NIGHT TERROR
Who was the Black Panther Donald Neilson and is he still alive?
DONALD Neilson committed four murders and over 400 burglaries during a five-year crime spree in the 1970s.
Dubbed 'the Black Panther' by the press, Channel 5 made a documentary series about Neilson called The Abduction of Lesley Whittle in 2021.
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Who was Donald Neilson?
Donald Neilson, born on August 1, 1936 was a builder turned career criminal whose crimes included burglary, murder and a kidnapping.
Born Donald Nappey, Neilson was bullied at school because of his name.
When he was 10 years old his mother died, and he was raised by his strict, disciplinarian father — who frequently belittled and physically abused him.
He developed an avid interest in guns during his National Service stints in Kenya, Aden and Cyprus.
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Neilson married his wife Irene at 18 before leaving the Army and changing his name.
The couple moved to Bradford with their daughter, Kathryn, but a string of failed business ventures left him increasingly frustrated and resentful at his lack of money.
In the early 1970s Neilson — whose motto was “control or be controlled'' — committed a spate of 400 burglaries, always dressed in black and wearing a balaclava.
But after making just £16,000 in five years, he upped the stakes by using a shotgun and pistol to stage armed robberies on Post Offices around the country.
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Neilson shot and killed his first murder victim, sub-postmaster Donald Skepper, in an armed raid in Harrogate, Yorkshire in February 1974.
Shortly afterwards he broke into the home of another sub-postmaster, Derek Astin in Baxenden, Lancashire, shooting him dead while in bed beside his wife.
In November 1974, just two months later, he shot to death postmaster Sidney Grayland in Langley, West Midlands, before beating his wife Peggy so severely that she nearly died as well.
While he was carrying out the robberies and raids, Neilson had one final payday in mind — the kidnap of 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 teen becoming a target.
The head of a successful coach firm in Shropshire, he left a fortune of £300,000 — the equivalent of £4million in today's money — to his partner Dorothy and their two children, Ronald and Lesley.
But George's former wife Selena, who was still legally married to him, successfully sued for years of unpaid maintenance.
Having read a newspaper report on the case, Neilson began planning his evil crime — watching the family’s home for a year to get to know 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 a little while later, entered the house through the garage and let himself into Lesley’s room.
He then gagged Lesley and tied her hands, forcing her out of the house and into the Morris 1100 he'd stolen for the kidnap.
Neilson drove the terrified teen for almost two hours to the hiding place he had discovered — a maze of drains and tunnels reaching 90ft underground — in Bathpool Park, Staffordshire.
When Dorothy took a bowl of cornflakes to Lesley’s room to wake her the following morning, she discovered her daughter was missing.
She attempted to phone her son Ron, 28, who lived nearby — but the lines were dead, so she drove to his house.
On their return Ron searched the house and found a Turkish delight box containing four rolls of Dymo-tape — plastic tape which 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 phone boxes and wait for a call outside a nearby shopping centre that evening between 6pm and 1am.
It ended with the sinister threat: “No police, no tricks — or death.”
The family contacted the police despite the warning, with Chief Superintendent Bob Booth, of West Mercia police, taking on the case.
They hatched a plan for Ron to withdraw £50,000 from the bank and comply with the instructions — with the police covertly in tow.
At 8pm that day, when the story of the kidnap was leaked to the press, Booth called off the operation and Ron wasn’t there to take the call.
The following day one of Whittle's employees received a call in the office and heard Lesley’s voice delivering a message to Dorothy.
“There’s no need to worry Mum, I’m OK,” she said on the tape. “I got a bit wet but I’m dry now. I’m being treated very well.”
She also directed Ron to a phone box in Kidsgrove, near Stoke-on-Trent, to find instructions, which told him to drive to Bathpool Park with the ransom and stop at a low wall, flashing his headlights.
With a policeman hiding in the back of the car, Ron did as instructed but missed the wall, driving a quarter of a mile too far before frantically flashing his lights and shouting for the kidnapper to “come and get the money” — but no one came.
The following morning a police search team combed Bathpool Park with sniffer dogs, but no trace of Lesley or her kidnapper were found.
On the night of the failed ransom drop, security guard Gerald Smith was shot six times by a trespasser at the Dudley Freightliner Terminal, and survived.
The cartridges recovered from the scene were linked the shooting to the Post Office murders.
Days later a Morris 1100 abandoned nearby was searched and inside was another tape of Lesley’s voice, her slippers and a roll of Dymo-tape, along with fingerprints connecting the driver to the shootings.
Police now knew Lesley’s captor was the Black Panther.
Still no closer to finding Lesley six weeks after her disappearance, DCS Booth and Ron Whittle put out a TV appeal for information.
The following day another piece of Dymo-tape reading "Drop suitcase into hole", along with a torch wedged into the grilles of a ventilation shaft, was found by local schoolchildren in Bathpool Park.
Police once again searched the park, finding the drainage system and the ventilation shaft.
Climbing down three ladders to a platform 60ft below ground, they came across a horrific scene.
Lesley’s blue dressing gown was hanging above the platform, which was just 2ft wide, and a sleeping bag and survival blanket lay on the cold steel floor.
A wire was fastened to the bottom of the ladder and, when an officer shone a torch below the platform, he found Lesley’s body hanging from the wire noose around her neck, just 7 inches from the ground.
Former officer Alec Salt says the memory will never leave him.
“I’d seen the body and it was the body of a young woman,” he says.
“She was just an ordinary college girl. She shouldn’t have been treated like that by anybody.”
Neilson’s return to crime finally led to his capture in December 1975.
Two police officers saw him acting suspiciously near a Post Office in Mansfield — and he pulled a shotgun.
Despite being shot and injured in the struggle, the brave officers managed to overpower him.
After a fingerprint check, they realised they had caught the Black Panther.
While Neilson confessed to the Post Office murders and kidnapping Lesley Whittle, he told his lawyer: “I did not murder her. I had no intention of murdering her.”
He claimed Lesley had died on the third day of captivity, when she accidentally fell off the platform when she moved to allow him to sit down.
“I saw her face, her eyes seemed half closed, I froze and I panicked,” he said.
Neilson was convicted of Lesley’s kidnap and murder, as well as those of the three sub-postmasters
Following 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 and Norwich University Hospital.
He was having breathing difficulties, as he had been suffering with motor neurone disease.
A day later, he passed away.
Why was Donald Neilson called the Black Panther?
Marion Astin, the widow of Derek Astin, who was Neilson's second murder victim, got a look at the murderer as she lay in bed next to her husband when he was shot.
Marion described the attacker as being dressed entirely in black and “so quick he was like a panther”.
This led to the press naming him the Black Panther.
Who is Donald Neilson's daughter?
Nelison's daughter, Kathryn, born in 1960, was just two years younger than her father's victim Lesley.
She wrote a book, Behind the Panther’s Smile, which contains accounts of Neilson’s home life.
Kathryn says her father became increasingly controlling over the course of his killing spree.
“He got more and more moody at home. It was as if he was taken over, his mind and body, by a monster.
“I know now why he got so intolerable at home. No one could live normally with the horrors he had on his conscience.”
Kathryn said he became obsessed with the coverage as police launched a massive manhunt.
“I don’t know whether he felt any remorse about his victims,” she wrote.
“We were watching television one night and there was a bit on the news about a sub-postmaster being murdered and my father said, ‘If anyone points a gun at you, I hope you’ll have more sense.’
“Looking back he used to take a lot of interest in the Black Panther news. If I talked when there was something on the telly about the raids, he told me to shut up.”
Kathryn admitted she and her mum were completely oblivious to her father’s “terrible secret” before the police arrived.
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“The secret of my father’s locked attic was revealed that night, when police burst through its locked door,” she said.
“I felt stunned as I realised he’d used it as a headquarters for his raids. He spent more and more time locked away in there. If you asked what he was doing he’d say ‘mind your own business.’”
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