February 5, 2025 • 51 mins
In this second part of a two-parter, Paul and Kate pick back up in 1975 England where a kidnapping case lead authorities to a single location. Hoping the victim is still alive, a massive investigation picks up steam.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
A Kate, I guess we have a second part to
a two parter today we do.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We have a kidnapping of a young girl, seventeen year
old named Leslie Whittle, and she is from a village
in West Midlands of England, and she is from a
very wealthy family. Somebody has come into her home she
shares with her mother. She has an adult brother who
lives not far away, but it's just the two of
(01:28):
them in a house that you and I talked about
being sort of visibly exposed to people because it's sort
of walls of glass almost the second floor, so she's
been taken. It looks like just wearing a robe and
her slippers, and if she was wearing pajamas, and the
police have not seen her. The kidnapper or kidnappers have
(01:51):
left behind notes, odd notes.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Using a label maker, which is an interesting choice.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
They are confusing instructions and her brother can figure it out,
and they keep missing each other and this is not working,
and there are cassettes that are being played over the
phone of Leslie's voice. There is a guard who was
shot by it sounds like our prime suspect here, a
man they've dubbed the Black Panther because they were able
(02:18):
to use some ballistics in some fingerprinting to connect this man,
this violent robber, with the shooting of the security guard
and with the murders of four postal workers the year
before to Leslie's kidnapping. Because in this guy's car they
find items of hers, as well as the tape recorder
(02:40):
and cassette tapes that have some instructions that were just
never delivered. And the police are kind of at a
dead end. They don't know what to do next. They
haven't done such a hot job it sounds like they
were at a location where Leslie could have been kept,
and they did sort of a discreete sweep.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
They said.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But other than that, they have not hear from Leslie
for it looks like almost two weeks. And then when
they find out about this Black Panther, this you know
man who they've dubbed the Black Panther for killing all
of these people and being very sneaky, then it starts
to be very concerning. And you said you were very
concerned at the end of episode one about Leslie.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah, you know, this Black Panther has shown a proclivity
to utilize violence. You know, he's killed four postal workers.
He shot at a security guard six times, I'm sure
with the intent to kill, as well as now he's
got possession of seventeen year old Leslie. This is a
very serious offender that is capable of committing homicides. So
(03:44):
now in my mind, Leslie's safety is in question. And
I'm not even convinced at this point that he kept
Leslie alive at all. You know, he pre planned these crimes,
He thought ahead, had her record multiple planes on the
cassette player. He may have decided, you know, during his
planning process. Trying to keep her alive was just logistically cumbersome,
(04:10):
and he would be more successful being able to move
around and hopefully get the money he wants without Leslie
being drug along.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And one of the things that we've seen in previous
cases where it seems like the kidnapping victims, the ransom
victims have been kept alive, is how upsetting it is
to find that out that they've been kept alive. There
could have been a chance that they were not murdered,
that they were reunited with their families. But getting the
media or getting the police involved, well meaning citizens just
(04:41):
MUCKs up everything. On the other hand, I'm certainly not
advocating for not getting police involved in these situations. But
this is the kidnapper who has shown in the past
to have the most violent tendencies, right the robberies and
with Gerald, and like you said, right, he's willing to
use a weapon. I'm not one hundred percent sure we
I've seen that in any of our previous cases. They
(05:02):
felt in a little like haphazard some of those kidnappings.
But this guy, you're right, sounds very serious. Do you
have anything to add before I tell you what happens next.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I'm sure you don't know this. I'm kind of curious
what the black panthers, you know, with the postal workers
that he killed, he left some alive, you know, did
he make any statements to them about what he was after,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Three murders occurred in nineteen seventy four of the year before,
involved violent robberies of post offices in different locations across
the country. So there were three of them and all
three men ended up dead.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Okay, So black Panther is going into a post office
and killing a postal worker inside the.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Office, That's what it sounds like, right, Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And then he is he is touching surfaces during this
process maybe you know, part of the theft aspect where
he doesn't have gloved hands on, which is interesting, you
know during this timeframe usually say usually, but you know,
of course, that's the one form of evidence back in
the seventies that could be used to identify him, you know.
So there's a little bit of carelessness on his part
(06:09):
in these post office robbery homicides. And then now he
shoots the security guard, leaves the car abandoned. The shooting
of the security guard, I wonder if Leslie was in
the car at the time, you know, or he had
put Leslie somewhere and was just concerned that the security
guard would connect him to either the robbery homicides or
(06:32):
the abduction of Leslie. You know. But obviously he's he's
willing to pull the trigger for self preservation.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, let me remind you what they found inside this
car eight days after this happened. There's the gun that
he used to shoot Gerald. There's a box of bullets.
There's a foam mattress, a flashlight, Leslie slippers, several unused
Dimo labels, a tape recorder in those cassettes that we
talked about, So, like everything tying him to Leslie is there.
(06:59):
They use these bullets. Now, the BBC only says they
used the bullets found in the car to link him
to the other murders, these postal worker murders. To me,
that didn't I was trying to channel you. That didn't
make sense. I wonder if they meant that they used
the gun with the bullets to be able to match it,
because wouldn't that the bullets would be kind of useless
(07:21):
if it's just a standard gun, right, they'd have to
fire it through the bullet through the gun to match
it to bullets found inside the postal workers.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Right, right, So the gun and we don't know what
type of gun, if it's a semi auto or revolver.
But let's just I'm going to make an assumption. Let's
say all they did is recover bullets from the post
office crime scenes. You know, as that bullet passes down
the barrel of the gun, you know, the lands and
grooves of the rifling of that barrel get him in
(07:50):
essence impressed on the side of the bullets. And then
there's very microscopic striations that end up also on the
side of the bullet, that is to the kind of
the tool marks that that inside of the barrel of
the firearm leaves on the bullet. And so, now that
they've recovered the gun out of this vehicle, they test
(08:11):
fire that gun and then compare the marks on those
test fired bullets to the marks on the evidence bullets,
and they're able to draw a conclusion, yes, this gun
fired the bullets and these robbery homicides at the post offices.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well there you go.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I mean, I think that they feel like there's pretty
definitive proof, and they're desperate to figure out where he
is and where Leslie is, and her mother and her
brother are petrified of all of this. As I had
said before, now we are fast forwarding fifty one days
after Leslie was discovered missing. They launch finally a very
(08:48):
extensive search of Bathpool Park. And now I can show
you a photo in a second, so you can actually
see what this place looks like. The reason they do
it is because some school boys find a flashlight as
well as a Dimo label that says drop suitcase into hole.
So they found an old instruction. I mean, this must
(09:10):
have been what he was talking about, Torch Lane and
all of the weird torch So you can see the
next instructions he says drop suitcase into hole. And of course,
because it's fifty one days later, the police just throw
out subtlety and decide they're going to do a full
on search. But this is the reason why they go
back to this park. I mean, this place, it's foggy
(09:32):
and it's yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Now this photo, you know, speaks volumes. First, I'm not
seeing any residential structures, commercial structures. It literally looks like
somewhat rolling hills with groves of trees that are lacking
their leaves. And in the foreground. Now you see all
these men with all of them look like German shepherds.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yep, I'm sure do.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, there's no variety in the breed. No, no bloodhounds here,
you know, and obviously they're they're searching. And this is
you know what after fifty one days after Leslie was abducted.
You know that is not sounding good for Leslie at all.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
No, and no word from the kidnappers at this point.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, we don't know about Leslie yet, but you know,
we don't have anybody who can identify the man who
sounds to be definitively the Black Panther because the three
poster workers are dead. No one else could identify him
except the security guard, Gerald Smith. He's in critical condition,
but he gave a very detailed description of the attacker.
(10:38):
And they made a sketch, and we love a good sketch,
So let me go ahead and show you. They send
this out to the press. Let me show you the
sketch and you could tell me from one of the
quality if you like the quality of the sketch, and
two you know what parts of it would be helpful
he looks very menacing.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
This guy.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Oh wow, that's the guy who was prowling around the
rail yard.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Okay, so the security guard confronts him outside of the vehicle.
That would explain some of the lack of maybe firearms
damage to the vehicle from shots being fired out of it.
You know. First up, you know, I'm looking at a
sketch of a man that the sketch is from knee
height all the way up to the top of his head.
(11:22):
So the security guard saw this man standing in front
of him. The first thing that stands out is the clothing,
whereas this man appears to have something akin to I'd
call it like maybe a car coat or a half
trench coat. I'm not sure if that's the correct term,
(11:44):
but you know, this type of it looks sort of
like a trench coat, but instead of going down to
the ankles, it cuts off at the knees. Appears to
be maybe zipped up or buttoned up. But then there's
a belt around the waist that's holding the coat closed.
And then what appears to possibly be a t shirt
of some type or shirt underneath this coat. But then
(12:07):
he's got a backpack on, and he's got a bag
in his left hand, you know. So you know that
in part I never see the composites like this. You know,
that's really detailed in terms of the clothing and the
backpack and the bag that he's holding. But the face,
there's a lot of detail in this face. You know, first,
(12:29):
this is a very good artist just in terms of
the ability to sketch, because this is close to photo realistic,
not really photo level, but in terms of when I
look at this face, I see a human face that
is something that I could envision in the real world.
(12:51):
You know. Oftentimes there's some composites and you're going, well,
you know, proportions aren't quite right, but you know, the
composite is trying to convey the distinguishing features. The man's
eyes stand out. He's obviously got somewhat of a scowl
and an angry look with kind of a firm set jaw,
you know, and of course he's being confronted by a
(13:12):
security guard, so this is kind of the you know
what the facial expression would probably be accurate too, is
he's not happy that a security guard is standing in
front of him. You know. So this, yeah, this is
a very interesting composite, and I can't speak to the
accuracy of it right now until we know who this
guy is and can look at the actual face of
(13:34):
this guy side by side. But you know, this is
something most certainly you'd want to put out to the
public because it is so detailed.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
So Gerald is helpful from you know, his hospital room.
He gives us this really good sketch, you know, really
good description. Okay, so now we need to go back
to the park. So we are at Bathpool Park. They
are doing a search because they found a flashlight and
they lay that says drop suitcase into hole. So this
is March sixth. The next day they have zeroed in on.
(14:07):
Now this just sounds like a nightmare to me to search.
There is an extensive drain and tunnel system underneath the park.
There are various levels and platforms with this thing going
totally underneath the park. They think that this would have
been the best spot for a kidnapper as both a
hiding place and a potential escape route should he need
it out of the park because there are all these
(14:28):
different exits and entrances and stuff that people just don't
know about. So what do you think about that? I mean,
this just sounds like the beginning of a bad horror film. You're,
you know, sending some police officers down underground to try
to find this girl who might still be alive a kidnapper.
There could be a whole team of kidnappers down there,
and they have to go through this extensive tunnel system.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah, that would be a process. You know, anytime you search,
you need to track where you've searched. And when you
have tunnels like this, I could see we're just trying
to stay on top of well what has been searched
and what hasn't been searched could be problematic.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Well, let me give you They did a mock up
of some of the tunnels where they think that this
might have happened.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So I'm going to show you that real quick. So
this is there. Now.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I don't even know what this is made of, but
this is their rendition of this section of the tunnels.
I don't know what the material is. I don't understand it.
I just see a series of tunnels along with you know,
like ways to climb down ladders and stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I mean, it looks very complicated.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah. So I'm looking at you know, this photo, which
is a it looks like the cross section of part
of you know, this bathpool park, and so most of
what I'm looking at it took me a while from
my eyes to adjust. But in essence, they've used some
sort of for lack of a better term, like a
clay to represent the earth, and then they've got cross
(15:58):
sections of pipes to illustrate the tunnels. At the right side,
they have a very tall vertical tunnel if you will,
that shows rungs that somebody would have to use to
climb down into or up out of this vertical section
(16:19):
of I would say maybe a pipe to get to
the surface. Then there's a long horizontal area with two
other vertical connections to the surface. Neither one have the
man ladder built within them. One to the furthest left,
which is the shortest one, has some sort of cage
(16:40):
on top of it. I think what strikes me is
the diagonal part of the tunnel that's on the right
hand side of the image that kind of dives from
the long horizontal tunnel. It dives diagonally to underneath the
vertical pipe that has the man That diagonal aspect tends
(17:02):
to suggest that this tunnel system may be more for waterflow,
you know, plumbing aspects, drainage aspects of the park. At
this point, we don't know if the offender actually used
this tunnel system. But if he did use this tunnel system,
how does he know about it? You know, that's something
that I'd be wanting to know once we identify the offender.
(17:25):
Does he have a connection to this park? Did he
have a connection to this tunnel system? And then that's
why he knew about it? Yeah, But to hole up
inside of this system, this looks like it's going down
probably I don't know, twelve fourteen feet for that first
horizontal long section, and then goes even deeper than that,
(17:46):
you know, into I'm assuming it's some sort of drainage system.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, I can give you some more information to It's
just a daunting to look at something like this and
to think this is, you know, potentially where this young
girl could be. And it's fifty one days now, fifty
two days. Okay, So he sends an officer into the
system's main shaft. So I don't know who pulled the
short straw on that one, but this guy.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
God, that's what we called the rookie job.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
ECLA, listen to this. This is what petrified me. He
climbs down a sixty foot ladder carrying a flashlight and
takes notes of what he sees, because you got to know,
there's no like, there's no lighting system. There are pins
and batteries. There's a notepad, so they're right, somebody's been
down here. And down on the platform there's a sleeping bed,
a foam mattress, and a tape recorder. And there's a
(18:36):
blue robe hanging off a beam that looks like the
one missing from Leslie's room.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Oh well, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
He also finds some wire on the platform. So let
me show you a photo of this kind of hodgepodge
of things. Well, first of all, let me show you
the man meet with this poor guy. Let me show
you what he had to climb down first. So this
is a man hole that this officer had to go down.
(19:05):
I mean, this is not a lot of room to maneuver.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
No. In essence, this is a photo that anybody listening
is going to be familiar, like with the kind of
the man covers to the sewer systems and the mill streets.
This is similar, except it's square, not much bigger. It
looks like it's maybe two feet by two feet, you know.
So I don't know what the size of the shaft is,
(19:29):
but obviously it's a narrow opening that the officer would
have had to go through. Looks like they've tented over this.
So and then you have this plain closed detective with
a couple of uniform bobbies, you know in the photograph,
and the detective is opening up this cover. You know,
(19:49):
I think when you said that this officer had to
descend sixty feet down this shaft, we obviously the mockup
that I was describing earlier is not to scale. Sixty
feet is much deeper than what I would have imagined.
And now this is getting to where this is so
dangerous to anybody entering in that not only just from
(20:10):
a fall perspective, but from oxygen oxygen deprivation literally is
what we would call a confined space. You have to
be specially trained to go down into something like that.
In this day and age, OSHA monitors this big time.
Your vitals need to be monitored. They have to pump
oxygen down into something that deep. Potentially, it just all
(20:32):
depends on the circumstances. You know. I've had to go
underground typically for drug lab scenarios, and I have has
MATT specialists standing by keeping track of the environment in
me going down into this space, that's say, taking leslie
down that deep. You know. One of my concerns is
(20:53):
is that, well, what is the environment down there just
to sustain life, let alone to be able to see, Yeah,
this would be a very scary scenario.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Well, now let me show you the things. So her
bathrobe looks like sleeping bag.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah, and that's a so you know, this photograph is showing,
you know, on the left hand side what appears to
be a sleeping bag. Right in the middle is this
foam pad that has coils of what appear to be
metal wire. To the right of the pad appears to
be the robe, and then right to the top of that,
which robe is somewhat on top of, appears to be
(21:32):
a second sleeping bag.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They're disgusting. I mean, I don't know why I think
that's a big deal, but it's filthy. They're filthy down there.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, everything looks well, the sleeping bags I can't tell
as much, but the robe and this foam pad very soiled.
Is the soiling due to having you know, gone down
into this environment is a soiling because you've got maybe
a body that's decomposing. You know what did it smell like?
(22:03):
You know? So I would have questions. But that type
of cord, you know, this is if that's what I'm
seeing and that's this metal cord, and if it's being
used to control Leslie, this is a type of material
that would cut into her skin if it's tied tightly
or if she's fighting against it. This would not be
(22:24):
This isn't you know, soft binding material for comfort. This
is like almost like the worst type of material you
would use to keep somebody under control because it'd be
so painful.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Let me show you a close up because I do
want to emphasize that. Let me show you a close
up of this is the wire, the circular wire that
you saw that could have been used to control her.
It's like a braided metal braided wire.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
So yes, so this man is holding up it's just
a loop of this cable part and in essence, what
it is is it's a twisted cable. You've got multiple
smaller metal wires that during manufacture have been twisted around
each other, and I don't know what the correct term
of that is in order to make a larger cable,
(23:09):
and some of this cable has untwisted, probably because it's
close to a cut end. And then on the right
hand side, down near where the man's fingers are that's
holding this, you can see the original twist of this cable.
I am guessing that this cable is maybe three eighth
inch in diameter. I mean, this is not something that
(23:30):
you could tie a knot in. It is something that
you could potentially bend around let's say Leslie's wrists or
her ankles, or use it as a ligature to strangle.
But this is not a material that one would use
an a fender would use to have, you know, basically
(23:50):
control and compliance from the victim. You know, again, this
is potentially suggesting that Leslie was not treated very well
in the early days after her abduction.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Okay, well, let's get to this, you know, the whole
part of this, which is you have this officer down
there in this what I consider to be an absolute
nightmare of a scenario, sixty feet under the ground by
himself only with a flashlight pitch black, finding all of
these terrible things. He finds this wire on the platform
which he follows. There's wire because it's just laying there,
(24:26):
but it's leading somewhere. It's tied onto part of the
platform and he drops further into the shaft. So he
follows it to the edge of something that goes over
the shaft and the end of the wire is around
Leslie's neck. Yeah, she's hanging by the wire, no clothes, naked,
her feet are just inches from the very bottom of
the drain system.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And I can tell you more. Of course, there's an
autopsy and all that.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah, I want to know is are her wrist bound
or her ankles bound? Obviously the offender, it's not like
she inadvertently fell off this ledge. Sounds like the offender
either she was dead ahead of time and he hung her,
or that's how she died as he literally pushed her
(25:11):
off this edge and this was a hanging.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
It's awful.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
You know when you start thinking about the scenario, you know,
when does Leslie realize what's about to happen.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, so let me tell you about what the pathologist said.
They had pretty good ones in nineteen seventy five in England.
But I mean, we'll see I was a little confused
following the post wartem. They believe Leslie actually died weeks earlier,
thank goodness, just shortly after she was abducted, so hopefully
this did not last long. They said that her cause
(25:45):
of death was determined to be I'm going to say
this wrong, vag al inhibition bagel.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
And yeah, so the vegus nerve, well.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
This is what they say.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
This is translated in the newspapers as shock or fright.
Is not mentioned as a cause of death, and the
AP says that a police surgeon likened this to like
a diver jumping suddenly into ice cold water and suffering
cardiac arrest. Based on her autopsy, they did not think
it was strangulation. They didn't see signs of that kind
(26:15):
of strangulation. And you had said you thought maybe after
she died he hung her, you know, as a way
to hide her or something else.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah, you know, I would think that at the hanging
itself was the cause of death. They would see definitive
signs of that.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Fatikia, I mean whatever, all the other lists of things.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Right right, I mean she's hanging. There is going to
be physical damage to her neck structures, possibly to her
cervical vertebrae if she fell a distance like you see
in your typical hangings where the floor is drops out
from the person that has a noose around their neck.
You know, that's a lot of force that's concentrated in
(26:57):
a very small cross section of the neck. You know.
In terms of this conclusion of like a vagual reflex,
that almost sounds more like they couldn't figure out why
she died, you know, and considering that she they thought
she was dead for for weeks, you know, there is
going to be decomposition this This location is sheltered from insects,
(27:22):
but it's I imagine it's still not a great location
for you know, body preservation. So I kind of think
that maybe they didn't find any diagnostic features to determine
a cause of death, and this is maybe the one
thing that they could think of. You know, I'm not
sure what they would be seeing in a body of
(27:44):
this condition that's hanging to be able to draw a
conclusion that it's a you know, some sort of vagueal
reflex that caused her death that I would need to
know more about.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Well, we'll have more information, I think a little bit later,
once we get our suspect together. So they're trying to
find Leslie's killer, they start attempting to link the evidence
from the drain system, like the sleeping bag and the
tape recorder to a specific suspect. So they start referencing
serial numbers and labels, anything, any warranties, anything, but they
aren't really getting anywhere.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
When the news.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Gets a hold of this, the media finds out about
Leslie's body, a couple reaches out to investigators and says
that they were in the park the night that Whittle
was there, screaming, this is Ron Whittle, you know, is
anybody here? But they were there earlier in the evening
they had seen a car flashing its lights at them.
They weren't sure why the car was doing that, and
(28:37):
they wrote it off, this is not Ron's car, this
is the kidnappers car. So I don't know where the
timing went off, but they said that during this same time,
the exact same time, the couple also noticed a police car.
And this is not a police officer who was working
on Leslie's case, so it's totally coincidental that he was there.
(28:58):
But he was in the park in his car. So
the police wonder if the kidnapper saw this car and
that frightened him enough to abandon the whole thing and
then he ends up killing Leslie.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
But I don't know. What do you think about that theory?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Oh, I think that's a legitimate theory. Now it's curious
that if the kidnapper is flashing his headlights in this
what appears to be a fairly wide open space, how
did Ron not see that?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I think the timing was different. So this is what
I think.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Remember, Ron got lost, and I wonder if the kidnapper
is flashing his lights thinking Ron is there somewhere. He's
trying to say, this is where I am. But Ron
was several hours late, so the couple was not there
when Ron was there. The couple was there much earlier
because Ron got there I think at three in the morning.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
So it's bad timing.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I could see where if it's dark out and the
kidnappers sitting there waiting for Ron, and then this patrol
car rolls out its headlights on, and kidnapp thinks it's
Rod and then recognizes, oh shit, that's law enforcement. Now
there's panic. So yeah, I think that's a bona fide
theory right there.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
It's awful and I'm sure when Ron finds out this theory,
you know if he had known how to get there, but.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Then the kidnappers giving him terrible instructions. It's just awful.
I mean all of it.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I will tell you. If Ron had shown up on
time with the money, I think both Ron and Leslie
would be hanging in that shaft.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I was thinking that too.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, this is not a guy who seems to be
playing by any kind of moral rules at all. He
would have just pulled out a gun and killed him.
It probably did save his life that he got lost. Yeah,
and I'm not convinced that Leslie was alive even at
that point.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
He's not gonna be strapped with a teenage girl.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You know that just is so risky this guy, no
for sure, Okay, all right, nine months nothing happens. They
cannot find Black Panther until December eleventh, nineteen seventy five,
So this is eleven months after she is initially kidnapped.
Two policemen stop a man they believed is being suspicious
near a post office the sky and his post offices
(31:08):
in Mansfield, which is about one hundred miles northeast of
the Wittulls home in Highly. When the guy is questioned,
he gives a false name, and then he pulls a
gun and he orders the officers to drive him to
a nearby village. Remember they don't carry guns the police officers.
There's a struggle that results in everybody exiting the car,
and as the man starts to run, they restrain him.
(31:32):
They flag down customers from a nearby restaurant, and then
everybody overpowers this guy and they arrest him. So they
go and do a search. I would not red herring you.
This is our guy. They find various paraphernalia, including firearms
and face masks that are directly linked to Black Panther.
And there is also a wire that looks just like
(31:53):
the kind of wire found around Leslie Snack. And they said,
this is it. This is the guy. His name is
Donald Nielsen. And when you're ready, I want to do
a comparison of his photo and our fantastic sketch artist
to see if there's a like this here or not.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
But this is the guy. That's his name.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
You know, I'm just kind of curious, is Donald Nielsen?
Is he from the United States? By chance? No? UK? Why?
Just because of the use of the firearm. This sounds
more of like an American type crime than a British
type crime.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
No, but he was in the armed forces.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Okay, I'll tell you about Donald once we get further
into here. Let's look at the sketch and look at
the photo. So let me show you the sketch first.
So that's the sketch menacing guy, and then we have
him menacing guy.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
You know. So I'm looking at what appears to be
a mug shot of Donald Nielsen. What appears similar to
me and the sketch. It definitely the eyes. Even in
this mugshot, he has that hard stare, the heavy eyebrows.
You know, There's definitely some differences in terms of the
face shape. But I would say that's well within tolerance.
(33:08):
I think the composite is close enough that if somebody
saw it and knew Donaldson and especially that outfit and
the composite will go, hey, you might want to look
at this guy.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Absolutely well. He does not look like somebody you want
to meet in an alleyway, that's for sure. He looks
pretty upset, mad, and he eventually will tell us what
happened with Leslie. So his mom died when he was eleven,
and he was the constant butt of jokes. You know,
throughout his young adulthood and adolescence. He was born with
the last name Nappy, and this is a word for diaper,
(33:42):
common word for diaper in the UK.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah, so he that would not be good.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
He adopted the surname Nilsen in the sixties after his
daughter was born because he wanted to spare her the
same ridicule. He was in the Armed Forces, as I
had mentioned to you before, so there's a reference with
the gun. He struggled really a lot. He struggled financially
after he left the military, and he was in various
(34:07):
careers including carpentry and security, and then he went into crime.
By the mid nineteen sixties he was carrying out a
lot of burglaries to boost his family's income. Police say
four hundred burglaries without being caught. He started robbing post
offices because he needed more money between sixty seven and
(34:28):
seventy four and he carried out about nineteen post office
raids in Yorkshire and Lancashire. So he admits eventually to
being the Black Panther and the man responsible for kidnapping Leslie.
He read about all of these lucrative kidnappings in the
United States and decided that that would be a really
(34:48):
good idea. So he targeted her after reading about the
inheritance and that everybody was calling her an heiress. So
that is that he's very violent. He's had a long
his of crime. You know, clearly has no problem killing people.
He does detail what happens. I want to get your
impressions of Donald right now, and then I'll tell you
(35:09):
what he says happened, and you can tell me what
you think.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Well, first, I don't have any sympathy for him with
the last name of Nappy. Try having the last name
of Holes. Oh, come on, I have been referred to
about every body orifice as possible.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
I know that as a young kid.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I'm sure, I mean, the worst the worst I ever
got was Awesome Dawson, So I know, I'm sorry, Oh poor.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
You Kate the great I mean, I'll let anybody listening
use their imagination to how the surname Holes could be
referred to. But okay, so obviously kind of a disrupted childhood.
He was in the military. You didn't go into the
details of what he experienced in the military. Did he
(35:55):
see action? Was he on the front lines? That can
be very traumatic and then the getting out of you know,
the service and now struggling financially. It's it's still you
make You can make a choice, you know, there are
other ways to make money. He chose the criminal route
(36:15):
all along. The post office robbery homicides as well as
the Leslie abduction. They're financially motivated, you know. He's a
financially motivated offender. He chose to go down a criminal path.
He has a predisposition for violence. You know. He most
certainly could you know, commit robberies without doing the homicides.
(36:40):
And you know, I don't know the circumstances of the
post office crimes, you know, but chances are My guess
is is that he made a decision to kill these
postal workers. He possibly could have successfully robbed these places
and walked away. He's got a gun, they don't, right, Yeah,
(37:03):
So he chose to kill them. He chose to kill Leslie,
you know. So he has that violent predisposition thought and
may have had some struggles in his early life. There's
nothing about his upbringing or anything, as far as I'm
concerned that should cause anybody to have any sympathy for him.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
No, And he's a parent too. I mean, that's just nauseating.
Let me tell you what he says. He had planned
all of this pretty meticulously. That night, January fourteenth, he
entered the house wearing a hood in all black clothing,
such was his way. He forced the door open and
gagged and blindfolded Leslie in her bedroom upstairs and brought
(37:46):
her out to his stolen vehicle at gunpoint. She was
just wearing her robin slippers, so what police thought. He
hit her in the back of the car beneath a
foam mattress, and he drove her over sixty miles to
Bathpool Park, where he imprisoned her in the dark, damp
drain shaft. I mean, he just says, very straightforwardly. I
(38:08):
gave her nothing to keep her warm and comfortable except
for the sleeping bag. He made her take off the
rope so she was completely naked. I will say, there's
a note that says that there has never been a
suggestion that she had been sexually assaulted. He never said
anything about that. It could have also been that they
just didn't find evidence. They would have seen evidence. I
(38:28):
don't know about after fifty one days, but I mean, certainly,
you know in seventy five, they would have seen physical
evidence of something.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
So I don't know, do you want me to pause
there or do you want me to keep going?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Well, keep going because I need to know more about
when you know how long Leslie had been dead and hanging.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
But yeah, keep going, okay, So he says he made her,
of course, make the recorded tapes that eventually he shared
with her family. This was a very complicated plan that
he had done before. You know, he knew it was
never going to be this one drop. He wanted to
do what some articles were calling a ransom run that
I've read about before. So a ransom run is requiring,
(39:07):
you know, the family to go from one location to
the next to the next, like a scavenger hunt, and
then finally there's a money drop at a specific location.
But the plan went off script super early when you
know Ron missed that phone call because the police said,
you're gonna miss this phone call. Nielsen had actually called
(39:28):
that night at midnight when he was supposed to talk
to Ron, and the police had said initially, well, no,
you don't go to that phone booth. The kidnapper I'm
sure has made us by now, and he hadn't he
did say that the plan got bungled after he saw
that off duty cop or that cop and got frightened
in the park that night. So we do have more
(39:49):
information about sort of what happens and with her death too.
I can talk about that now. Also it comes out
in trial that I can skip to that.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
No, I think you know everything he's saying, just mad
up with the details of the case in terms of
it obviously was pre planned. Does he ever address why
he used a box of candy in order to leave
the message in the first place at the house?
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Now, and it was Turkish delights, which had various definitions
from the seventies, and so I just said, I'm just
going to say, a box of candy. I don't know
if it was significant or just something he had in
his car, but it would have had his fingerprints on it,
I'm assuming unless he wore gloves.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Yeah, you know, I think you know the type of
ransom note that he left. It wasn't like a piece
of paper that he could he's placing on the kitchen counter.
It's the strip of this dimo, you know, like a label,
so you know, containerizing it into a larger object that
would stand out to the family. I could see the reasoning,
(40:52):
but you know, why a box of candy? Why not
something else? And it may have been at what you suggested,
you know, maybe that was just the one thing he
had but to have, you know, and thought, oh, I'll
just use that. The family will look inside that.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, to make clear that this is something unusual that
was not theirs. The trial for Nielsen mcgins in June
of nineteen seventy six. He's charged with kidnapping, grievous bodily harm,
firearms possessions, and four murders. So the three poster workers
in Leslie and I have bad news. Gerald Smith died.
That's the security guard. You would think he would be
(41:26):
included in these and it would be five murders. And
there was something interesting I did not know at the time.
English laws said that there was something called year in
a day a year and a day rule which prevented
murder charges from being brought if the victim died more
than a year and a day after the attack. Isn't
that interesting? So it meant that they could not include
(41:48):
Gerald Smith's death. He survived for over a year, if
it was over a year and a day, he wouldn't
be included, and that law has since changed. Okay, here's details.
I mean, this guy on an asshole. In the trial,
it comes out that in the final days of her life.
I don't see how long he kept her alive. It
did not seem within it was within like two or
(42:08):
three days.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It sounds like he.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Tied her to the side of the pitch black shaft
using a wire noose that I showed you that was
fastened around her neck.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Remember, she was very petite.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
The noose was designed to prevent her from moving it all,
and he says that any big shift in Police say
this too, any big shift in position would tighten the
wire around her neck, which could potentially strangle her.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
He says, I didn't kill her.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
He said she accidentally fell off the ledge into the
lower shaft of the draining system. That he'd only tied
the wire around Leslie's neck to restrain her, not to
kill her. But most people thought that he killed her
in a fit of rage after probably the cop he
spotted the cop.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Or what you know, any number of reasons.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
But the truth is unknown, and you know, the pathology
report is sort of inconclusive. I wonder Paul knowing where
she is now though, if she's standing there for days
naked and it's cold and it's January and it's wet
down there, if the cardiac arrest theory is not so
out of bounds.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Yeah, you know, I think that this is this is
now getting just from a medical side. It's above me
in terms of okay, you know, because I've heard of
you know, the bagel reflex vegus nerve issues causing death.
In terms of the condition that she was left in,
(43:34):
you know, the fright that she would be under. I mean,
imagine if you're a seventeen year old girl and you're
left alone in absolute darkness, sixty feet down in a shaft,
and you're hearing sounds, you know, because guess what's down there.
There's rats down there, There's going to be other types
of sounds, you know, water running. This would be a
(43:56):
very very scary environment, and you've got this noose around
your neck that basically you have to be absolutely still
or it just continues to tighten. Yeah, you know, that's
where I think the pathologist is looking at the circumstances
that she was bound under in the environment versus you know,
(44:19):
some diagnostic feature he could see at autopsy. I just
don't if she accidentally fell off that shaft or was
pushed off that shaft. And I mean she's falling I
don't know how long, but obviously her body weight, she's
hanging under her body weight because her feet aren't touching
the bottom. You know, this would cause some significant damage
to her neck. And is it possible that that damage
(44:41):
from the hanging could obscure evidence of strangulation. But if
she did die of a vaguel nerve reflex, you know,
was she just laying on the platform and then was
she pushed off by him or did she you know,
under collapsing from this vaguel reflex. Now she falls, But
(45:02):
then I would think that being so close to death
that it would be indistinguishable. They would find evidence of
literally strangulation from the hanging. So I don't know. You know,
that's literally getting a high end forensic pathologist to assess everything,
and then I would need to hear from that person
(45:22):
what their thoughts are.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
He killed her no matter what.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah, I mean, he is absolutely responsible for her homicide.
I kind of want to go back to the fact
that she's nude. Yeah, as I mentioned before, like with
this metal cable. You know, this is not a type
of binding material one would use if you want your
victim to be as compliant as possible, because it would
(45:48):
be so uncomfortable and so painful. You have to think about, Okay,
if I'm going to be having to control this seventeen
year old girl, Leslie, how do I I do that
and minimize her resistance or her And part of that
is minimizing her discomfort. And now you're down in this
(46:10):
cold shaft and he's having her take her robe off.
That further causes discomfort. So that's where I start going,
Hold on, why is he doing that? I am not
convinced that once he had her isolated that there wasn't
any sexual activity. But if she's down there for almost
(46:31):
two months and dead, they're really not going to be
able to find evidence of any sexual assault.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Well, thankfully he has found guilty. Of course, he gets
five life sentences, no possibility of parole.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
He died just in twenty eleven. He was seventy five.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
This is not an old story. It's seventy five, you know,
nineteen seventy five. Yeah, so he died at age seventy five.
He had developed a neurological disease, and you know, the
family went on. They have a bus company that still operates.
It doesn't seem like the family is, you know, that
involved with it, but we aren't sure. I feel like
(47:08):
I don't know a lot sometimes about our criminals in
their background and like their criminal history and sort of
how it all builds, and particularly about how violent these
kidnappings can be, because I feel like we've had bungling kidnappings,
but this was really that end up somehow with people dead.
But this was really calculated and scary, and this was
(47:29):
somebody who needed to be stopped and killed, you know,
five people.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
So a really sad story for.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
A seventeen year old girl who I'm assuming had just
all the potential in the world, and you know, just
devastating for her family.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
To bring that kind of case to you, I think.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Is important unfortunately, whether it be kidnappings like in Leslie's case,
or sexual assaults or homicides, you know, you have victims
who you know, they go to bed at night think
and they're going to wake up the next morning and
life will be the same, and within a matter of
hours their lives are either completely changed or taken away
(48:07):
from them, somebody like this Nielsen guy. He was on
kind of this escalation of criminality from I don't know
how far back, you know, whether he did anything in
the military, but definitely after he got out of the military.
He's committing the burglaries, you know, he's doing the robbery homicides,
(48:28):
and then he's doing an abduction homicide of a girl.
He just escalated over time, and though the primary motive
is financial, got to ask the question about why the escalation.
You know, what is truly his inner motivation? You know,
is he just angry at the world and is just
(48:48):
getting more and more pissed off and escalates the violence
as he goes on. Once Leyton's tied Leslie's abduction to
these post office homicides, it's like, Okay, you know, this
is a bad, bad guy. He is a threat to
public safety. And you know, fortunately law enforcement found him
before he committed another crime. Unfortunately they didn't find Leslie
(49:13):
before she was killed.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Okay, I don't think I can talk about this story anymore.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
It's a tough one.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It is a tough one, you know, it is.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Well, Paul, thank you for going through the story with
me and talking about all the forensics. It's nice to
have a reminder there was a time when we did
have good forensics that we could talk about on this
show and not just sort of like wishing the real
killer will walk through the door, or you know, like
looking at tea leaves to try to figure out who
the killer was.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
There.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
We are in the seventies able to pick up on
some things. Yeah, and thankfully the police finally got it
together there at the end.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
But I will see you next week. For my hope,
is a drastically different story that we can talk about.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Okay, as always, I look forward to it.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Okay, I'll see you next week. Thanks. This has been
an exactly right production.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
For our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hart Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Pod Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a
Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode
the criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, my life solving America's cold cases,
is also available now
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
A Kate, I guess we have a second part to
a two parter today we do.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We have a kidnapping of a young girl, seventeen year
old named Leslie Whittle, and she is from a village
in West Midlands of England, and she is from a
very wealthy family. Somebody has come into her home she
shares with her mother. She has an adult brother who
lives not far away, but it's just the two of
(01:28):
them in a house that you and I talked about
being sort of visibly exposed to people because it's sort
of walls of glass almost the second floor, so she's
been taken. It looks like just wearing a robe and
her slippers, and if she was wearing pajamas, and the
police have not seen her. The kidnapper or kidnappers have
(01:51):
left behind notes, odd notes.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Using a label maker, which is an interesting choice.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
They are confusing instructions and her brother can figure it out,
and they keep missing each other and this is not working,
and there are cassettes that are being played over the
phone of Leslie's voice. There is a guard who was
shot by it sounds like our prime suspect here, a
man they've dubbed the Black Panther because they were able
(02:18):
to use some ballistics in some fingerprinting to connect this man,
this violent robber, with the shooting of the security guard
and with the murders of four postal workers the year
before to Leslie's kidnapping. Because in this guy's car they
find items of hers, as well as the tape recorder
(02:40):
and cassette tapes that have some instructions that were just
never delivered. And the police are kind of at a
dead end. They don't know what to do next. They
haven't done such a hot job it sounds like they
were at a location where Leslie could have been kept,
and they did sort of a discreete sweep.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
They said.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
But other than that, they have not hear from Leslie
for it looks like almost two weeks. And then when
they find out about this Black Panther, this you know
man who they've dubbed the Black Panther for killing all
of these people and being very sneaky, then it starts
to be very concerning. And you said you were very
concerned at the end of episode one about Leslie.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah, you know, this Black Panther has shown a proclivity
to utilize violence. You know, he's killed four postal workers.
He shot at a security guard six times, I'm sure
with the intent to kill, as well as now he's
got possession of seventeen year old Leslie. This is a
very serious offender that is capable of committing homicides. So
(03:44):
now in my mind, Leslie's safety is in question. And
I'm not even convinced at this point that he kept
Leslie alive at all. You know, he pre planned these crimes,
He thought ahead, had her record multiple planes on the
cassette player. He may have decided, you know, during his
planning process. Trying to keep her alive was just logistically cumbersome,
(04:10):
and he would be more successful being able to move
around and hopefully get the money he wants without Leslie
being drug along.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And one of the things that we've seen in previous
cases where it seems like the kidnapping victims, the ransom
victims have been kept alive, is how upsetting it is
to find that out that they've been kept alive. There
could have been a chance that they were not murdered,
that they were reunited with their families. But getting the
media or getting the police involved, well meaning citizens just
(04:41):
MUCKs up everything. On the other hand, I'm certainly not
advocating for not getting police involved in these situations. But
this is the kidnapper who has shown in the past
to have the most violent tendencies, right the robberies and
with Gerald, and like you said, right, he's willing to
use a weapon. I'm not one hundred percent sure we
I've seen that in any of our previous cases. They
(05:02):
felt in a little like haphazard some of those kidnappings.
But this guy, you're right, sounds very serious. Do you
have anything to add before I tell you what happens next.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I'm sure you don't know this. I'm kind of curious
what the black panthers, you know, with the postal workers
that he killed, he left some alive, you know, did
he make any statements to them about what he was after,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Three murders occurred in nineteen seventy four of the year before,
involved violent robberies of post offices in different locations across
the country. So there were three of them and all
three men ended up dead.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Okay, So black Panther is going into a post office
and killing a postal worker inside the.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Office, That's what it sounds like, right, Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And then he is he is touching surfaces during this
process maybe you know, part of the theft aspect where
he doesn't have gloved hands on, which is interesting, you
know during this timeframe usually say usually, but you know,
of course, that's the one form of evidence back in
the seventies that could be used to identify him, you know.
So there's a little bit of carelessness on his part
(06:09):
in these post office robbery homicides. And then now he
shoots the security guard, leaves the car abandoned. The shooting
of the security guard, I wonder if Leslie was in
the car at the time, you know, or he had
put Leslie somewhere and was just concerned that the security
guard would connect him to either the robbery homicides or
(06:32):
the abduction of Leslie. You know. But obviously he's he's
willing to pull the trigger for self preservation.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah, let me remind you what they found inside this
car eight days after this happened. There's the gun that
he used to shoot Gerald. There's a box of bullets.
There's a foam mattress, a flashlight, Leslie slippers, several unused
Dimo labels, a tape recorder in those cassettes that we
talked about, So, like everything tying him to Leslie is there.
(06:59):
They use these bullets. Now, the BBC only says they
used the bullets found in the car to link him
to the other murders, these postal worker murders. To me,
that didn't I was trying to channel you. That didn't
make sense. I wonder if they meant that they used
the gun with the bullets to be able to match it,
because wouldn't that the bullets would be kind of useless
(07:21):
if it's just a standard gun, right, they'd have to
fire it through the bullet through the gun to match
it to bullets found inside the postal workers.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Right, right, So the gun and we don't know what
type of gun, if it's a semi auto or revolver.
But let's just I'm going to make an assumption. Let's
say all they did is recover bullets from the post
office crime scenes. You know, as that bullet passes down
the barrel of the gun, you know, the lands and
grooves of the rifling of that barrel get him in
(07:50):
essence impressed on the side of the bullets. And then
there's very microscopic striations that end up also on the
side of the bullet, that is to the kind of
the tool marks that that inside of the barrel of
the firearm leaves on the bullet. And so, now that
they've recovered the gun out of this vehicle, they test
(08:11):
fire that gun and then compare the marks on those
test fired bullets to the marks on the evidence bullets,
and they're able to draw a conclusion, yes, this gun
fired the bullets and these robbery homicides at the post offices.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well there you go.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I mean, I think that they feel like there's pretty
definitive proof, and they're desperate to figure out where he
is and where Leslie is, and her mother and her
brother are petrified of all of this. As I had
said before, now we are fast forwarding fifty one days
after Leslie was discovered missing. They launch finally a very
(08:48):
extensive search of Bathpool Park. And now I can show
you a photo in a second, so you can actually
see what this place looks like. The reason they do
it is because some school boys find a flashlight as
well as a Dimo label that says drop suitcase into hole.
So they found an old instruction. I mean, this must
(09:10):
have been what he was talking about, Torch Lane and
all of the weird torch So you can see the
next instructions he says drop suitcase into hole. And of course,
because it's fifty one days later, the police just throw
out subtlety and decide they're going to do a full
on search. But this is the reason why they go
back to this park. I mean, this place, it's foggy
(09:32):
and it's yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Now this photo, you know, speaks volumes. First, I'm not
seeing any residential structures, commercial structures. It literally looks like
somewhat rolling hills with groves of trees that are lacking
their leaves. And in the foreground. Now you see all
these men with all of them look like German shepherds.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yep, I'm sure do.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, there's no variety in the breed. No, no bloodhounds here,
you know, and obviously they're they're searching. And this is
you know what after fifty one days after Leslie was abducted.
You know that is not sounding good for Leslie at all.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
No, and no word from the kidnappers at this point.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, we don't know about Leslie yet, but you know,
we don't have anybody who can identify the man who
sounds to be definitively the Black Panther because the three
poster workers are dead. No one else could identify him
except the security guard, Gerald Smith. He's in critical condition,
but he gave a very detailed description of the attacker.
(10:38):
And they made a sketch, and we love a good sketch,
So let me go ahead and show you. They send
this out to the press. Let me show you the
sketch and you could tell me from one of the
quality if you like the quality of the sketch, and
two you know what parts of it would be helpful
he looks very menacing.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
This guy.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Oh wow, that's the guy who was prowling around the
rail yard.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Okay, so the security guard confronts him outside of the vehicle.
That would explain some of the lack of maybe firearms
damage to the vehicle from shots being fired out of it.
You know. First up, you know, I'm looking at a
sketch of a man that the sketch is from knee
height all the way up to the top of his head.
(11:22):
So the security guard saw this man standing in front
of him. The first thing that stands out is the clothing,
whereas this man appears to have something akin to I'd
call it like maybe a car coat or a half
trench coat. I'm not sure if that's the correct term,
(11:44):
but you know, this type of it looks sort of
like a trench coat, but instead of going down to
the ankles, it cuts off at the knees. Appears to
be maybe zipped up or buttoned up. But then there's
a belt around the waist that's holding the coat closed.
And then what appears to possibly be a t shirt
of some type or shirt underneath this coat. But then
(12:07):
he's got a backpack on, and he's got a bag
in his left hand, you know. So you know that
in part I never see the composites like this. You know,
that's really detailed in terms of the clothing and the
backpack and the bag that he's holding. But the face,
there's a lot of detail in this face. You know, first,
(12:29):
this is a very good artist just in terms of
the ability to sketch, because this is close to photo realistic,
not really photo level, but in terms of when I
look at this face, I see a human face that
is something that I could envision in the real world.
(12:51):
You know. Oftentimes there's some composites and you're going, well,
you know, proportions aren't quite right, but you know, the
composite is trying to convey the distinguishing features. The man's
eyes stand out. He's obviously got somewhat of a scowl
and an angry look with kind of a firm set jaw,
you know, and of course he's being confronted by a
(13:12):
security guard, so this is kind of the you know
what the facial expression would probably be accurate too, is
he's not happy that a security guard is standing in
front of him. You know. So this, yeah, this is
a very interesting composite, and I can't speak to the
accuracy of it right now until we know who this
guy is and can look at the actual face of
(13:34):
this guy side by side. But you know, this is
something most certainly you'd want to put out to the
public because it is so detailed.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
So Gerald is helpful from you know, his hospital room.
He gives us this really good sketch, you know, really
good description. Okay, so now we need to go back
to the park. So we are at Bathpool Park. They
are doing a search because they found a flashlight and
they lay that says drop suitcase into hole. So this
is March sixth. The next day they have zeroed in on.
(14:07):
Now this just sounds like a nightmare to me to search.
There is an extensive drain and tunnel system underneath the park.
There are various levels and platforms with this thing going
totally underneath the park. They think that this would have
been the best spot for a kidnapper as both a
hiding place and a potential escape route should he need
it out of the park because there are all these
(14:28):
different exits and entrances and stuff that people just don't
know about. So what do you think about that? I mean,
this just sounds like the beginning of a bad horror film. You're,
you know, sending some police officers down underground to try
to find this girl who might still be alive a kidnapper.
There could be a whole team of kidnappers down there,
and they have to go through this extensive tunnel system.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah, that would be a process. You know, anytime you search,
you need to track where you've searched. And when you
have tunnels like this, I could see we're just trying
to stay on top of well what has been searched
and what hasn't been searched could be problematic.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Well, let me give you They did a mock up
of some of the tunnels where they think that this
might have happened.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So I'm going to show you that real quick. So
this is there. Now.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I don't even know what this is made of, but
this is their rendition of this section of the tunnels.
I don't know what the material is. I don't understand it.
I just see a series of tunnels along with you know,
like ways to climb down ladders and stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I mean, it looks very complicated.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah. So I'm looking at you know, this photo, which
is a it looks like the cross section of part
of you know, this bathpool park, and so most of
what I'm looking at it took me a while from
my eyes to adjust. But in essence, they've used some
sort of for lack of a better term, like a
clay to represent the earth, and then they've got cross
(15:58):
sections of pipes to illustrate the tunnels. At the right side,
they have a very tall vertical tunnel if you will,
that shows rungs that somebody would have to use to
climb down into or up out of this vertical section
(16:19):
of I would say maybe a pipe to get to
the surface. Then there's a long horizontal area with two
other vertical connections to the surface. Neither one have the
man ladder built within them. One to the furthest left,
which is the shortest one, has some sort of cage
(16:40):
on top of it. I think what strikes me is
the diagonal part of the tunnel that's on the right
hand side of the image that kind of dives from
the long horizontal tunnel. It dives diagonally to underneath the
vertical pipe that has the man That diagonal aspect tends
(17:02):
to suggest that this tunnel system may be more for waterflow,
you know, plumbing aspects, drainage aspects of the park. At
this point, we don't know if the offender actually used
this tunnel system. But if he did use this tunnel system,
how does he know about it? You know, that's something
that I'd be wanting to know once we identify the offender.
(17:25):
Does he have a connection to this park? Did he
have a connection to this tunnel system? And then that's
why he knew about it? Yeah, But to hole up
inside of this system, this looks like it's going down
probably I don't know, twelve fourteen feet for that first
horizontal long section, and then goes even deeper than that,
(17:46):
you know, into I'm assuming it's some sort of drainage system.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, I can give you some more information to It's
just a daunting to look at something like this and
to think this is, you know, potentially where this young
girl could be. And it's fifty one days now, fifty
two days. Okay, So he sends an officer into the
system's main shaft. So I don't know who pulled the
short straw on that one, but this guy.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
God, that's what we called the rookie job.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
ECLA, listen to this. This is what petrified me. He
climbs down a sixty foot ladder carrying a flashlight and
takes notes of what he sees, because you got to know,
there's no like, there's no lighting system. There are pins
and batteries. There's a notepad, so they're right, somebody's been
down here. And down on the platform there's a sleeping bed,
a foam mattress, and a tape recorder. And there's a
(18:36):
blue robe hanging off a beam that looks like the
one missing from Leslie's room.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Oh well, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
He also finds some wire on the platform. So let
me show you a photo of this kind of hodgepodge
of things. Well, first of all, let me show you
the man meet with this poor guy. Let me show
you what he had to climb down first. So this
is a man hole that this officer had to go down.
(19:05):
I mean, this is not a lot of room to maneuver.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
No. In essence, this is a photo that anybody listening
is going to be familiar, like with the kind of
the man covers to the sewer systems and the mill streets.
This is similar, except it's square, not much bigger. It
looks like it's maybe two feet by two feet, you know.
So I don't know what the size of the shaft is,
(19:29):
but obviously it's a narrow opening that the officer would
have had to go through. Looks like they've tented over this.
So and then you have this plain closed detective with
a couple of uniform bobbies, you know in the photograph,
and the detective is opening up this cover. You know,
(19:49):
I think when you said that this officer had to
descend sixty feet down this shaft, we obviously the mockup
that I was describing earlier is not to scale. Sixty
feet is much deeper than what I would have imagined.
And now this is getting to where this is so
dangerous to anybody entering in that not only just from
(20:10):
a fall perspective, but from oxygen oxygen deprivation literally is
what we would call a confined space. You have to
be specially trained to go down into something like that.
In this day and age, OSHA monitors this big time.
Your vitals need to be monitored. They have to pump
oxygen down into something that deep. Potentially, it just all
(20:32):
depends on the circumstances. You know. I've had to go
underground typically for drug lab scenarios, and I have has
MATT specialists standing by keeping track of the environment in
me going down into this space, that's say, taking leslie
down that deep. You know. One of my concerns is
(20:53):
is that, well, what is the environment down there just
to sustain life, let alone to be able to see, Yeah,
this would be a very scary scenario.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Well, now let me show you the things. So her
bathrobe looks like sleeping bag.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah, and that's a so you know, this photograph is showing,
you know, on the left hand side what appears to
be a sleeping bag. Right in the middle is this
foam pad that has coils of what appear to be
metal wire. To the right of the pad appears to
be the robe, and then right to the top of that,
which robe is somewhat on top of, appears to be
(21:32):
a second sleeping bag.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They're disgusting. I mean, I don't know why I think
that's a big deal, but it's filthy. They're filthy down there.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, everything looks well, the sleeping bags I can't tell
as much, but the robe and this foam pad very soiled.
Is the soiling due to having you know, gone down
into this environment is a soiling because you've got maybe
a body that's decomposing. You know what did it smell like?
(22:03):
You know? So I would have questions. But that type
of cord, you know, this is if that's what I'm
seeing and that's this metal cord, and if it's being
used to control Leslie, this is a type of material
that would cut into her skin if it's tied tightly
or if she's fighting against it. This would not be
(22:24):
This isn't you know, soft binding material for comfort. This
is like almost like the worst type of material you
would use to keep somebody under control because it'd be
so painful.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Let me show you a close up because I do
want to emphasize that. Let me show you a close
up of this is the wire, the circular wire that
you saw that could have been used to control her.
It's like a braided metal braided wire.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
So yes, so this man is holding up it's just
a loop of this cable part and in essence, what
it is is it's a twisted cable. You've got multiple
smaller metal wires that during manufacture have been twisted around
each other, and I don't know what the correct term
of that is in order to make a larger cable,
(23:09):
and some of this cable has untwisted, probably because it's
close to a cut end. And then on the right
hand side, down near where the man's fingers are that's
holding this, you can see the original twist of this cable.
I am guessing that this cable is maybe three eighth
inch in diameter. I mean, this is not something that
(23:30):
you could tie a knot in. It is something that
you could potentially bend around let's say Leslie's wrists or
her ankles, or use it as a ligature to strangle.
But this is not a material that one would use
an a fender would use to have, you know, basically
(23:50):
control and compliance from the victim. You know, again, this
is potentially suggesting that Leslie was not treated very well
in the early days after her abduction.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Okay, well, let's get to this, you know, the whole
part of this, which is you have this officer down
there in this what I consider to be an absolute
nightmare of a scenario, sixty feet under the ground by
himself only with a flashlight pitch black, finding all of
these terrible things. He finds this wire on the platform
which he follows. There's wire because it's just laying there,
(24:26):
but it's leading somewhere. It's tied onto part of the
platform and he drops further into the shaft. So he
follows it to the edge of something that goes over
the shaft and the end of the wire is around
Leslie's neck. Yeah, she's hanging by the wire, no clothes, naked,
her feet are just inches from the very bottom of
the drain system.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
And I can tell you more. Of course, there's an
autopsy and all that.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yeah, I want to know is are her wrist bound
or her ankles bound? Obviously the offender, it's not like
she inadvertently fell off this ledge. Sounds like the offender
either she was dead ahead of time and he hung her,
or that's how she died as he literally pushed her
(25:11):
off this edge and this was a hanging.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
It's awful.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
You know when you start thinking about the scenario, you know,
when does Leslie realize what's about to happen.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, so let me tell you about what the pathologist said.
They had pretty good ones in nineteen seventy five in England.
But I mean, we'll see I was a little confused
following the post wartem. They believe Leslie actually died weeks earlier,
thank goodness, just shortly after she was abducted, so hopefully
this did not last long. They said that her cause
(25:45):
of death was determined to be I'm going to say
this wrong, vag al inhibition bagel.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
And yeah, so the vegus nerve, well.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
This is what they say.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
This is translated in the newspapers as shock or fright.
Is not mentioned as a cause of death, and the
AP says that a police surgeon likened this to like
a diver jumping suddenly into ice cold water and suffering
cardiac arrest. Based on her autopsy, they did not think
it was strangulation. They didn't see signs of that kind
(26:15):
of strangulation. And you had said you thought maybe after
she died he hung her, you know, as a way
to hide her or something else.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah, you know, I would think that at the hanging
itself was the cause of death. They would see definitive
signs of that.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Fatikia, I mean whatever, all the other lists of things.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Right right, I mean she's hanging. There is going to
be physical damage to her neck structures, possibly to her
cervical vertebrae if she fell a distance like you see
in your typical hangings where the floor is drops out
from the person that has a noose around their neck.
You know, that's a lot of force that's concentrated in
(26:57):
a very small cross section of the neck. You know.
In terms of this conclusion of like a vagual reflex,
that almost sounds more like they couldn't figure out why
she died, you know, and considering that she they thought
she was dead for for weeks, you know, there is
going to be decomposition this This location is sheltered from insects,
(27:22):
but it's I imagine it's still not a great location
for you know, body preservation. So I kind of think
that maybe they didn't find any diagnostic features to determine
a cause of death, and this is maybe the one
thing that they could think of. You know, I'm not
sure what they would be seeing in a body of
(27:44):
this condition that's hanging to be able to draw a
conclusion that it's a you know, some sort of vagueal
reflex that caused her death that I would need to
know more about.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Well, we'll have more information, I think a little bit later,
once we get our suspect together. So they're trying to
find Leslie's killer, they start attempting to link the evidence
from the drain system, like the sleeping bag and the
tape recorder to a specific suspect. So they start referencing
serial numbers and labels, anything, any warranties, anything, but they
aren't really getting anywhere.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
When the news.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Gets a hold of this, the media finds out about
Leslie's body, a couple reaches out to investigators and says
that they were in the park the night that Whittle
was there, screaming, this is Ron Whittle, you know, is
anybody here? But they were there earlier in the evening
they had seen a car flashing its lights at them.
They weren't sure why the car was doing that, and
(28:37):
they wrote it off, this is not Ron's car, this
is the kidnappers car. So I don't know where the
timing went off, but they said that during this same time,
the exact same time, the couple also noticed a police car.
And this is not a police officer who was working
on Leslie's case, so it's totally coincidental that he was there.
(28:58):
But he was in the park in his car. So
the police wonder if the kidnapper saw this car and
that frightened him enough to abandon the whole thing and
then he ends up killing Leslie.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
But I don't know. What do you think about that theory?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Oh, I think that's a legitimate theory. Now it's curious
that if the kidnapper is flashing his headlights in this
what appears to be a fairly wide open space, how
did Ron not see that?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I think the timing was different. So this is what
I think.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Remember, Ron got lost, and I wonder if the kidnapper
is flashing his lights thinking Ron is there somewhere. He's
trying to say, this is where I am. But Ron
was several hours late, so the couple was not there
when Ron was there. The couple was there much earlier
because Ron got there I think at three in the morning.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
So it's bad timing.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
I could see where if it's dark out and the
kidnappers sitting there waiting for Ron, and then this patrol
car rolls out its headlights on, and kidnapp thinks it's
Rod and then recognizes, oh shit, that's law enforcement. Now
there's panic. So yeah, I think that's a bona fide
theory right there.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
It's awful and I'm sure when Ron finds out this theory,
you know if he had known how to get there, but.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Then the kidnappers giving him terrible instructions. It's just awful.
I mean all of it.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I will tell you. If Ron had shown up on
time with the money, I think both Ron and Leslie
would be hanging in that shaft.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I was thinking that too.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, this is not a guy who seems to be
playing by any kind of moral rules at all. He
would have just pulled out a gun and killed him.
It probably did save his life that he got lost. Yeah,
and I'm not convinced that Leslie was alive even at
that point.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
He's not gonna be strapped with a teenage girl.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You know that just is so risky this guy, no
for sure, Okay, all right, nine months nothing happens. They
cannot find Black Panther until December eleventh, nineteen seventy five,
So this is eleven months after she is initially kidnapped.
Two policemen stop a man they believed is being suspicious
near a post office the sky and his post offices
(31:08):
in Mansfield, which is about one hundred miles northeast of
the Wittulls home in Highly. When the guy is questioned,
he gives a false name, and then he pulls a
gun and he orders the officers to drive him to
a nearby village. Remember they don't carry guns the police officers.
There's a struggle that results in everybody exiting the car,
and as the man starts to run, they restrain him.
(31:32):
They flag down customers from a nearby restaurant, and then
everybody overpowers this guy and they arrest him. So they
go and do a search. I would not red herring you.
This is our guy. They find various paraphernalia, including firearms
and face masks that are directly linked to Black Panther.
And there is also a wire that looks just like
(31:53):
the kind of wire found around Leslie Snack. And they said,
this is it. This is the guy. His name is
Donald Nielsen. And when you're ready, I want to do
a comparison of his photo and our fantastic sketch artist
to see if there's a like this here or not.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
But this is the guy. That's his name.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
You know, I'm just kind of curious, is Donald Nielsen?
Is he from the United States? By chance? No? UK? Why?
Just because of the use of the firearm. This sounds
more of like an American type crime than a British
type crime.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
No, but he was in the armed forces.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Okay, I'll tell you about Donald once we get further
into here. Let's look at the sketch and look at
the photo. So let me show you the sketch first.
So that's the sketch menacing guy, and then we have
him menacing guy.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
You know. So I'm looking at what appears to be
a mug shot of Donald Nielsen. What appears similar to
me and the sketch. It definitely the eyes. Even in
this mugshot, he has that hard stare, the heavy eyebrows.
You know, There's definitely some differences in terms of the
face shape. But I would say that's well within tolerance.
(33:08):
I think the composite is close enough that if somebody
saw it and knew Donaldson and especially that outfit and
the composite will go, hey, you might want to look
at this guy.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Absolutely well. He does not look like somebody you want
to meet in an alleyway, that's for sure. He looks
pretty upset, mad, and he eventually will tell us what
happened with Leslie. So his mom died when he was eleven,
and he was the constant butt of jokes. You know,
throughout his young adulthood and adolescence. He was born with
the last name Nappy, and this is a word for diaper,
(33:42):
common word for diaper in the UK.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah, so he that would not be good.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
He adopted the surname Nilsen in the sixties after his
daughter was born because he wanted to spare her the
same ridicule. He was in the Armed Forces, as I
had mentioned to you before, so there's a reference with
the gun. He struggled really a lot. He struggled financially
after he left the military, and he was in various
(34:07):
careers including carpentry and security, and then he went into crime.
By the mid nineteen sixties he was carrying out a
lot of burglaries to boost his family's income. Police say
four hundred burglaries without being caught. He started robbing post
offices because he needed more money between sixty seven and
(34:28):
seventy four and he carried out about nineteen post office
raids in Yorkshire and Lancashire. So he admits eventually to
being the Black Panther and the man responsible for kidnapping Leslie.
He read about all of these lucrative kidnappings in the
United States and decided that that would be a really
(34:48):
good idea. So he targeted her after reading about the
inheritance and that everybody was calling her an heiress. So
that is that he's very violent. He's had a long
his of crime. You know, clearly has no problem killing people.
He does detail what happens. I want to get your
impressions of Donald right now, and then I'll tell you
(35:09):
what he says happened, and you can tell me what
you think.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Well, first, I don't have any sympathy for him with
the last name of Nappy. Try having the last name
of Holes. Oh, come on, I have been referred to
about every body orifice as possible.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
I know that as a young kid.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I'm sure, I mean, the worst the worst I ever
got was Awesome Dawson, So I know, I'm sorry, Oh poor.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
You Kate the great I mean, I'll let anybody listening
use their imagination to how the surname Holes could be
referred to. But okay, so obviously kind of a disrupted childhood.
He was in the military. You didn't go into the
details of what he experienced in the military. Did he
(35:55):
see action? Was he on the front lines? That can
be very traumatic and then the getting out of you know,
the service and now struggling financially. It's it's still you
make You can make a choice, you know, there are
other ways to make money. He chose the criminal route
(36:15):
all along. The post office robbery homicides as well as
the Leslie abduction. They're financially motivated, you know. He's a
financially motivated offender. He chose to go down a criminal path.
He has a predisposition for violence. You know. He most
certainly could you know, commit robberies without doing the homicides.
(36:40):
And you know, I don't know the circumstances of the
post office crimes, you know, but chances are My guess
is is that he made a decision to kill these
postal workers. He possibly could have successfully robbed these places
and walked away. He's got a gun, they don't, right, Yeah,
(37:03):
So he chose to kill them. He chose to kill Leslie,
you know. So he has that violent predisposition thought and
may have had some struggles in his early life. There's
nothing about his upbringing or anything, as far as I'm
concerned that should cause anybody to have any sympathy for him.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
No, And he's a parent too. I mean, that's just nauseating.
Let me tell you what he says. He had planned
all of this pretty meticulously. That night, January fourteenth, he
entered the house wearing a hood in all black clothing,
such was his way. He forced the door open and
gagged and blindfolded Leslie in her bedroom upstairs and brought
(37:46):
her out to his stolen vehicle at gunpoint. She was
just wearing her robin slippers, so what police thought. He
hit her in the back of the car beneath a
foam mattress, and he drove her over sixty miles to
Bathpool Park, where he imprisoned her in the dark, damp
drain shaft. I mean, he just says, very straightforwardly. I
(38:08):
gave her nothing to keep her warm and comfortable except
for the sleeping bag. He made her take off the
rope so she was completely naked. I will say, there's
a note that says that there has never been a
suggestion that she had been sexually assaulted. He never said
anything about that. It could have also been that they
just didn't find evidence. They would have seen evidence. I
(38:28):
don't know about after fifty one days, but I mean, certainly,
you know in seventy five, they would have seen physical
evidence of something.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
So I don't know, do you want me to pause
there or do you want me to keep going?
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Well, keep going because I need to know more about
when you know how long Leslie had been dead and hanging.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
But yeah, keep going, okay, So he says he made her,
of course, make the recorded tapes that eventually he shared
with her family. This was a very complicated plan that
he had done before. You know, he knew it was
never going to be this one drop. He wanted to
do what some articles were calling a ransom run that
I've read about before. So a ransom run is requiring,
(39:07):
you know, the family to go from one location to
the next to the next, like a scavenger hunt, and
then finally there's a money drop at a specific location.
But the plan went off script super early when you
know Ron missed that phone call because the police said,
you're gonna miss this phone call. Nielsen had actually called
(39:28):
that night at midnight when he was supposed to talk
to Ron, and the police had said initially, well, no,
you don't go to that phone booth. The kidnapper I'm
sure has made us by now, and he hadn't he
did say that the plan got bungled after he saw
that off duty cop or that cop and got frightened
in the park that night. So we do have more
(39:49):
information about sort of what happens and with her death too.
I can talk about that now. Also it comes out
in trial that I can skip to that.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
No, I think you know everything he's saying, just mad
up with the details of the case in terms of
it obviously was pre planned. Does he ever address why
he used a box of candy in order to leave
the message in the first place at the house?
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Now, and it was Turkish delights, which had various definitions
from the seventies, and so I just said, I'm just
going to say, a box of candy. I don't know
if it was significant or just something he had in
his car, but it would have had his fingerprints on it,
I'm assuming unless he wore gloves.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Yeah, you know, I think you know the type of
ransom note that he left. It wasn't like a piece
of paper that he could he's placing on the kitchen counter.
It's the strip of this dimo, you know, like a label,
so you know, containerizing it into a larger object that
would stand out to the family. I could see the reasoning,
(40:52):
but you know, why a box of candy? Why not
something else? And it may have been at what you suggested,
you know, maybe that was just the one thing he
had but to have, you know, and thought, oh, I'll
just use that. The family will look inside that.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, to make clear that this is something unusual that
was not theirs. The trial for Nielsen mcgins in June
of nineteen seventy six. He's charged with kidnapping, grievous bodily harm,
firearms possessions, and four murders. So the three poster workers
in Leslie and I have bad news. Gerald Smith died.
That's the security guard. You would think he would be
(41:26):
included in these and it would be five murders. And
there was something interesting I did not know at the time.
English laws said that there was something called year in
a day a year and a day rule which prevented
murder charges from being brought if the victim died more
than a year and a day after the attack. Isn't
that interesting? So it meant that they could not include
(41:48):
Gerald Smith's death. He survived for over a year, if
it was over a year and a day, he wouldn't
be included, and that law has since changed. Okay, here's details.
I mean, this guy on an asshole. In the trial,
it comes out that in the final days of her life.
I don't see how long he kept her alive. It
did not seem within it was within like two or
(42:08):
three days.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It sounds like he.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Tied her to the side of the pitch black shaft
using a wire noose that I showed you that was
fastened around her neck.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Remember, she was very petite.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
The noose was designed to prevent her from moving it all,
and he says that any big shift in Police say
this too, any big shift in position would tighten the
wire around her neck, which could potentially strangle her.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
He says, I didn't kill her.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
He said she accidentally fell off the ledge into the
lower shaft of the draining system. That he'd only tied
the wire around Leslie's neck to restrain her, not to
kill her. But most people thought that he killed her
in a fit of rage after probably the cop he
spotted the cop.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Or what you know, any number of reasons.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
But the truth is unknown, and you know, the pathology
report is sort of inconclusive. I wonder Paul knowing where
she is now though, if she's standing there for days
naked and it's cold and it's January and it's wet
down there, if the cardiac arrest theory is not so
out of bounds.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Yeah, you know, I think that this is this is
now getting just from a medical side. It's above me
in terms of okay, you know, because I've heard of
you know, the bagel reflex vegus nerve issues causing death.
In terms of the condition that she was left in,
(43:34):
you know, the fright that she would be under. I mean,
imagine if you're a seventeen year old girl and you're
left alone in absolute darkness, sixty feet down in a shaft,
and you're hearing sounds, you know, because guess what's down there.
There's rats down there, There's going to be other types
of sounds, you know, water running. This would be a
(43:56):
very very scary environment, and you've got this noose around
your neck that basically you have to be absolutely still
or it just continues to tighten. Yeah, you know, that's
where I think the pathologist is looking at the circumstances
that she was bound under in the environment versus you know,
(44:19):
some diagnostic feature he could see at autopsy. I just
don't if she accidentally fell off that shaft or was
pushed off that shaft. And I mean she's falling I
don't know how long, but obviously her body weight, she's
hanging under her body weight because her feet aren't touching
the bottom. You know, this would cause some significant damage
to her neck. And is it possible that that damage
(44:41):
from the hanging could obscure evidence of strangulation. But if
she did die of a vaguel nerve reflex, you know,
was she just laying on the platform and then was
she pushed off by him or did she you know,
under collapsing from this vaguel reflex. Now she falls, But
(45:02):
then I would think that being so close to death
that it would be indistinguishable. They would find evidence of
literally strangulation from the hanging. So I don't know. You know,
that's literally getting a high end forensic pathologist to assess everything,
and then I would need to hear from that person
(45:22):
what their thoughts are.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
He killed her no matter what.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah, I mean, he is absolutely responsible for her homicide.
I kind of want to go back to the fact
that she's nude. Yeah, as I mentioned before, like with
this metal cable. You know, this is not a type
of binding material one would use if you want your
victim to be as compliant as possible, because it would
(45:48):
be so uncomfortable and so painful. You have to think about, Okay,
if I'm going to be having to control this seventeen
year old girl, Leslie, how do I I do that
and minimize her resistance or her And part of that
is minimizing her discomfort. And now you're down in this
(46:10):
cold shaft and he's having her take her robe off.
That further causes discomfort. So that's where I start going,
Hold on, why is he doing that? I am not
convinced that once he had her isolated that there wasn't
any sexual activity. But if she's down there for almost
(46:31):
two months and dead, they're really not going to be
able to find evidence of any sexual assault.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Well, thankfully he has found guilty. Of course, he gets
five life sentences, no possibility of parole.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
He died just in twenty eleven. He was seventy five.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
This is not an old story. It's seventy five, you know,
nineteen seventy five. Yeah, so he died at age seventy five.
He had developed a neurological disease, and you know, the
family went on. They have a bus company that still operates.
It doesn't seem like the family is, you know, that
involved with it, but we aren't sure. I feel like
(47:08):
I don't know a lot sometimes about our criminals in
their background and like their criminal history and sort of
how it all builds, and particularly about how violent these
kidnappings can be, because I feel like we've had bungling kidnappings,
but this was really that end up somehow with people dead.
But this was really calculated and scary, and this was
(47:29):
somebody who needed to be stopped and killed, you know,
five people.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
So a really sad story for.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
A seventeen year old girl who I'm assuming had just
all the potential in the world, and you know, just
devastating for her family.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
To bring that kind of case to you, I think.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Is important unfortunately, whether it be kidnappings like in Leslie's case,
or sexual assaults or homicides, you know, you have victims
who you know, they go to bed at night think
and they're going to wake up the next morning and
life will be the same, and within a matter of
hours their lives are either completely changed or taken away
(48:07):
from them, somebody like this Nielsen guy. He was on
kind of this escalation of criminality from I don't know
how far back, you know, whether he did anything in
the military, but definitely after he got out of the military.
He's committing the burglaries, you know, he's doing the robbery homicides,
(48:28):
and then he's doing an abduction homicide of a girl.
He just escalated over time, and though the primary motive
is financial, got to ask the question about why the escalation.
You know, what is truly his inner motivation? You know,
is he just angry at the world and is just
(48:48):
getting more and more pissed off and escalates the violence
as he goes on. Once Leyton's tied Leslie's abduction to
these post office homicides, it's like, Okay, you know, this
is a bad, bad guy. He is a threat to
public safety. And you know, fortunately law enforcement found him
before he committed another crime. Unfortunately they didn't find Leslie
(49:13):
before she was killed.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
Okay, I don't think I can talk about this story anymore.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
It's a tough one.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
It is a tough one, you know, it is.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Well, Paul, thank you for going through the story with
me and talking about all the forensics. It's nice to
have a reminder there was a time when we did
have good forensics that we could talk about on this
show and not just sort of like wishing the real
killer will walk through the door, or you know, like
looking at tea leaves to try to figure out who
the killer was.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
There.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
We are in the seventies able to pick up on
some things. Yeah, and thankfully the police finally got it
together there at the end.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
But I will see you next week. For my hope,
is a drastically different story that we can talk about.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Okay, as always, I look forward to it.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Okay, I'll see you next week. Thanks. This has been
an exactly right production.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
For our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot
com slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hart Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
Pod Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a
Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode
the criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, my life solving America's cold cases,
is also available now
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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