The Black Panther, Donald Neilson, was today told he must die in jail by one of Britain’s top judges at the High Court in London.

Neilson, now 71, is serving four life sentences for the murder of teenage Shropshire heiress Lesley Whittle and three sub-postmasters, Donald Skepper, Derek Astin and Sidney Grayland, during a crime spree in the 60s and 70s.

Neilson, a jobbing builder, became a murderer, kidnapper and Britain’s most wanted man before he was finally brought to justice in 1976 at Oxford Crown Court.

By the time he kidnapped 17-year-old Lesley Whittle from her home in Highley in 1975 he was already a multiple murderer after a series of gunpoint post office raids.

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

Ruling today that Neilson must never be freed, High Court judge Mr Justice Teare said: “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 Neilson’s reign of terror, the judge said he “never set out without a loaded shotgun or other loaded weapon and he never hesitated to shoot to kill”.

He said Neilson had abducted Lesley for gain, adding: “The location and manner of her death indicates she must have been subjected to a dreadful and horrific ordeal.”

Neilson carried out a large number of sub-post office raids in Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire between 1967 and 1974.

On January 14, 1975, after learning Lesley had inherited a fortune from her father George, a coach company boss, Neilson broke into the Whittle home in Highley and took her with him at gunpoint, leaving a ransom demand for £50,000.

Neilson took Lesley to a disused drainage shaft in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire, and left her with a wire round her neck, basic food requirements and some bedding. Her naked body was found nearly two months later.

Neilson was arrested in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, at the end of 1975.

By Peter Johnson