MY CREEPY UNCLE WHEN SHANNON DISAPPEARED

Saturday November 15 2008 byPaul Jeeves

THE niece of the man accused of kidnapping schoolgirl Shannon Matthews yesterday described him as “a loner, a strange character, a bit creepy and a fantasist”.

Caroline Meehan told a court that Michael Donovan had been a regular visitor to her home.

She said Donovan – her mother Alice’s brother – visited most days but they had had no contact with him from the day Shannon went missing.

When her mother phoned him to ask why, he told her: “I am working away.”

Ms Meehan added: “He would come to see us for periods and then he would go away and we wouldn’t hear from him.”

Shannon was discovered after a 24-day manhunt, hidden in the base of a divan bed at Donovan’s first-floor flat in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

The prosecution claims the nine-year-old was drugged with sleeping and travel sickness tablets and restrained by an elastic leash tied in a noose.

It is alleged she was the victim of an elaborate hoax by her mother Karen Matthews, 33, and 40-year-old Donovan to fake Shannon’s kidnap to claim a £50,000 reward for her return.

Both deny kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.

Donovan’s downstairs neighbour yesterday told Leeds Crown Court how she heard “the tiny patter of feet” coming from his flat during the search for Shannon.

But pensioner June Batley failed to link the noise to the missing girl because she thought it was a toddler.

She said she heard footsteps and laughter in the defendant’s home on about three occasions but despite all the publicity surrounding the search for Shannon thought it was the young daughter of a woman Donovan had been seeing.

Ms Batley said: “We heard tiny footsteps which we thought was a toddler, not a nine-year-old.

No way.”

Asked if she had ever seen a child, she replied: “No, never. Just heard laughter of a child.

“It only seemed like a young, young child.”

Donovan yesterday sat in the dock nursing a cut face after being attacked by a fellow inmate at Armley jail in Leeds.

Defence barrister Alan Conrad QC told the judge, Mr Justice McCombe: “Mr Donovan was assaulted and as a result of the attack he received facial injuries.

“The attack followed a week in which a number of things have happened to him.

“He has been verbally threatened and his prison ID card has been stolen in mysterious circumstances.”

The trial continues.