Shannon Matthews case almost cost me life: Detective

Jan 23 2009 by Andrew Hirst, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Putting the job first almost cost my life!

A MURDER squad detective’s dedication to duty almost cost him his life.

Now John Lee – who postponed a vital hospital appointment to give evidence at the Karen Matthews trial – has spoken out about his battle with bowel cancer.

The 48-year-old, who is the stepfather of ex-Town star Jonathan Stead, has warned others never to put their job before their own health.

John has been in the police for more than 28 years, mostly as a detective in Huddersfield CID.

He has served with West Yorkshire Police’s Homicide and Major Enquiry Team for the last five years and as a specialist interviewer has come face-to-face with some of the county’s most notorious criminals, including Daniel Sykes who is serving 24 years for killing 23-year-old Tobiasz Minski on a lonely canal towpath between Slaithwaite and Marsden in 2007, and Ronald Castree, convicted in 2007 of murdering 11-year-old Lesley Molseed and dumping her body on moorland in West Yorkshire in 1975.

He is serving a minimum 30-year term.

John also interviewed murdered Christopher Hawkins, who stabbed his four-year-old son Ryan to death in Slaithwaite in September 2007 and tried to kill his teenage daughter, Donna. He is serving a minimum 21-year jail term.

John interviewed 34-year-old Karen Matthews after she was arrested for kidnapping and falsely imprisoning her nine-year-old daughter, Shannon, in one of West Yorkshire’s biggest ever cases.

Speaking exclusively to the Examiner on the day Matthews and her ex-lover’s uncle, 40-year-old Michael Donovan are sentenced for their crimes, John said: “I’d had the symptoms for two years, but like a lot of people with busy working lives I pushed them to the back of my mind and put the job first.”