Questions on 1975 kidnap case 'have never stopped'

A former police officer who was tasked with recovering the body of a teenager in the 1970s after she was kidnapped and murdered has said it is a day he will "never, ever forget".

Phil Maskery, who was a detective constable for Staffordshire Police, was the officer who found Lesley Whittle, from Highley, Shropshire, after she was taken from her home by Donald Neilson - known as the Black Panther - in January 1975.

He spoke last year on the BBC podcast The Cop, The Kidnap and The Killer, which on Thursday won an industry award.

Since it was launched six months ago, the series has had more than 1,000,000 listens.

Recalling the awful discovery for the podcast, he said: "Seeing Lesley was the most horrific thing that I have ever seen, tethered like a dog at the bottom of an old mine shaft."

Maskery said people had been asking him questions about the case for years, wanting to find out more about the events leading up to the retrieval of Whittle's body.

"They've been doing that for a long time, people want to hear about crimes like this and the questions have never stopped," he said.

"Organisations ask me to go and give presentations and talks, and I've done many of them - but I've stopped now."

At the time of her kidnap, the A-level student was in her second year at Wulfrun College, in Wolverhampton.

On 14 January 1975, Whittle's mother went to wake her daughter and found an empty bed.

She then discovered three ransom notes and a warning not to involve police in their lounge, but instead to wait for a call from a telephone phone box at a shopping centre in Kidderminster.

"The Whittles had got a coach company - 70 coaches, based over in Shropshire at Highley and everybody in the area knew the family," explained researcher Dave Waterhouse.

"When the father died, Lesley became known as the heiress and people knew her as that," he said.

Whittle's kidnapper, Neilson, was a builder turned career criminal. Originally from Bradford, he died in prison in 2011.

The story was covered from start to finish in a five-part podcast by BBC presenter Susan Hanks.

"It was important to tell the story with the respect that it deserves," Hanks said.

"Fifty years on from when it happened, we felt it was the right time to retell it for what could be the final time."

Speaking before winning its category at the True Crime Awards, Hanks said: "It's an honour to be nominated for an award, and the real thanks go to the contributors who helped us tell the story."

Midlands Today presenter Nick Owen, who was a radio presenter at the time, said he had felt "some trepidation" when he knocked on the door of Whittle's family home.

"I was quite a young journalist then," he added. "I was sort of getting used to major stories - but this one became more and more major as time went on."

He said he remembered becoming emotionally involved and concerned about the events.

"All of my friends and colleagues were undoubtedly shocked by it all and visibly saddened. You get used to things and hardened in our business but that particular story struck a chord," he said.

Owen added that taking part in the podcast had rekindled his memories from the time and he found Nielsen's actions still horrifying all these years later.

All five episodes of The Cop, the Kidnap and the Killer, created by BBC Radio Stoke, are available to listen to on BBC Sounds as part of its Crime Next Door series.

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