Donald Neilson

Donald Neilson (born Donald Nappey; 1 August 1936 – 18 December 2011), alias the "Black Panther", was an English armed robber, kidnapper and murderer.

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.

Due to his age and circumstances, Neilson was given a police caution or stern warning.

In April 1955, the 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.

Their daughter, Kathryn, was born in 1960.

Four years after his daughter's birth, Nappey changed the family name to "Neilson" so that the child 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 committed over 400 house burglaries without detection during his early days of crime.

Before he became notorious as the "Black Panther", he was sought under a variety of nicknames, such as "The Phantom" and "Handy Andy."

To confuse the police, he adopted a different modus operandi every few weeks.

For example: he would steal a radio from each house, and abandon it nearby; when that pattern of behaviour was established, he would drop it, and do something else.

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.

From 1971, he committed a series of robberies of sub-post offices; in 1974, he killed three men during these robberies.

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.

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.

Richardson rejoined, "We'll find out if it's loaded!"

and pulled the trigger himself, blasting two holes in the ceiling.

The fight continued, and Richardson pulled off Neilson's black hood.

Neilson stamped on Richardson's feet, breaking several toes, and kneed him in the groin.

As Richardson collapsed on the floor, Neilson made his escape empty-handed.

Richardson gave police a description of the masked intruder, which turned out to be inaccurate in many respects.

Several other photofits of Neilson were similarly unhelpful to the police, but one, made by sub-postmistress Margaret Grayland, was extremely accurate.

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.

The Baxenden murder resulted in Neilson being dubbed the "Black Panther", as, during an interview with a local television reporter, Astin's wife, Marion, described her husband's killer as being "so quick, he was like a panther".

Alluding to the killer's dark clothing, the enterprising reporter ended his piece by asking, "Where is this Black Panther?"

and the nickname stuck.

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.