'Perfect' life shattered by kidnapping charge

WILLIAMSON, W.Va. -- For one month this year, life was perfect, says Nancy Matthews.

The granddaughter she had raised since age 2 had joined her in this hilly coal and rail town on the Kentucky border, escaping a "drug-using crowd" in Chicago and sharing the rent on the small blue house at 937 Vinson St.

Four months later, Matthews' granddaughter, Sheila Matthews, was in handcuffs and being led away from that house, which Nancy herself had fled in September.

Sheila Matthews, who says she is 35 but who her grandmother insists is 33, is accused of kidnapping 16-month-old Jasmine Anderson from a Chicago bus station on Christmas Eve.

She appeared before a federal magistrate in Charleston on Friday, waiving her right to be returned to Chicago for an initial appearance. She was remanded to U.S. Marshals and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for Thursday in Charleston.

A few miles away, Jasmine, apparently unharmed, waited to be reunited with her her mother, Marcella Anderson, before returning to Chicago.

Nancy Matthews, 80, initially told reporters she hopes they "throw the book" at her granddaughter, but was more conciliatory Friday.

"My heart bleeds for her," Nancy said Friday, surrounded by some of the 344 teddy bears and many pictures of Jesus in her home. "She's a good girl. She'd give you the shirt off her back. She just got up with the wrong bunch," she said.

"She doesn't need to go to prison. She needs a psychiatrist. I told her and her mother that. She needs to pay for the things that she's done, but not for a lifetime. If you go to prison, you don't get no help."

14-year-old mother

Nancy said her daughter was 14 when Sheila was born in Augusta, Ga.

By age 2, Sheila was her legal child, and they had moved to the Seattle area, where Nancy had spent time during a career as a truck driver. Sheila's mother and her two children still live in Washington, she said.

Nancy said she moved to Williamson about 13 months ago, encouraged to do so by another granddaughter who lives in nearby Lenore.

Sheila joined her in August and that's when they moved to the $300-a-month house on narrow Vinson Street.

"For a month, it was perfect," Nancy said.

Then the person Nancy blames for much of Sheila's current trouble arrived.

Dewallis Cortez Harris, known as Teddy, was Sheila's boyfriend and police say it was to cover up a lie to him that Sheila kidnapped Jasmine. Authorities said she told Harris she had given birth while he was in a California prison. A tip from the boyfriend's mother led to Sheila's arrest.

Additionally, workers at a local store had recognized the baby Thursday and called a tip line.

Authorities said they questioned Harris Thursday and released him; on Friday, they said he had left the area.

Nancy acknowledged that Sheila had pleaded guilty in 1988 to a kidnapping charge in Washington. She abducted a 2 1/2-year-old girl in Seattle in 1987. The child was found unharmed about a month later and Sheila was sentenced to 5 1/2 months in jail and 12 months of community supervision.

"There were a lot of years where she didn't do anything like this," Nancy said.

Nancy said she left the house after Harris moved in.

The Rev. Ron Reynolds, who lives across the street from the house where the toddler was found, said both Sheila Matthews and Harris seemed nice enough.

Sheila had told Reynolds she was pregnant with twins, but told others she had had an abortion.

"Sheila always loved kids to death," Nancy said. "I think she wanted one so bad that it got into her head that she was pregnant."

Friday, the house had been boarded up by landlord Eugene Thorn. Shattered glass from where officers had broken in littered the floor, mixed in with a white cap and gloves in an empty baby carrier.