Donald Neilson
Encyclopedia
Donald Neilson is a British
multiple murderer and armed robber. Following three murders committed during robberies of sub-post offices during 1971–74, his last victim was Lesley Whittle, an heiress from Highley
, Shropshire
, England
, in 1975.
and his lack of height - he was only five feet six inches tall. According to David Bell and Harry Hawkes, Nappey bought a taxi business from a man named Neilson and decided, then, to use that name instead of the former. An alternative theory, proposed by a lodger, Miss Lena Fearnley, who stayed with the Neilson family in the early 1960s, is that Neilson took the name from an ice-cream van from which he and Irene often bought ice-cream for their daughter. Miss Fearnley told the BBC in an interview that he told her, "I like that name."
, West Yorkshire
, Neilson turned to crime when his business failed. It is believed he committed over 400 house burglaries without detection during his early days of crime. Before he became notorious as The Black Panther he was sought under a variety of nicknames such as The Phantom and Handy Andy. To confuse the police, he adopted a different modus operandi every few weeks. For example he would steal a radio from each house and abandon it nearby then when that pattern of behaviour was established he would drop it and do something else. Proceeds from simple housebreaking were low however and after stealing guns and ammunition from a house in Cheshire he upped his criminal activity which resulted in him turning to robbing small post offices. Neilson committed eighteen such crimes between 1971 and 1974.(ref: Harry Hawkes, The Capture of the Black Panther, Harrap Books 1978) His phobia about dogs meant that, although they didn't know it, postmasters with guard dogs were safe from his attentions.
His crimes became progressively more violent as he sought to protect himself from occupants prepared to put up a resistance to defend their property. In February 1972 he gained entry to a sub-post office in Rochdale Road, Heywood, Lancashire during the night. Leslie Richardson, the postmaster, and his wife woke to find a hooded man in their bedroom. Mr Richardson leapt out of bed to tackle the intruder while his wife phoned the police. During the struggle, Neilson showed Mr Richardson his sawn off shotgun and snapped in a West Indian accent, "This is loaded." Mr Richardson saw that the gun was pointing up at the ceiling and there was no danger of anyone being shot. He snapped back, "We'll find out if it's loaded," and pulled the trigger himself blasting two holes in the ceiling. The fight continued and Mr Richardson managed to pull Neilson's black hood off to reveal not the West Indian he had expected but a white man with dark staring eyes. Neilson then stamped mercilessly on Mr Richardson's feet breaking several toes and kneed him in the groin. As Mr Richardson collapsed on the floor, Neilson made his escape empty handed. Mr Richardson gave police a description of his masked intruder which turned out to be inaccurate in many respects. Several other photofits of Neilson were similarly unhelpful to the police but one, made by sub postmistress Margaret Grayland, was extremely accurate.
in February 1974, Derek Astin of Baxenden
near Accrington
in September 1974, and Sidney Grayland in Langley
, West Midlands
during November 1974. The Baxenden murder gained Neilson the nickname The Black Panther when, during an interview with a local television reporter, Mr Astin's wife, Marion, described her husband's killer as "so quick, he was like a panther". Alluding to the killer's dark clothing, the enterprising reporter ended his piece by asking "Where is this Black Panther?" and the soubriquet stuck. The Whittle case made him Britain's most wanted man in the mid-1970s and the kidnapper was irrefutably linked to the post office shootings when he shot security guard Gerald Smith six times while checking a ransom trail and forensics showed the bullets were fired from the same .22 pistol that was used to shoot Derek Astin and Sidney Grayland.
Shropshire
, England
. Neilson demanded a £50,000 ransom
from her family for her release. Her mother was asleep in the house at the time. The kidnapper had read about a dispute between her father George Whittle's first wife Selina and his second family, common law wife Dorothy, son Ronald and Lesley herself, then a schoolgirl, over George Whittle's will which left all his considerable fortune to be divided between the three surviving members of his second family and nothing to Selina. who had been living in poverty and knew nothing of his wealth. 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 Ronald and £82,000 to Lesley. 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 and read by Neilson who was incensed at Selina's treatment. His kidnapping plan, previously a crime looking to happen, quickly focussed on the Whittles. 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 Whittles would not affect their lifestyle too much because they would still have quite a bit of capital left plus their successful coach business. He got the shock of his life when he walked into Lesley Whittle's bedroom and found her there because he had believed she was away at school. He woke her up and took her anyway.
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, who, it is widely believed, pushed Whittle off the ledge in the drainage shaft where he had tethered her in Bathpool Park, at Kidsgrove
, Staffordshire
, 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. Whittle's body was found on 7 March 1975, hanging from a wire at the bottom of the shaft. 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 98lbs when found, her stomach and intestines were completely empty, she had lost a considerable amount of weight and was emaciated. Even if Neilson's assertions that he fed her chicken soup, spaghetti and meatball and bought her fish and chips and chicken legs were callous lies and the last time she actually ate was around 7 o'clock on the evening of 13 January this would only leave a window of around 80 hours for her to have lost the weight if the allegation that Neilson pushed her to her death in the early hours of 17 January is to stand scrutiny.
He ordered them to drive to Blidworth
, six miles away and told them not to look at him. This presented PC Mackenzie with a problem. Gently he explained to the gunman that they were going the wrong way and he would have to turn the car round. The gunman agreed but warned both officers if there were any tricks they would both be dead. As they were driving along Southwell Road the gunman asked if they had any rope. As White pretended to look, Mackenzie reached a junction in the road. Turning the steering wheel violently one way then the other, he asked,"which way, left or right"? causing the gunman to look toward the road ahead. White saw the gun drop a few inches and realised this was his chance; he pushed the gun forwards and Mackenzie stamped on the brake. They screeched to a halt outside The Junction Chip Shop in Rainworth. The gun went off, grazing White's hand. MacKenzie fell out of the driver's seat, banging his head on the road. He staggered to his feet and ran towards the fish and chip shop screaming for help. Two men (Roy Morris and Keith Wood) ran from the queue outside the chip shop and helped overpower Neilson. Wood subdued the gunman considerably with a karate chop to the neck before Morris grabbed his wrists and held them for White to snap the handcuffs on. The locals attacked him so severely that in the end the police had to protect him.
They hauled Neilson to iron railings at the side of a bus stop and handcuffed him there before calling for back up, and when they found two Panther hoods on him, they realised that they had probably caught the most wanted man in Britain. This was confirmed when a fingerprint was found to match a single partial one found in a notebook in the drainage shaft with the body of Lesley Whittle, the only fingerprint evidence he ever made the mistake of leaving.
in July 1976 for the murder of Lesley Whittle, two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress. He was found not guilty of the attempted murders of sub-postmistress Margaret "Peggy" Grayland and PC Tony White but guilty of the lesser alternative charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mrs Grayland and possessing a shotgun with the intent of endangering life at Mansfield. A charge of attempting to murder a security guard named Gerald Smith whom he shot six times while checking the Whittle ransom trail was left on file because of legal complications due to fact that Mr Smith died more than a year and a day after being shot. The trial judge recommended that Neilson receive a whole life tariff
. After the verdicts, his counsel, Gilbert Gray QC, visited him in the cells below the court. He found his client in the corner of his cell curled up in a pre-natal position, totally broken and dejected, filled with immense remorse for Lesley Whittle and her family. He has since been confirmed on the Home Office's
list of prisoners issued with whole life tariffs, as a succession of Home Secretaries
have ruled that life should mean life for Neilson. The European Court of Human Rights
legislation saw politicians lose that power in November 2002.
In 2008, Neilson applied to the High Court
to have his minimum term reverted to 30 years. On 12 June 2008, however, Neilson's appeal was rejected, and he was told by the court that he will have to spend the rest of his life in prison. Neilson currently serves his sentence at HMP Norwich
and is one of Britain's longest-serving prisoners. On 29 June 2008, it was revealed that Neilson has Motor Neurone Disease
, a progressive and fatal disease.
Adam Mars-Jones, Lantern Lecture - Bathpool Park
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
multiple murderer and armed robber. Following three murders committed during robberies of sub-post offices during 1971–74, his last victim was Lesley Whittle, an heiress from Highley
Highley
Highley is a large village in Shropshire, England, on the west bank of the River Severn and on the B4555 road. Highley has a population of approximately 3,100, but is beset by transport problems due to the lack of a road bridge, resulting in a high unemployment rate.-History:Highley began as a...
, Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, in 1975.
Early life
Neilson, known previously as Donald Nappey, married 20 year old Irene Tate in April 1955 at the age of 18. Their daughter, Kathryn, was born in 1960. After his daughter's birth, Nappey changed the family name to Neilson so that the little girl would not suffer the bullying and abuse he had endured at school and in the army because of his surname's similarity to NappyNappy
Nappy may refer to the following:* British, Australian, and New Zealand English for a diaper or another garment used for incontinence* Afro-textured hair* The raised surface and texture of cloth, referred to as the nap...
and his lack of height - he was only five feet six inches tall. According to David Bell and Harry Hawkes, Nappey bought a taxi business from a man named Neilson and decided, then, to use that name instead of the former. An alternative theory, proposed by a lodger, Miss Lena Fearnley, who stayed with the Neilson family in the early 1960s, is that Neilson took the name from an ice-cream van from which he and Irene often bought ice-cream for their daughter. Miss Fearnley told the BBC in an interview that he told her, "I like that name."
Turn to crime
A jobbing builder in BradfordBradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, Neilson turned to crime when his business failed. It is believed he committed over 400 house burglaries without detection during his early days of crime. Before he became notorious as The Black Panther he was sought under a variety of nicknames such as The Phantom and Handy Andy. To confuse the police, he adopted a different modus operandi every few weeks. For example he would steal a radio from each house and abandon it nearby then when that pattern of behaviour was established he would drop it and do something else. Proceeds from simple housebreaking were low however and after stealing guns and ammunition from a house in Cheshire he upped his criminal activity which resulted in him turning to robbing small post offices. Neilson committed eighteen such crimes between 1971 and 1974.(ref: Harry Hawkes, The Capture of the Black Panther, Harrap Books 1978) His phobia about dogs meant that, although they didn't know it, postmasters with guard dogs were safe from his attentions.
His crimes became progressively more violent as he sought to protect himself from occupants prepared to put up a resistance to defend their property. In February 1972 he gained entry to a sub-post office in Rochdale Road, Heywood, Lancashire during the night. Leslie Richardson, the postmaster, and his wife woke to find a hooded man in their bedroom. Mr Richardson leapt out of bed to tackle the intruder while his wife phoned the police. During the struggle, Neilson showed Mr Richardson his sawn off shotgun and snapped in a West Indian accent, "This is loaded." Mr Richardson saw that the gun was pointing up at the ceiling and there was no danger of anyone being shot. He snapped back, "We'll find out if it's loaded," and pulled the trigger himself blasting two holes in the ceiling. The fight continued and Mr Richardson managed to pull Neilson's black hood off to reveal not the West Indian he had expected but a white man with dark staring eyes. Neilson then stamped mercilessly on Mr Richardson's feet breaking several toes and kneed him in the groin. As Mr Richardson collapsed on the floor, Neilson made his escape empty handed. Mr Richardson gave police a description of his masked intruder which turned out to be inaccurate in many respects. Several other photofits of Neilson were similarly unhelpful to the police but one, made by sub postmistress Margaret Grayland, was extremely accurate.
Turn to murder
Neilson's first three murders occurred in 1974. He shot dead two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress as well as brutally battering sub-postmistress Margaret 'Peggy' Grayland in post office robberies. He killed Donald Skepper in HarrogateHarrogate
Harrogate is a spa town in North Yorkshire, England. The town is a tourist destination and its visitor attractions include its spa waters, RHS Harlow Carr gardens, and Betty's Tea Rooms. From the town one can explore the nearby Yorkshire Dales national park. Harrogate originated in the 17th...
in February 1974, Derek Astin of Baxenden
Baxenden
Baxenden is a village and ward located in the Borough of Hyndburn in Lancashire, North-West England. Baxenden is sometimes known to the locals as ‘Bash’.- History :...
near Accrington
Accrington
Accrington is a town in Lancashire, within the borough of Hyndburn. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, north of Manchester city centre and is situated on the mostly culverted River Hyndburn...
in September 1974, and Sidney Grayland in Langley
Langley
Langley is often used as a metonym in U.S. government and military parlance to refer to the Central Intelligence Agency, whose headquarters is located in Langley, Virginia.Langley may also refer to:-Persons:...
, West Midlands
West Midlands (county)
The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...
during November 1974. The Baxenden murder gained Neilson the nickname The Black Panther when, during an interview with a local television reporter, Mr Astin's wife, Marion, described her husband's killer as "so quick, he was like a panther". Alluding to the killer's dark clothing, the enterprising reporter ended his piece by asking "Where is this Black Panther?" and the soubriquet stuck. The Whittle case made him Britain's most wanted man in the mid-1970s and the kidnapper was irrefutably linked to the post office shootings when he shot security guard Gerald Smith six times while checking a ransom trail and forensics showed the bullets were fired from the same .22 pistol that was used to shoot Derek Astin and Sidney Grayland.
Kidnap and murder of Lesley Whittle
Lesley Whittle (1957–1975) was a 17-year-old girl and was Neilson's youngest victim. On 14 January 1975, Whittle was kidnapped from the bedroom of her home in HighleyHighley
Highley is a large village in Shropshire, England, on the west bank of the River Severn and on the B4555 road. Highley has a population of approximately 3,100, but is beset by transport problems due to the lack of a road bridge, resulting in a high unemployment rate.-History:Highley began as a...
Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Neilson demanded a £50,000 ransom
Ransom
Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or it can refer to the sum of money involved.In an early German law, a similar concept was called bad influence...
from her family for her release. Her mother was asleep in the house at the time. The kidnapper had read about a dispute between her father George Whittle's first wife Selina and his second family, common law wife Dorothy, son Ronald and Lesley herself, then a schoolgirl, over George Whittle's will which left all his considerable fortune to be divided between the three surviving members of his second family and nothing to Selina. who had been living in poverty and knew nothing of his wealth. 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 Ronald and £82,000 to Lesley. 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 and read by Neilson who was incensed at Selina's treatment. His kidnapping plan, previously a crime looking to happen, quickly focussed on the Whittles. 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 Whittles would not affect their lifestyle too much because they would still have quite a bit of capital left plus their successful coach business. He got the shock of his life when he walked into Lesley Whittle's bedroom and found her there because he had believed she was away at school. He woke her up and took her anyway.
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, who, it is widely believed, pushed Whittle off the ledge in the drainage shaft where he had tethered her in Bathpool Park, at Kidsgrove
Kidsgrove
Kidsgrove is a town in the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, near the border with Cheshire. It forms part of The Potteries Urban Area in North Staffordshire, along with Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme. It has a population of 24,112...
, Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
, 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. Whittle's body was found on 7 March 1975, hanging from a wire at the bottom of the shaft. 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 98lbs when found, her stomach and intestines were completely empty, she had lost a considerable amount of weight and was emaciated. Even if Neilson's assertions that he fed her chicken soup, spaghetti and meatball and bought her fish and chips and chicken legs were callous lies and the last time she actually ate was around 7 o'clock on the evening of 13 January this would only leave a window of around 80 hours for her to have lost the weight if the allegation that Neilson pushed her to her death in the early hours of 17 January is to stand scrutiny.
Capture and arrest
In December 1975, two police officers, Tony White and Stuart Mackenzie, were in a Panda car in a quiet side road keeping a watch on the main A60 trunk road leading out of Mansfield in North Nottinghamshire when they spotted a small wiry man scurrying by carrying a holdall. As he passed the police car he averted his face, drawing Mackenzie's attention. As a matter of routine, they called him over to question him. The man said he was on his way home from work, then produced a sawn-off shotgun from the holdall. He ordered White into the back of the car. The policeman opened the car door but the gunman snapped,"No time for that, climb the seat"! The officer did so with alacrity and the gunman settled himself in the passenger seat, jamming the gun into Mackenzie's armpit.He ordered them to drive to Blidworth
Blidworth
Blidworth is a small village approximately five miles east of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England. Its history can be traced back to the 14th century, although many of the current houses were built in the first half of the 20th century to provide housing for workers at Blidworth Colliery .-Robin...
, six miles away and told them not to look at him. This presented PC Mackenzie with a problem. Gently he explained to the gunman that they were going the wrong way and he would have to turn the car round. The gunman agreed but warned both officers if there were any tricks they would both be dead. As they were driving along Southwell Road the gunman asked if they had any rope. As White pretended to look, Mackenzie reached a junction in the road. Turning the steering wheel violently one way then the other, he asked,"which way, left or right"? causing the gunman to look toward the road ahead. White saw the gun drop a few inches and realised this was his chance; he pushed the gun forwards and Mackenzie stamped on the brake. They screeched to a halt outside The Junction Chip Shop in Rainworth. The gun went off, grazing White's hand. MacKenzie fell out of the driver's seat, banging his head on the road. He staggered to his feet and ran towards the fish and chip shop screaming for help. Two men (Roy Morris and Keith Wood) ran from the queue outside the chip shop and helped overpower Neilson. Wood subdued the gunman considerably with a karate chop to the neck before Morris grabbed his wrists and held them for White to snap the handcuffs on. The locals attacked him so severely that in the end the police had to protect him.
They hauled Neilson to iron railings at the side of a bus stop and handcuffed him there before calling for back up, and when they found two Panther hoods on him, they realised that they had probably caught the most wanted man in Britain. This was confirmed when a fingerprint was found to match a single partial one found in a notebook in the drainage shaft with the body of Lesley Whittle, the only fingerprint evidence he ever made the mistake of leaving.
Life Sentence
Neilson received five life sentencesLife imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
in July 1976 for the murder of Lesley Whittle, two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress. He was found not guilty of the attempted murders of sub-postmistress Margaret "Peggy" Grayland and PC Tony White but guilty of the lesser alternative charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mrs Grayland and possessing a shotgun with the intent of endangering life at Mansfield. A charge of attempting to murder a security guard named Gerald Smith whom he shot six times while checking the Whittle ransom trail was left on file because of legal complications due to fact that Mr Smith died more than a year and a day after being shot. The trial judge recommended that Neilson receive a whole life tariff
Whole life tariff
This is a list of prisoners who have received a whole life tariff through some mechanism in jurisdictions of the United Kingdom.Eight of these prisoners have since died in prison, while three of them have had their sentences reduced on appeal, meaning that there are currently at least 48 prisoners...
. After the verdicts, his counsel, Gilbert Gray QC, visited him in the cells below the court. He found his client in the corner of his cell curled up in a pre-natal position, totally broken and dejected, filled with immense remorse for Lesley Whittle and her family. He has since been confirmed on the Home Office's
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
list of prisoners issued with whole life tariffs, as a succession of Home Secretaries
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
have ruled that life should mean life for Neilson. The European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
legislation saw politicians lose that power in November 2002.
In 2008, Neilson applied to the High Court
High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
to have his minimum term reverted to 30 years. On 12 June 2008, however, Neilson's appeal was rejected, and he was told by the court that he will have to spend the rest of his life in prison. Neilson currently serves his sentence at HMP Norwich
Norwich (HM Prison)
HM Prison Norwich is a Category B/C multi-functional prison for adult and juvenile males, located on Mousehold Heath in Norwich, Norfolk, England. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.-History:...
and is one of Britain's longest-serving prisoners. On 29 June 2008, it was revealed that Neilson has Motor Neurone Disease
Motor neurone disease
The motor neurone diseases are a group of neurological disorders that selectively affect motor neurones, the cells that control voluntary muscle activity including speaking, walking, breathing, swallowing and general movement of the body. They are generally progressive in nature, and can cause...
, a progressive and fatal disease.
Further reading
- 1975: Heiress Lesley Whittle kidnapped BBC On This Day archive
- Serial killer who chose Heywood to strike first, Heywood Advertiser, 8 September 2004, not working now
- Harry Hawkes, The Capture of the Black Panther, Harrap: 1978.
- Shari-Jayne Boda, Real crime: four crimes that shocked a nation, Granada:2003.
Adam Mars-Jones, Lantern Lecture - Bathpool Park
External links
- Crime & Investigation Network feature
- "Audio slideshow: Lesley Whittle remembered ", BBC Shropshire website