Some people do automatically default to ‘They’re just jealous’ as a way of deflecting criticism or perceived dislike from others, though. There doesn’t need to be any grounds whatsoever. It’s a self-protecting belief that makes other people the problem.
You see it on Mn all the time.
‘Waah! Some mum didn’t talk to me at the school gate!’
‘Never mind, she’s probably just jealous (of your good looks/wealth, popularity etc).’
I mean, if the families had both said at the time ‘Sure, Sally, we’re absolutely fine with you stealing large sums of money from your mum/our mum and dad — you crack on’, and then changed their minds years later, sure.
But it caused huge upset at the time, and presumably was only down to the fact that neither SW’s mother not TW’s parents wanted to press charges (probably because of TW’s terminal illness and SW being likely to be sent to prison, or possibly descending into serious mental illness if they believed in her ‘voices’) that no one reported it then.
Both families must have been watching the rise of SW and TW as media darlings who’d made a killing out of being beloved plucky underdogs and victims of their own trusting, unworldly natures, with mounting disbelief. When CH first published her story, at least one of the families contacted her immediately, but it took some time to find documentary corroboration, and to put ‘Anne’’s documentation together with stories from the other side of the family, in a way that took it beyond rumour/family gossip, all of the three victims of the theft being dead.