Donald Neilson Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

A television documentary titled “The Abduction of Lesley Whittle” explores her abduction and murder by Neilson, and was aired on UK television by Channel 5 on 11 October 2021.

In the early hours of 17 December 2011, Neilson was taken from Norwich Prison to Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital with breathing difficulties. He was pronounced dead the next day.

Following subsequent legal judgements in various other cases, and the implications of European Union Human Rights laws, Neilson was confirmed on numerous occasions to be on the Home Office’s list of prisoners with whole life tariffs. A succession of Home Secretaries ruled that life should mean life for Neilson. In 2008, Neilson applied to the High Court to have his minimum term reverted to 30 years. On 12 June 2008, Mr. Justice Teare upheld the whole life tariff, and imparted:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}

Neilson’s life and crimes were portrayed in the 1977 film The Black Panther, starring Donald Sumpter as Neilson. It was released on DVD in 2012.

In July 1976, Neilson was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Lesley Whittle, for which he was given a life sentence. Three weeks later, he was convicted of the murders of two postmasters and the husband of a postmistress. In total, Neilson received five life sentences. The judge, Mr Justice Mars-Jones, also gave Neilson a further 61 years: 21 years for kidnapping Lesley Whittle, and 10 years for blackmailing her mother. Three further sentences of 10 years each were imposed for the two burglary charges, when he stole guns and ammunition, and for possessing the sawn-off shotgun with intent to endanger life.

Lesley Whittle (1957–14 January 1975) was a 17-year-old girl when she became Neilson’s youngest victim. Whittle was the daughter of noted coach transport business owner George Whittle and his mistress. Whittle had left his entire fortune to his mistress and their children, Ronald and Lesley. After reading about a family dispute over George Whittle’s will, Neilson planned for three years to gain some of this fortune.

On 14 January 1975, Neilson entered the Whittle family home in Highley, Shropshire, and kidnapped Lesley from her bedroom. Neilson calculated that the family would not materially miss £50,000 of their fortune, and so made a subsequent demand for that sum in a note left at the family home. A series of police bungles and other circumstances resulted in Whittle’s brother, Ronald, being unable to deliver the ransom money at the designated time and place demanded by the kidnapper.

Lesley Whittle’s body was found on 7 March 1975, hanging from a wire at the bottom of the drainage shaft where he had tethered her in Bathpool Park, at Kidsgrove, Staffordshire. The subsequent post-mortem examination showed that Whittle had died from vagal inhibition, not from strangulation. The shock of the fall had caused her heart to stop.

In December 1975, two police officers, Tony White and Stuart Mackenzie, were in a panda car in a side road, keeping a watch on the main A60 trunk road that led out of Mansfield in North Nottinghamshire, when they spotted a small, wiry man carrying a holdall walking alongside the road. 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 answered that he was on his way home from work, but then produced a sawn-off shotgun from the holdall. He ordered White into the back of the car, and the policeman complied and opened the car door. However, the gunman rapidly grew impatient and snapped, “No time for that, climb the seat!” The officer did so, and the gunman settled into the passenger seat, jamming the gun into Mackenzie’s armpit.

Neilson committed his first three murders in 1974. During post office robberies, he shot dead two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress, as well as brutally battering sub-postmistress Margaret Grayland. He killed Donald Skepper in Harrogate in North Yorkshire in February 1974, Derek Astin of Baxenden in Lancashire in September 1974, and Sidney Grayland in Langley, West Midlands during November 1974.

In February 1972, he gained entry during the night to a sub-post office located in a private home in Rochdale Road, Heywood, Lancashire. Leslie Richardson, the postmaster, and his wife woke to find a hooded man in their bedroom. Richardson leapt out of bed to tackle the intruder while his wife phoned the police. During the struggle, Neilson showed Richardson his sawn-off shotgun and warned, in a fake West Indian accent, “This is loaded.” Richardson saw that the gun was pointing up at the ceiling, and realized that there was no danger of anyone being shot.

Proceeds from simple housebreakings were low, however, and after stealing guns and ammunition from a house in Cheshire, he upped his criminal activity, turning to robbing small post offices. Neilson committed eighteen such crimes between 1971 and 1974. His crimes became progressively more violent as he sought to protect himself from occupants prepared to resist and defend their property.

Their daughter, Kathryn, was born in 1960. Four years 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 the word nappy.

According to David Bell and Harry Hawkes, Nappey bought a taxi business from a man named Neilson, and decided to use that name instead of the former. An alternative theory, proposed by a lodger, Lena Fearnley, who stayed with the Neilson family in the early 1960s, is that Neilson took the name from an ice-cream van (carrying the brand name “Lord Neilson”), from which he and Irene often bought ice-cream for their daughter. Fearnley told the BBC in an interview that he told her, “I like that name.”

Neilson, born Donald Nappey, was aged ten in January 1947, when his 33-year-old mother died from breast cancer. He was said to have had an unhappy childhood, and was caught shopbreaking in 1948. But due to his age and circumstances, Neilson was given a police caution or stern warning. In April 1955, an 18-year-old Neilson married 20-year-old Irene Tate. In 1958, his wife persuaded him to leave the army, following a period as a national serviceman in Kenya, Aden, and Cyprus as part of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

Donald Neilson (born Donald Nappey; 1 August 1936 – 18 December 2011), alias the “Black Panther,” was an English armed robber, kidnapper, and serial killer. From 1971, he committed a series of robberies of sub-post offices; in 1974, Neilson killed three men during these robberies. In 1975, he kidnapped Lesley Whittle, an heiress from Highley, Shropshire, who died in his captivity. He was arrested later that year, convicted of four counts of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1976. Neilson remained in prison until his death in 2011.