Woman charged in abduction has criminal history

By Gene Johnson

The Associated Press

SEATTLE - Sheila Matthews, charged in the abduction of an infant from a Chicago bus station on Christmas Eve, has taken children on at least two other occasions, the FBI said Friday.

In 1988, Matthews pleaded guilty to kidnapping a toddler she was babysitting in Seattle. And earlier this year, she pleaded guilty to an attempted forgery charge after she was found with a Chicago boy in Seattle, the FBI's Seattle office said.

Matthews was arrested again Thursday in West Virginia, where 16-month-old Jasmine Anderson was found unharmed after being taken from a Chicago bus station. Jasmine's mother was reunited with her Friday, while Matthews was charged with kidnapping in federal court in Charleston, W. Va.

The case earlier this year is strikingly similar to the Anderson case, said Julia Buchanan, a Seattle woman who knows Matthews. Buchanan's account was confirmed by an FBI official in Seattle.

Buchanan's brother, Eldridge Carmichael Buchanan, was in jail when Matthews told him she was pregnant with his child, Julia Buchanan said. Last fall, after Eldridge Buchanan was released, Matthews showed up in Seattle with a baby boy.

"She basically tells us she has my brother's baby, and so they move in with me and I'm playing aunty and my brother's playing daddy," Buchanan said. "She stayed four months before the feds came and arrested her. She had never done anything to hurt us, so we had no reason not to believe her."

The baby, named David Scott, was the son of a woman in Chicago. Matthews knew the family and had cared for the child.

Buchanan said she did not know why kidnapping charges were never filed. The FBI official said she could not say.

Matthews was arrested Jan. 31 in an emergency housing facility operated by the city, but not on charges related to the boy. The charge was attempted forgery, for a bogus $75 check she wrote in 1988 at a grocery store in Grant County in central Washington, Grant County Prosecutor John Knodell said Friday.

She pleaded guilty to the charge and was given a 90-day sentence, with most of it suspended, Knodell said.

When she was arrested in January, "There was a child in the house that was determined not to be her child," said FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs. "The child was returned to the parent in Chicago."