Kidnapping and murder of Lesley Whittle

The Murder of Lesley Whittle was the noted murder of heiress Lesley Whittle, the last crime undertaken by Donald Neilson, who became known to the British press as the Black Panther.

Lesley Whittle

Lesley Whittle, born 1957, was the daughter George Whittle, the founder of Whittle coaches, and his common-law partner Dorothy. At the time of her kidnap, she was studying for her A Levels, and had a steady boyfriend.

Background

To avoid death duties well before he died in 1970 aged 65, George gifted three houses plus £70,000 in cash to Dorothy, £107,000 to his son Ronald and £82,000 to Lesley. As he had left nothing to her, George's estranged wife, Selina Whittle, began legal proceedings in May 1972 to obtain reasonable provision from her husband's estate. The story was picked up by the Daily Express.

Kidnap and murder

Requiring money, and inspired by reading about United States kidnaps and the subsequent amount of monies that they gained, Neilson read about a dispute between Whittle and Selina. Incensed at Selina's treatment, he decided he was going to kidnap either Ronald or Dorothy Whittle and hold them until a £50,000 ransom had been paid. He had estimated that taking £50,000 from the Whittle's would not affect their lifestyle too much, because they would still have quite a bit of capital left plus their successful coach business.

After three years of planning, on 14 January 1975, Neilson cut the telephone line (suspecting a burglar alarm), and then entered the Whittle's home in Highley, Shropshire through the garage. Encountering Lesley by mistake, he decide to kidnap her instead; only her mother was asleep in the house at the time, having taken a sleeping pill. Gagging the teenager, who was wearing only her dressing gown and slippers, he took her to his green Morris car, where he tied her up and laid her down on the back seat. He left three notes in Dyno tape on the sofa in the lounge of the house, demanding a £50,000 ransom, and no police involvement.

Neilson then drove Lesley to Bathpool Park at Kidsgrove, Staffordshire. There he forced her down into the drainage shaft of the nearby reservoir. Inside the shaft he placed a hood over her head, removed the dressing gown leaving her naked, and then tethered her to the side of the shaft by a wire noose. There was a mattress and a sleeping bag.

Investigation

A series of police bungles and other circumstances meant that Whittle's brother Ronald was unable to deliver the ransom money to the place and time demanded by the kidnapper.

Scotland Yard agreed that Ronald Whittle should take a suitcase as instructed containing the ransom money to Bathpool Park. He set off, but unfamiliar with the area and got lost, arriving 90 minutes late and unable to find the torch that Neilson had left as a signal. West Mercia Police officers put the blame for the failed operation onto Staffordshire Police, when a patrol car was seen driving through the area. A courting couple in a car had also parked up near to where the ransom was to have been left. A subsequent search of Bathpool Park by West Mercia Police revealed no clues.

A week later, West Midlands Police contacted West Mercia. On the same night of the failed ransom drop, a car had been left near a Freightliner railway terminal in Dudley, where security guard Gerald Smith had been shot and injured. In the car was a cassette tape with Lesley Whittle's voice on it, her slippers and plastic tape, which linked Neilson to the kidnapping. Ballistics evidence also linked him to the shooting.

It was not until early March that a full search of Bathpool Park was carried out. Whittle's body was found on 7 March 1975, hanging from a wire at the bottom of the shaft. It is widely believed That Neilson pushed Lesley off the ledge in the drainage shaft, strangling her. An alternative to this scenario is that Neilson was not even there when Whittle died and that, in fact, he fled on the night of the failed ransom collection without returning to the shaft after he panicked, believing the police were closing in on him, leaving Whittle alive in the dark surrounded by rats and other vermin to slowly starve for a considerable period of time before falling to her death. If the police had searched the park and the shaft the morning after Ron Whittle's attempt to deliver the ransom the story might have had a very different ending.

The subsequent post-mortem examination showed that Whittle had not, in fact, died slowly from strangulation but instantaneously from vagal inhibition. The shock of the fall had caused her heart to literally stop beating. The pathologist, Dr John Brown, reported that this would have been induced by high blood pressure in her carotid artery, caused by the constrictive wire loop around her neck triggering an alarm to her brain via the vagus nerve. The brain's response to this urgent signal for a reduction in artery pressure would be to slow down radically the heart and when that failed, her heart stopped altogether and she died. The pathologist noted that Whittle weighed only 98 pounds (44 kg) when found, her stomach and intestines were completely empty, she had lost a considerable amount of weight and was emaciated.

Detective Bob Booth, who led the investigation into Lesley's kidnapping, was subsequently demoted from CID to a uniformed beat officer.

Arrest and conviction

Main article: Donald Neilson

In December 1975, two police officers spotted a man seen acting suspiciously in Mansfield, who turned out to be Neilson, also known as the Black Panther for his trademark balaclava. Armed with saw-off shotgun, he was only arrested with the help of several customers in a nearby fish and chips shop. In the subsequent investigation, Neilson's fingerprints were found to match one of those in the drain shaft.

During his trial, Neilson's asserted that he fed Whittle chicken soup, spaghetti and meatball and bought her fish and chips and chicken legs, were dismissed by the jury as callous lies.

In July 1976, Neilson was convicted of the murder of Lesley Whittle at Oxford Crown Court, and given a lfe sentence. Three weeks later he was convicted of the murder of three post office workers, and given three further life sentences.

2008 appeal and death of Neilson

In 2008 and suffering from Motor neurone disease, Neilson appealed his sentence, requesting it be muted to a maximum of 30 years. High Court judge Mr Justice Teare ruled the killer must never be released from prison, saying:

This is a case where the gravity of the applicant's offences justifies a whole life order. The manner in which the young girl was killed demonstrates that it too involved a substantial degree of premeditation or planning. It also involved the abduction of the young girl. The location and manner of Lesley Whittle's death indicates that she must have been subjected by the applicant to a dreadful and horrific ordeal

Neilson died in prison in December 2011.

External links

• BBC Shropshire, Audio slideshow: Lesley Whittle remembered