Scotland Yard's History of Crime in 100 Objects by Alan Moss

Author:Alan Moss [Skinner, Alan Moss and Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750966559
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2015-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

DATE:

1975

EXHIBIT:

Balaclava, tethering wire and other items from the Donald Neilson case

47

Black Panther Tools

THE EXHIBITS AND part of a courtoon model relate to the case of Donald Neilson, known as the ‘Black Panther’, who kidnapped Lesley Whittle.

On the morning of Tuesday, 14 January 1975, Mrs Dorothy Whittle, who lived in the village of Highley in Shropshire, went to her 17-year-old daughter’s bedroom and found her missing. She had checked on Lesley at about 1 a.m. and found her fast asleep, but now her bed was empty and there was no sign of her in the house. Lesley’s clothes were still in the bedroom. Her late father, George, had established a successful coach business but died five years earlier. Dorothy and Lesley lived alone in the house, whilst Lesley’s married brother, Ronald, lived elsewhere and ran the business. Dorothy tried to telephone her son, but found that the line did not work, so she drove to Ronald’s house. The telephone line had in fact been cut. Ronald drove round the village looking for his sister while his wife, Gaynor, checked the house. Gaynor found a message with strips of letters made by a Dymo tape machine that demanded a £50,000 ransom. The demand instructed that the money should be ready for delivery according to instructions that would be telephoned to one of three public boxes at the Swan shopping centre in Kidderminster that night. The message threatened to kill Lesley if the instructions were not followed precisely, or if police were called in.

There had been some publicity three years earlier when George Whittle’s former wife had taken legal action to secure payment from his estate after years of being told that he could not afford to increase her small allowance. (George had not been legally married to Dorothy.) The coach business was successful, but the family did not have wealth on a scale that would normally be at risk from this sort of crime: there were far wealthier and better known families in the area. There was £300 in cash in a briefcase due to be taken to the bank that had been left untouched by whoever had abducted Lesley.

Gaynor went to Ronald’s office with the news that Lesley had been kidnapped, and he in turn phoned West Mercia police. Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Booth gave orders that inquiries were to be low-key and unobtrusive, and that a news blackout should be imposed. Some aspects of the ransom demand seemed amateurish and the police at first speculated whether the case could be a student prank, possibly connected with Lesley’s boyfriend who was studying at Sheffield University. Specialist officers from Scotland Yard and surveillance equipment were brought in to help with the investigation, which was a very rare event for anywhere in Britain – even taking into account the Hosein brothers’ kidnap of Muriel McKay in 1969 (described later in the book). Under police supervision, Ronald Whittle took two suitcases of money to the Kidderminster shopping centre to comply with the directions. A

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