Donald Neilson was one of the UK's most notorious criminals. He left a trail of death and destruction in his wake.

Birmingham Post columnist Harry Hawkes, who was chief crime reporter for the Birmingham Evening Mail at the time, covered the case and went to every day of the trial at Oxford Crown Court.

Subsequently he wrote a book generally acknowledged to be the definitive account of the crime. Here he gives his insight in to the panic which unfolded when the Black Panther reigned in 1975.

The death announced this week of a man hunted and jailed for a series of crimes which brought about one of the biggest British police hunts for raiders specialising in stealing Royal Mail packages and parcels in transit or at postal premises, has closed the final door of a saga of kidnap, death and tragedy.

It was the closure of one of Britain’s most alarming and puzzling multiple murder hunts in modern times.

The man who has died was Donald Neilson, more widely known by his underworld nickname of The Black Panther, who created a reign of terror in the early 1970s.

His targets were sub-post offices in Harrogate, Accrington and Black Country robberies in Langley and Dudley.

In the course of these robberies, he had killed each of the four sub-postmasters and at Langley he also seriously injured the wife of the postmaster. Her life was only saved by the skill of hospital surgeons.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Black Panther’s raids was that he obviously had obtained details of security at post offices throughout the West Midlands area and detectives could not keep guard over all of them. There was an obvious danger to each of the sub-postmaster’s families.

It was then that the Panther moved in a different direction.

He decided to kidnap the young daughter of a prominent Midland motor coach operator’s family, Lesley Whittle, who was abducted one night from her home at Highley, Shropshire and Neilson lost no time in sending a note to her family demanding a ransom of £50,000.

For the police this posed a real problem of ensuring Lesley’s safety.

Getting her back alive was the prime consideration, so panicking her captor had to be avoided at all costs.

Nevertheless, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Booth and his colleagues were quick to realise that this was merely a change of target by their quarry and that they had to employ steps which did not endanger innocent lives.

These events underlined the serious difficulties which faced the police. Here was a kidnap criminal prepared to switch his victims to any rich family, whatever their background and occupation.

In other words, if they were rich enough, they could be held to pay a hefty ransom for the safe return of a loved one.