ONE of Britain's most notorious killers - Donald Neilson, the black panther' - has been told that he must die in prison by a top judge.

Neilson, 71, kidnapped and murdered 17-year-old Lesley Whittle, daughter of George Whittle, who ran Whittle coach company based in Kidderminster.

He had left a ransom note at her family home in Highley demanding £50,000 and leaving instructions to wait for a telephone call at the Swan shopping centre.

Neilson had learned that the teenage schoolgirl had inherited a fortune and later took Lesley to a disused drainage shaft in a beauty spot, in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire, and left her there with a wire round her neck, basic food requirements and some bedding.

She later died, either from being throttled, or from the shere shock and terror of her ordeal and almost two months after her kidnap, her naked body was found in the shaft.

She was hanging from a wire cable, her feet only a few inches from the ground. A post mortem suggested that she had been killed within 48 hours of her capture.

Neilsen is serving four life sentences for the murder of Lesley and three sub-Post Masters, Donald Skepper, Derek Astin and Sidney Grayland.

The former jobbing builder became Britain's most wanted man before he was finally brought to justice in 1976 at Oxford Crown Court.

By the time he kidnapped teenage heiress, Lesley Whittle, from her home in 1975, he was already a multiple murderer after a series of gun point Post Office robberies.

A decade of robberies had led to three postmasters being fatally shot and others being wounded. Neilson is now amongst Britain's longest serving prisoners.

Ruling today that Neilson must never be freed, High Court judge, Mr Justice Teare, said today: "This is a a case where the gravity of the offences justifies a whole life order".

Rejecting Neilson's plea that his minimum jail tariff should be set as low as 30 years - which would have enabled him to seek parole straight away - the judge said: "There are and were no mitigating features".

During his reign of terror, the judge said Neilson, who was aged 39 when convicted, "never set out without a loaded shotgun or other loaded weapon and he never hesitated to shoot to kill whenever he thought he was in danger of arrest or of detection".

All the killings were premeditated and "committed for gain", added Mr Justice Teare, who was reviewing Neilson's tariff at London's High Court.

The trial judge had said that, in his view, Neilson should never be freed unless "on account of great age or infirmity".

The Home Secretary later agreed with him and today's final decision confirms that Neilson must serve the whole of his life behind bars.

Mr Justice Teare said: "It is plain ...that Neilson was ruthlessly prepared to shoot to kill if he considered such action necessary. "

He had abducted Lesley Whittle for gain and the judge added: "The location and manner of her death indicates that she must have been subjected by Neilson to a dreadful and horrific ordeal".

"I have concluded that the seriousness of the four murders is such that the appropriate minimum term is a whole life order", the judge ruled.

Neilson carried out a large number of sub Post Office raids in Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, between 1967 and 1974.

In that year, Neilson shot sub-Post Master, Donald Skepper, during a raid in Harrogate. Derek Astin, another sub-Post Master in Higher Baxenden, near Accrington, died at the black panther's hands about six months later.

Two months after that, Neilson struck again, murdering Sidney Grayland, at his sub-Post Office in Langley, West Midlands.

Mr Grayland's wife was also left with a fractured skull, but managed to give a description of Neilson to police.

Neilson, who carried out more post office raids, was finally arrested in Mansfield, Notts, at the end of 1975.

It was only after his home in Bradford was searched the police learned they had finally captured the black panther.