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Shannon Matthews update
Words cannot express. Good God.
The mother of Shannon Matthews has been jailed for kidnapping her own daughter in an attempt to claim reward money.
Karen Matthews, 33, and her co-accused Michael Donovan, 40, were earlier found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.
Both were jailed for eight years by a judge at Leeds Crown Court who said the offences were “truly despicable”.
Shannon was held at Donovan’s flat in Batley Carr, West Yorkshire, for 24 days. (full article, BBC)
- case timeline
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Missing nine-year-old Shannon Matthews had been given the sedative drug temazepam for up to 20 months before her disappearance, a court heard. (BBC)
- Inside the trial: BBC
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Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
Roanoke Colony
For Larry, since we had a lovely discussion in the car, in which neither of us could remember the state of the abandoned “Lost Colony”—were the dwellings disheveled, or did they appear normal, as if their occupants had simply vanished?
The settlers landed on Roanoke Island on July 22 1587. On 18 August, White’s daughter delivered the first English child born in the Americas: Virginia Dare. Before her birth, White reestablished relations with the neighboring Croatans and tried to reestablish relations with the tribes that Ralph Lane had attacked a year previously. The aggrieved tribes refused to meet with the new colonists. Shortly thereafter, George Howe was killed by natives while searching for crabs alone in Albemarle Sound. Knowing what had happened during Ralph Lane’s tenure in the area and fearing for their lives, the colonists convinced Governor White to return to England to explain the colony’s situation and ask for help. There were approximately 116 colonists—115 men and women who made the trans-Atlantic passage and a newborn baby, Virginia Dare, when White returned to England….
White landed on 18 August 1590, on his granddaughter’s third birthday, but found the settlement deserted. He organized a search, but his men could not find any trace of the colonists. Some ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children had disappeared; there was no sign of a struggle or battle of any kind. The only clue was the word “Croatoan” carved into a post of the fort and “Cro” carved into a nearby tree. In addition, there were two skeletons buried. All the houses and fortifications were dismantled. Before the colony disappeared, White established that if anything happened to them they would carve a maltese cross on a tree near their location indicating that their disappearance could have been forced. White took this to mean that they had moved to Croatoan Island, but he was unable to conduct a search; a massive storm was brewing and his men refused to go any further. The next day, White stood on the deck of his ship and watched, helplessly, as they left Roanoke Island.
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Originally published at The Haunted Palace. Please leave any comments there.
