50 years on: What happened to Lesley Whittle - the murdered teenage heiress?

Warning: You may find some details in this article distressing

On Tuesday 14 January 1974 teenage heiress Lesley Whittle was kidnapped at gunpoint from her home in Highley in Shropshire by Donald Neilson, a murderer known as 'The Black Panther'.

52 days passed until she was found dead 65 miles away from her home in an underground drainage shaft in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire. This was 50 years ago, today.

Born to a life of privilege, heiress Lesley Whittle was the youngest of two children and the only daughter of George Whittle, the co-owner of Whittle Coaches.

At the time of her kidnapping, Lesley was in her second year of college in Wolverhampton.

In the early hours of Tuesday 14 January 1975, Neilson or 'The Black Panther', took the teenager by gunpoint from her bed.

He put Lesley in a blindfold and gagged her, before driving her to Shropshire and putting her at the bottom of a 54ft ventilation shaft, connected to a disused mine.

It is thought that Neilson was motivated by greed. By the time he kidnapped Lesley he had already murdered three sub-postmasters in armed robberies.

He targeted Lesley after reading about a widely-reported family dispute over the will of her father George Whittle, who had passed away in 1972.

George Whittle had left behind a fortune of £300,000, intended for his partner Dorothy and their children. The family were different to the families that Neilson would normally target. As he burgled 400 homes in the 70s in all black and a balaclava, which originally earned him the nickname of 'The Black Panther' from local police.

Before the kidnapping, Neilson had kept an eye on the Whittle family home in the village of Highley for more than a year. He had cut the phone wires before creeping into the home via their garage.

Neilson forced her family to pay a £50,000 ransom for her safe return. In a ransom message Lesley was forced to make for her mother, she was made to say: "There is nothing to worry about, mum. I am okay. I got a bit wet but I am quite dry now and I am being treated very well, okay?".

In reality, Lesley was kept unclothed over a steep ledge in the drain, with a hood placed over her head and a wire noose around her neck to keep her tethered.

Following an extensive search and a failed ransom delivery, Lesley's body was eventually found on Friday 7 March in 1975.

She had been starved for at least three days leading up to her death, despite Neilson's claims in court that he had brought her fish and chips.

The discovery triggered the most intensive murder investigation ever seen in Staffordshire and sent shockwaves through the town of Kidsgrove.

Speaking to The Sentinel from his home in Stafford in 2005, Detective Chief Superintendent Harold Wright said: "It was a feeling of immense sadness - and the knowledge that we now had a murder inquiry on our hands. It may have happened 30 years ago but you remember some murders much more than others."

"She had been wired up like a dog to a ledge and would have spent terrifying days in the pitch black, hearing only the rats scraping about, the water running and the rumble of the trains overhead".

The investigation into Lesley Whittle's death involved over 400 officers from multiple police forces.

It took eight months for police to find Neilson, but he was eventually tracked down in Mansfield and arrested on unrelated charges.

11 months after Lesley Whittle's death, Neilson was found guilty of kidnapping and murder in July 1976 at Oxford Crown Court and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Neilson had tried to portray himself as a caring kidnapper, who claimed Lesley died after accidentally plummeting from the platform while moving to make room for him to sit.

Cheers were said to have broken out of the courtroom.

Neilson was later jailed for life, and given five life sentences for the murders of Lesley and the sub-postmasters. He died from motor neurone disease in prison in 2011, aged 75.

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know...