Revealed: How Shannon Matthews' kidnapper Michael Donovan claimed to be a ... trends now
The kidnapper of Shannon Matthews claimed to be a forensic psychologist named Wendy in a series of bizarre emails as he attempted to try and shift the blame over a crime that shocked the nation.
Michael Donovan, 54, who died from cancer on Tuesday, had kept schoolgirl Shannon, nine, under a bed in his council flat for 24 days as part of a plot hatched by her mother Karen Matthews.
The pair had planned to discover Shannon in a bid to claim £50,000 reward money.
But it has now been revealed that Donovan had concocted an elaborate plan to disguise himself as 'Wendy' - a phony figure of a psychiatrist who had carried out assessments on him after he was thrown behind bars in 2009, so he could continue his webs of lies surrounding the kidnap and remove the blame from himself.
Donovan told The Mirror that Karen had threatened to burn his house down if he didn't follow through with the sick kidnap plan of her daughter.
Michael Donovan, the kidnapper of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, reportedly sent emails to The Mirror under the name of Wendy in a bid to shift the blame of the crime
Shannon was nine when she went missing from her estate in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire
The double bed base where schoolgirl Shannon Matthews was found hiding. This image was shown by the prosecution as evidence during a trial at Leeds Crown Court in 2008
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 admitted that the crime was carried out with the large reward sum in mind, and that the pair would have split it between them if they emerged successful.
'The plan to keep Shannon was only for a full week and not any further but Karen Matthews got greedy,' he wrote in an email to the publication.
Donovan then claimed Karen's threats of setting his property ablaze scared him while he had Shannon in his flat, and that he had concerns for her life.
According to the news site, Donovan had at least four different aliases he used.
The plan was, he claimed, to release Shannon near Dewsbury town centre and then pretend to find her - picking her up and dashing her to the nearest police station to collect the reward and appear the hero.
A family member of the kidnapper confirmed the emails were from him, and revealed the man 'wanted his side to come out' by writing a book, claiming 'he knew what he'd done'.
Police eventually found the nine-year-old in the drawer of a divan bed a few miles from her home estate in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where she went missing on February 19, 2008.
Matthews and Donovan were both jailed for eight years in January 2009 after being convicted of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.
She was released in April 2012 after serving half her sentence and given a new taxpayer-funded identity and home.
Karen Matthews pictured last year having a cigarette outside a supermarket with her boyfriend Paul
