Who Was Sheila Mathews Who Kidnapped the Baby

CHICAGO — A sixteen-month-quondam daughter who was taken from a Greyhound motorbus station Christmas Eve was found unharmed in West Virginia yesterday, and the woman charged in her kidnapping is the aforementioned woman who took a child from a Seattle family in 1987.

Jasmine Anderson was establish at a home in Williamson, Westward.Va., FBI Special Agent Thomas Kneir said. The toddler was being examined but appeared to be healthy, he said.

Authorities said Sheila Annalee Matthews, 33, was charged with one count of federal kidnapping.

Fourteen years ago, Matthews took off with a Seattle toddler, Maria Weeks, whom she had been baby-sitting. She was institute with the kid a month afterward in a Moses Lake apartment. She had told others the girl's proper noun was Mikka.

In the Jasmine Anderson abduction, Matthews told her boyfriend she'd had a babe while he was in prison, co-ordinate to Chicago law. When he was released, she told him that her mother was caring for the kid in Chicago.

"When she went to the Greyhound station that night, she was looking to abduct a babe," said Philip Cline, Chicago'southward chief detective. Police said Matthews and her fellow took the toddler to his relatives' business firm in Chicago on Christmas Day and posed for a photo with the daughter. They left for West Virginia the adjacent day.

Meanwhile, their hosts spotted a photo of Jasmine on television and chosen police.

Matthews is scheduled to appear in U.S. Magistrate Court in Charleston, W.Va., today, according to Joe Ciccarelli, spokesman for the FBI's Charleston office.

Her swain was questioned and released.

"We're really grateful to everyone who helped," said Marcella Anderson, the child'south female parent. "Especially the family unit members who were brave enough to come forward and had really good hearts, and God bless everyone."

Fourteen years ago, Matthews was arrested in Moses Lake in connectedness with the abduction of a 3-yr-old girl she had been baby-sitting in Seattle.

The preschooler, Maria Weeks, and her parents had been living at a motel on Aurora Avenue North when the father, Todd Weeks, let the daughter visit Matthews, who was also living at the cabin.

On Nov. eighteen, 1987, Matthews said she would like to care for the girl overnight. She telephoned the side by side day, saying she would continue the girl a few more days. Then she vanished with the child.

Todd Weeks didn't report his girl's disappearance for more than two weeks, saying he and his wife weren't worried at get-go.

"I trusted Sheila Matthews. I figured I could run her down myself," he said at the fourth dimension.

Maria Weeks was constitute unharmed with Matthews in a Moses Lake flat Dec. eighteen, 1987, after law received tips in Seattle and Moses Lake.

Matthews was arrested on two felony warrants — a 2d-caste kidnapping warrant and an older forgery warrant from Male monarch County Superior Courtroom.

King County prosecutors charged Matthews in December 1987 with i count of second-degree kidnapping.

While awaiting trial in the kidnapping case, she pleaded guilty to the forgery charge and served a xl-day sentence.

In Feb 1988, she accepted a deal to plead guilty to i count of unlawful imprisonment, a less-serious offense than kidnapping, in exchange for 5½ months in King County Jail and a yr of probation. In 1992, she served 90 days in jail for violating that probation.

In June 1989, not long afterwards her release from the jail, Grant Canton law arrested Matthews and charged her with some other forgery. Details of that crime were unavailable last night.

But later bailing out of Grant County Jail, she skipped town and wasn't defenseless until terminal February.

She was held in Grant County long enough to plead guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge of attempted forgery and was sentenced to a week in jail and 56 hours of community service. Instead of serving the time, though, she vanished last June.

Maria Weeks, who volition plough 17 next calendar month, doesn't call back anything of the month she spent with Matthews, said her mother, Priscilla.

Though her kid was returned unharmed, Priscilla Weeks said those days without her daughter "were absolutely devastating."

"I think she deserves to exist locked upwards longer than she was last fourth dimension," she said.

Because Matthews pleaded guilty to the reduced charge, Weeks said, "We were never able to run into her in courtroom, so we never knew why" she took Maria.

Weeks said she felt for the mother of the footling girl taken from a Chicago bus station.

"I'yard glad the child is safe and back with her parents," Weeks said. "And I hope she (Matthews) is never able to do it once more, 12 years down the road. Merely who knows — maybe she's washed information technology in the intervening years and now they've just linked (cases) to the same person."

Seattle Times staff reporters Ian Ith and Sara Jean Light-green contributed to this report.

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Source: https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20011228&slug=toddler280

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