Murder which shocked public recalled 50 years on

The horror of the kidnap and murder of a 17-year-old girl has been recalled 50 years on by people who lived through it.

Lesley Whittle, who lived in Highley, Shropshire, was killed in Staffordshire by Donald Neilson, a serial killer known as the Black Panther, who was given four life sentences for four murders in 1976.

Sylvia Dymond, a schoolgirl at the time, remembered her shock when police found Lesley's body in a woodland drainage shaft in Kidsgrove.

"This is where as children we'd come down and play through the summer," she said.

"We practically lived down here. It's horrific when you think about it, because she must have been terrified."

Neilson, a builder turned career criminal, originally from Bradford, died in prison in 2011.

Lesley's mother had gone to wake her daughter on 14 January 1975 and found an empty bed.

She then discovered three ransom notes and a warning not to involve police in their lounge.

Andy Wright, Shropshire Star reporter at the time, said at first people could not believe what had happened.

"People were absolutely astounded. They just couldn't comprehend what had gone on," he said.

He added the Whittle family was well-known in the area and Lesley was a normal girl, part of the community.

Researcher Dave Waterhouse said it was important to remember the case, even now.

"Many people have actually said 'let it lie, the past, move on'," he said.

But Mr Waterhouse said people wanted to remember because it affected everybody's lives at the time.

"Anybody born pre-1970 will have memories of what happened here in little old Kidsgrove," he said.

"Tributes keep coming year in year out....it's part of our local history and the impact it had is unquestionable."

Waterhouse, who has researched the case, described Neilson as "very much a loner" whose mother died when he was 10.

"He had very few friends," he said.

"He went into the military, spent a couple of years there, which he loved.

"He was not successful in anything that he did except for burglaries - 400 burglaries and he never got caught.

"But he'd have every job from a taxi driver, from a joiner, from salesmen - and failed at every one."

Mr Waterhouse said many people believed Lesley's mother was the target, not her daughter.

"The Whittles had got a coach company - 70 coaches, based over in Shropshire at Highley and everybody in the area knew the family," he said.

"When the father died, Lesley became known as the heiress and people knew her as that."

Mr Waterhouse said there were a series of errors leading up to a failed ransom delivery.

"The first night they had to abort - there was error after error," he added.

"The BBC released on the 20:00 GMT news on the radio that it was going to be dropped off at the Swan Centre in Kidderminster and it never happened.

"They decided to go again the next night and it was going to be a drop at Dudley Zoo but the security guard caught Neilson on the premises and that security guard was shot.

"Then that evening the rules changed. Tape recordings were sent to the Whittle family by Neilson saying the drop's got to be tonight at Kidsgrove."

The ransom drop did not take place, Mr Waterhouse said, because Neilson saw a courting couple and panicked.

"He thought he'd been betrayed. Evidence suggests he came from where he was waiting and he aborted," he said.

"But before he aborted he came back to Lesley and threw her off the shaft."

He said Neilson denied it all the way through the trials but police believe she was pushed.

Her murderer was eventually caught after he was seen acting suspiciously outside a post office near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in December 1975.

He was jailed in July 1976 for her murder and that of three sub-postmasters, killed in armed raids in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Accrington, Lancashire and Langley in the West Midlands.

Follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.