How I stopped The Black Panther’s killing spree
Hero former postie tells of his astonishing role in ending notorious British murderer’s reign of terror
To the people of Mansfield, Paul Cullen was their friendly local postman, delivering letters rain or shine, with a smile and a cheery wave. But few of the people on his rounds could have guessed his remarkable secret – he is the man who caught one of Britain’s most evil killers. Donald Neilson, known as The Black Panther because he wore a black balaclava to commit his crimes, had left a trail of terror across the North after killing four people in the Seventies. His victims included a 17-year-old girl who he had kidnapped and kept at the bottom of a drain shaft, naked with a hood over her head, before hanging her with a metal wire. By the end of 1975, with the serial killer still on the loose and now Britain’s most wanted man, the whole country was in a state of fear about when he would strike again. DecemberOn the night11, Paul,of then aged 18, left a disco with a group of friends and headed over to a nearby chip shop. A police panda car suddenly screeched to a halt outside. The next few minutes turned Paul and his two teenage friends, Gordon Henry and Derrick Smart, into national heroes.
GUNPOINT
Neilson had earlier taken two police officers in the car hostage at gunpoint. They had managed to overpower him the moment it came to a stop outside The Junction Fish Bar in Mansfield, Notts. But as the car stopped, the killer’s gun had gone off, injuring one of the police officers and leaving the other temporarily deaf and disorientated. Paul and his pals jumped into action. Now 60, he recalls: “When the police car slammed on its brakes it must have slid about three or four yards. Then there was this loud gunshot and one of the officers shouted ‘we’ve got an armed man here’. “Our fish and chips went up in the air and I ran up the road to the phone box to ring 999. When I got back, one of the policemen was still struggling with the man so we ran up and helped restrain him. We dragged him up to railings next to the chip shop and the policeman handcuffed him. “The buttons of his jacket came undone and I saw bullets strapped to his belt and knives under his jacket. He was still trying to get away, so one of my mates, Derrick, pulled back the man’s hair and punched him in the face.” The friends held the killer down for 12 minutes until another police car arrived. But they only found out they had helped catch the feared Black Panther two days later, when his arrest was reported in the newspapers, along with a photo of Neilson with a black eye from the punch. Paul said: “We were all shocked. We thought he must have been important because of the number of police cars that turned up, and even a chief inspector, but we had no idea he was The Black Panther. “The next week our photos were all over the papers and I was given a reward of £15, which was a lot of money at the time.” Neilson, a 39-year-old builder from Bradford, had become headline news in the months running up to his arrest. A year earlier he had robbed three post offices and shot dead two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress.
KIDNAPPED
Buthis reputationit was his finalas one crimeof Britain’sthat ensuredmost evil killers, when he kidnapped 17-year-old Lesley Whittle from her Shropshire home. An heiress to a fortune, she was held in a disused ventilation shaft 50ft below ground in a park in Stafford, where Neilson forced her to record a succession of ransom pleas. After the ransom drop failed, Lesley’s body was found hanging from a wire in the shaft two months later in a crime that shocked the nation. Following his arrest in Mansfield, Neilson’s fingerprints were found to match those left in the shaft. He was convicted of all four murders and jailed for life, dying in prison in 2011, aged 75. Married father-of-three Paul, who started working as a postman soon after his heroics and is now retired, said: “We were all relieved when he died. Even when he was in jail he still made threats that he would come and get everybody. “It gave me nightmares. “Because of our ages at the time we didn’t really realise how important what we’d done was. But today I’m really proud of the fact I caught a serial killer. I’ve got a grandson on the way and I’ll certainly be telling him about it.”