Donald Neilson

Donald Neilson
Donald Neilson mugshot
Born	Donald Nappey (1936-08-01)1 August 1936 Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died	18 December 2011(2011-12-18) (aged 75) Norwich, England
Cause of death	Natural causes
Other names	The Black Panther
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment
Killings
Victims	4
Span of killings	1974–1975
Country	England
Date apprehended	December 1975

Donald Neilson (1 August 1936 – 18 December 2011), alias the "Black Panther", was a British armed robber, kidnapper and murderer. He murdered 3 people during robberies of sub-post offices between 1971 and 1974, and murdered kidnap victim Lesley Whittle, an heiress from Highley, Shropshire, in January 1975. He was apprehended later that year, and sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1976, remaining in prison until his death in 2011.

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 but due to his age and circumstances was given a police caution or stern warning. He married 20-year-old Irene Tate in April 1955 at the age of 18. His wife persuaded him to leave the army where he was serving as a national serviceman in 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 little girl 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, Miss Lena Fearnley, who stayed with the Neilson family in the early 1960s, is that Neilson took the name from an ice-cream van from which he and Irene often bought ice-cream for their daughter. Miss Fearnley told the BBC in an interview that he told her, "I like that name."

A jobbing builder in Bradford, West Yorkshire, Neilson turned to crime when his business failed. It is believed he 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, then when that pattern of behaviour was established he would drop it and do something else.