Who was the Black Panther Donald Neilson and is he still alive?
DONALD Neilson committed four murders and more than 400 burglaries during a five-year crime spree in the 1970s.
Called 'the Black Panther' by the press, Channel 5 made a documentary series about it Neilson called The kidnapping of Lesley Whittle in 2021.
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Who was Donald Neilson?
Donald Neilsonborn August 1, 1936, was a builder who became a career criminal crimes including burglary, murder and kidnapping.
Neilson, born Donald Nappey, was bullied at school because of his name.
When he was ten years old, his mother died and he was raised by his strict, disciplinary father, who often belittled and physically abused him.
During his time in National Service he developed a keen interest in weapons KenyaAden and Cyprus.
Neilson married his wife Irene at the age of 18 before leaving the US Army and changing his name.
The couple moved to Bradford with their daughter Kathryn, but a series of failed business ventures left him increasingly frustrated and resentful about his lack of money.
In the early 1970s, Neilson – whose motto was 'check or be controlled' – committed a spate of 400 burglaries, always dressed in black and wearing a balaclava.
But after earning just £16,000 in five years, he upped the ante by using a shotgun and a pistol to commit armed robberies at post offices across the country.
Neilson shot dead his first murder victim, Sub-Postmaster Donald Skepper, during an armed raid in Harrogate. Yorkshire in February 1974.
Shortly afterwards he broke into the house of another sub-postmaster, Derek Astin, in Baxenden. Lancashireshooting him dead as he lay next to his wife in bed.
In November 1974, just two months later, he shot and killed Postmaster Sidney Grayland in Langley, West Midlandsbefore beating his wife Peggy so severely that she too almost died.
As he carried out the robberies and raids, Neilson had one last payday on his mind: kidnapping the 17-year-old Lesley Whittle from Highley, Shropshire.
A public family dispute over the will of her father George, who died in 1972, led to the teenager becoming a target.
As head of a successful coach firm in Shropshire, he left a fortune of £300,000 – the equivalent of £4 million in today's money – to his partner Dorothy and their two children, Ronald and Lesley.
But George's ex-wife Selena, who was still legally married to him, successfully sued for years of unpaid support.
After reading a newspaper report about the case, Neilson began planning his evil crime: keeping an eye on the family's home for a year to learn their routines and the best ways in and out of the property.
In the early hours of January 14, 1975, Dorothy Whittle returned home after a night out, before checking on her sleeping daughter, taking a sleeping pill and going to bed.
Neilson cut the telephone wires moments later, entered the house through the garage and entered Lesley's room.
He then gagged Lesley and tied her hands, forcing her out of the house and into the Morris 1100 he had stolen before the kidnapping.
Neilson drove the terrified teenager for almost two hours to the hideout he discovered – a maze of drains and tunnels reaching 100 feet underground – in Bathpool Park, Staffordshire.
The next morning, when Dorothy took a bowl of cereal to Lesley's room to wake her up, she discovered her daughter was missing.
She tried to call her son Ron, 28, who lived nearby, but the lines were dead, so she drove to his house.
Upon their return, Ron searched the house and found a box of Turkish delight containing four rolls of Dymo tape: plastic tape that could be punched with letters and words.
The tape contained a sinister message, explaining that Lesley had been kidnapped and demanding a ransom of £50,000 – around £428,000 today.
There were also instructions to go to a bank of payphones between 6pm and 1am that evening and wait for a call outside a nearby shopping centre.
It ended with the sinister threat: “No cops, no tricks – or death.”
Despite the warning, the family contacted police, with Chief Inspector Bob Booth of West Mercia Police taking charge of the case.
They devised a plan for Ron to withdraw £50,000 from the bank and follow the instructions Police secretly in tow.
At 8 p.m. that day, when the kidnapping story was leaked to the press, Booth called off the operation and Ron was not there to take the call.
The next day, one of Whittle's employees received a call at the office and heard Lesley's voice delivering a message to Dorothy.
“Mommy don't worry, I'm fine,” she said on the tape. “I got a little wet, but now I'm dry. I am treated very well.”
She also sent Ron to a phone box in Kidsgrove, near Stoke-on-Trent, to find instructions telling him to drive to Bathpool Park with the ransom and stop at a low wall, flashing his headlights.
With a police officer in the back of the car, Ron did as he was told, but he missed the wall, drove a quarter of a mile too far before frantically flashing his lights and shouting at the kidnapper to 'come get the money' – but no one came .
The next morning, a police search team combed Bathpool Park with sniffer dogs, but no trace of Lesley or her kidnapper was found.
On the night of the failed ransom payment, security guard Gerald Smith was shot six times by an intruder at the Dudley Freightliner Terminal and survived.
The cartridges recovered at the scene were linked to the post office murder shooting.
Days later, a Morris 1100 abandoned nearby was searched and found inside was another tape of Lesley's voice, her slippers and a roll of Dymo tape, along with fingerprints linking the driver to the shooting.
The police now knew that Lesley's kidnapper was the Black Panther.
Six weeks after her disappearance, DCS Booth and Ron Whittle are still no closer to finding Lesley TV appeal for information.
The next day, another piece of Dymo tape reading “Drop the suitcase in the hole” was found by local schoolchildren in Bathpool Park, along with a torch wedged into the grilles of a ventilation shaft.
Police searched the park again and found the drainage system and ventilation shaft.
As they descended three ladders to a platform 20 meters underground, they encountered a gruesome scene.
Lesley's blue dressing gown hung above the platform, which was only two feet wide, and a sleeping bag and survival blanket lay on the cold steel floor.
A wire was tied to the bottom of the ladder and when an officer shone a torch under the platform, he found Lesley's body hanging from the wire noose around her neck, just 12 inches off the ground.
Former officer Alec Salt says the memory will never leave him.
“I had seen the body and it was the body of a young woman,” he said.
“She was just an ordinary student. She should not have been treated this way by anyone.”
Neilson's return to crime eventually led to his capture in December 1975.
Two police officers saw him acting suspiciously near a post office in Mansfield – and he pulled out a shotgun.
Despite being shot and wounded during the battle, the brave officers managed to overpower him.
After a fingerprint check, they realized they had caught the Black Panther.
While Neilson confessed to the post office murders and the kidnapping of Lesley Whittle, he told his lawyer: 'I didn't kill her. I didn't mean to kill her.”
He claimed that Lesley had died on the third day of her captivity when she accidentally fell from the platform as she moved to make him sit down.
“I saw her face, her eyes seemed half closed, I froze and panicked,” he said.
Neilson was convicted of the kidnap and murder of Lesley, as well as that of the three sub-postmasters
After his heinous crimes, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1976.
Is Donald Neilson still alive?
On December 17, 2011, Neilson was rushed to Norfolk Norwich University Hospital.
He had breathing difficulties, which had bothered him for years motor neuron disease.
He died a day later.
Why was Donald Neilson called the Black Panther?
Marion Astin, the widow of Derek Astin, Neilson's second murder victim, was watching the killer as she lay next to her husband in bed when he was shot.
Marion described the attacker as dressed all in black and “so fast he looked like a panther.”
This led to the press calling him the Black Panther.
Who is Donald Neilson's daughter?
Nelison's daughter, Kathryn, born in 1960, was only two years younger than Lesley, her father's victim.
She wrote a book, Behind the Panther's Smile, which contains accounts of Neilson's family life.
Kathryn says her father became more and more in control of the course of his killing spree.
“He became increasingly moody at home. It was as if he, his body and mind, had been taken over by a monster.
'I now know why he became so unbearable at home. No one could live normally with the horrors he had on his conscience.”
Kathryn said he became obsessed with the reporting when police launched a massive manhunt.
“I don't know if he felt any remorse for his victims,” she wrote.
“We were watching television one evening and there was something on the news about the murder of a sub-postmaster and my father said, 'If someone points a gun at you, I hope you will wise up.'
“Looking back, he took a lot of interest in the Black Panther news. If I talked when there was something on TV about the raids, he told me to keep my mouth shut.'
Kathryn admitted that she and her mother were completely unaware of her father's “terrible secret” before police arrived.
“The secret of my father's locked attic was revealed that night, when police burst through the locked door,” she said.
'I was stunned when I realized he had used it as a headquarters for his raids. He spent more and more time there, locked up. If you asked what he was doing, he'd say, 'mind your own business.'”