THE ruthless serial killer, jailed for the kidnap and murder of a Worcestershire heiress, has died in hospital.

Donald Neilson, who was the once the most wanted man in England during the mid-1970s, died almost 37 years after kidnapping and killing Lesley Whittle.

The 17-year-old was the heiress to the Whittle coach firm, which is based at Kidderminster.

She was snatched from her bed at the family home as her mother slept in another room.

The teenager was then taken by Neilson to an underground drain complex in Bathpool Park, Staffordshire.

Police were called when her brother Ron received a £50,000 ransom demand from Neilson. The youngster had been left £82,000 in her father’s will.

Neilson was just 5ft 6ins tall and was dubbed the Black Panther for his trademark balaclava and after a woman he battered referred to his speed.

He had already shot dead three sub-postmasters during armed robberies by the turn of 1974, but on January 14 1975 escalated his list of crimes to include kidnapping, when he stole away young Lesley Whittle from the family home in Highley, Shropshire.

In an unfortunate series of events, the news of her abduction was first leaked to a journalist who lived next to one of the coach firm’s employees and promptly reported on the evening radio news, breaking the usual police protocol of keeping kidnapping cases out of the media.

Then when Ron Whittle went to deliver the ransom to a telephone box, he was late and no one came to meet him.

Meanwhile, its location had been reported in the evening press – unknown to West Mercia Police’s Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Booth, leading the case, and it is speculated Neilson was scared off from meeting Mr Whittle.

But veteran journalist Tony Bishop recalled the press conference where DCS Booth was told by the Daily Mirror reporter that the location of the phone box had been reported in a regional paper that same day.

“I’d written copy for the Express & Star, but the office had heard the location on the radio and added it into the copy,” said Mr Bishop.

“Mr Booth said to me, ‘Have you written that?’ and I said I’d written 99 per cent of it – but it didn’t matter because it had already been put in the story and reported.”

In another unfortunate turn, Neilson was spooked by a passing Staffordshire Police car when he returned to where he had left Miss Whittle.

The car had been on its way to an unrelated emergency.

Lesley was found hanging from a wire suspended above the floor in the underground drain on March 7, 1975.

Neilson was eventually caught by accident when police spotted a man acting suspiciously in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in December.

Neilson, armed with a loaded shotgun, was detained only after a violent struggle with the help of customers from a nearby fish and chip shop.

After a six-week trial at Oxford Crown Court in 1976 he received four life sentences and was told he would spend the rest of his days behind bars.

In 2008, the High Court ruled he would never be released.

Neilson died aged 75, after being taken from Norwich Prison to a nearby hospital with breathing difficulties, at about 6.45pm on Sunday.

Former DCS Bob Booth, who was well-regarded but quit the force following Miss Whittle’s death, was not well enough to comment yesterday.