Kidnapping and murder of Lesley Whittle

Neilson died in hospital, still serving his sentence, in December 2011.

In 2008, Neilson was suffering from motor neurone disease and appealed against his sentence, requesting it be commuted to a maximum of 30 years. Mr Justice Teare ruled that he must never be released from prison, saying:

After being arrested 11 months later in Mansfield, in July 1976 at Oxford Crown Court Neilson was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Whittle, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Three weeks later he was convicted of the murder of three post office workers, and given three further life sentences.

During his trial at Oxford Crown Court, Neilson's defence lawyer suggested that Whittle had accidentally fallen from the ledge and had hanged herself, and that Neilson had cared for her, feeding her chicken soup, spaghetti and meatballs, and buying her fish and chips and chicken legs. In July 1976, Neilson was convicted of Whittle's murder, for which he was given a life sentence; and a total of 61 years (running concurrently, with the longest being 21 years) for other offences. Three weeks later he was convicted of the murder of three post office workers, and given three further life sentences. The offences regarding the shooting of security guard Gerald Smith were left on file, as Smith had died more than a year and a day after the shooting.

British teenager Lesley Whittle was kidnapped on 14 January 1975, and her body discovered on 7 March 1975. Her kidnapping and murder dominated national headlines for 11 months. The investigation involved over 400 officers from the West Mercia Constabulary, Staffordshire and West Midlands police forces and the Metropolitan Police.

Neilson held Whittle in an underground drainage shaft of a reservoir at Bathpool Park in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire. He had placed a hood over her head, left her naked, and tethered her to the side of the shaft by a wire noose. After what was later seen as a bungled police operation, including two failed attempts to engage with Neilson's demand for a ransom of £50,000, her body was found hanging in the shaft on 7 March 1975.

On 14 January 1975, Dorothy Whittle returned to the house in Highley, Shropshire, at 1:30 am. Having found her daughter asleep in bed, Dorothy took two sleeping tablets and went to bed herself. Neilson later cut the telephone line (suspecting a burglar alarm) and then entered the Whittles' home through the garage. Encountering Lesley by mistake, he decided to kidnap her instead. Gagging the teenager, who was wearing only her dressing gown and slippers, he took her to his green Morris 1100 car, where he tied her up and laid her down on the back seat.

On 10 February 1975, the news blackout was lifted. On 5 March, Chief Superintendent Booth and Ronald Whittle appeared together on both national and local television. On the next day, a headmaster at a local school told police that a pupil had brought him a piece of Dymotape that read "DROP SUITCASE INTO HOLE" and, subsequently, other pupils had found a torch wedged in the grilles of what was locally known as the "glory-hole", one of the capped ventilation shafts of the old Harecastle Tunnel. The boys who found the torch in Bathpool Park had given it to the headmaster several weeks earlier, but neither had realised the significance of the find until the television broadcast.

On 6 March 1975, police began a second thorough search of Bathpool Park, starting with the glory-hole, within which a detective constable found a Dymotape machine and a roll of Dymotape. An inspection of the second shaft revealed nothing. The third shaft, the deepest of the three and once an air ventilation shaft for Nelson's Coal Mine, was then uncapped. As it was subject to HM Inspectorate of Mines regulations it had to be checked for gas, and so late in the day the investigation was suspended. On Friday, 7 March 1975, after gas tests had been passed, police officers and mine rescue staff entered the third shaft. Accessed by a vertical ladder, 22 feet (6.7 m) down on the first landing, a broken police torch was found from the previous day's work. A further 45 feet (14 m) down on a second landing, a cassette tape recorder was found. A further 54 feet (16 m) down on a third landing, the team found a rolled up sleeping bag that was acting as a pillow, a yellow foam mattress and a survival blanket. Whittle's body was found hanging from a steel wire, only 7 inches (180 mm) from the bottom of the shaft.

Neilson subsequently became Britain's most wanted man. In December 1975, two police officers spotted a man seen acting suspiciously in Mansfield, who turned out to be Neilson. Although he was armed with a sawn-off shotgun, he was arrested with the help of several customers in a nearby fish and chip shop.

Police subsequently found that ex-British Army soldier Neilson had put three years of planning into the kidnapping, after reading a 1972 news article pertaining to inheritance Dorothy had been bequeathed when her father had died. While in need of money, Neilson read about the dispute between Whittle and Selina. 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 the Whittles could easily afford £50,000. He planned the kidnap to take place in January 1974, but delayed it by 12 months; due to the petrol shortages of the three-day week, Neilson would have drawn attention to himself by driving long distances from his home in Bradford.

To avoid estate taxes, George Whittle gave three houses plus £70,000 in cash to Dorothy, £107,000 to his son Ronald, and £82,000 to Lesley during his life. He died in 1970, aged 65. He had left nothing to his estranged wife, Selina Whittle, and Selina began legal proceedings in May 1972 to obtain money from her husband's estate. The story was picked up by the Daily Express.

Lesley Whittle, born in 1957, was the daughter of George Whittle, a co-owner of Whittle Coaches, and his girlfriend Dorothy. At the time of her kidnapping, she was a student at Wulfrun College, Wolverhampton.