Ten years after Shannon Matthews vanished from her home in Dewsbury, the woman who helped expose her mother's lies has spoken out about the case that shocked the nation. Natalie Murray, once Karen Matthews's closest friend, says she suspected something was wrong from the start.
Shannon, nine, was reported missing on 19 February 2008. Her mother, Karen Matthews, made tearful appeals for her return, but 24 days later the girl was found hidden in a divan bed. Matthews was later jailed for her part in the kidnap hoax.
Murray lived two doors away and noticed odd behaviour immediately. 'Straight away my gut was telling me something wasn't right,' she said. 'Karen was carrying on with normal stuff, tidying up the house. It was as if Shannon had just gone to her friend's.'
Despite police warnings not to speak to the press, Matthews gave a live television appeal, clutching a teddy bear that was not Shannon's. 'She'd never called Shannon a princess,' Murray said. 'Someone must have told her to say that.'
It took three weeks after Shannon's safe recovery for Murray's questioning to extract a confession from her former friend. 'The first day Shannon was reported missing, I saw it in her eyes,' she recalled. 'She had this look where she wanted to tell you something, but what came out of her mouth was different.'
The case became West Yorkshire Police's largest operation since the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, with more than 300 officers and three-quarters of the UK's body dogs involved. Barry South, the divisional commander at the time, said the scale of the search quickly became clear.
