Life Means Life

by Nick Appleyard

  At Leeds Crown Court on 27 May of the following year, Hobson muttered pleas of guilty to four counts of murder. Wearing a dark grey suit, he sat with his head bowed and looked close to tears. At one point he started rocking backwards and forwards. The judge, Mr Justice Grigson, ordered him to die in prison. To cries of ‘Yes!’ from the victims’ families, the judge added: ‘You not only destroyed the lives of your victims, but you devastated the lives of those who loved them. The damage you have done is incalculable; the enormity of what you have done is beyond words.’

  As he was led to the cells, the twins’ mother Jacqueline Sanderson shouted: ‘You bastard! Rot in there! Rot in hell!’

  In a joint statement after the sentencing, the parents said: ‘How could anyone be such an animal? Claire and Diane did not deserve to die such horrid violent deaths, both ending up naked, with a plastic bag over Diane’s head and Claire inside a black bag. They didn’t deserve to end up like that. Though we were advised not to go and see them because of the state they were in, we did get to see them for the last time at the mortuary. You can imagine what they looked like, but to us they were our beautiful daughters, Claire and Diane. We will never forget that Sunday morning – George and Ian finding Claire and Diane, and George coming home to break the news of their horrid and cruel deaths. It was so unreal and still is. We are both full of hate and we will never get over what that animal did to our Claire and Diane. We will never get over it and will never see things in the same way. He not only took Claire and Diane away from us, he took our future happiness away from us. He took the hope of us ever becoming grandparents and having a normal family life.’

  It emerged in the course of the investigation that two years prior to Hobson’s killing spree he stabbed a love rival five times, leaving him for dead. William Brace, 30, needed emergency surgery for a punctured lung. In court the following year, Hobson admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, but claimed he acted in self-defence. His victim’s family expected a lengthy prison term, but instead, in what turned out to be a fatal error of judgment, he was sentenced to 100 hours’ community work and two years’ probation.

  In November 2005, Hobson’s lawyers asked for permission to appeal against his whole life order at London’s Court of Appeal. His counsel, Jeremy Richardson, QC, said that however barbaric his crimes, he deserved some credit for admitting the murders. But the nation’s most senior judge, Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips, said: ‘The facts of these four murders are so horrific that a whole life order was inevitable, guilty plea or no.’ He added: ‘The damage that he had done was incalculable and the enormity of what he had done was beyond words. No one knowing the facts of this case could be in any doubt as to why the judge had given no effect to the guilty plea. The application for permission to appeal is refused.’

  By pleading guilty to the killings, Hobson avoided a trial and so the need to account for his actions. After the verdict, Detective Superintendent Javad Ali, who led the investigation, said: ‘We do not know what Mark Hobson’s motives were, or why he carried out the four killings. He has never given the slightest indication of what possessed him.’

  The closest Hobson has come to any explanation was in prison visit conversations and letters to former neighbour Donna Kemp, one of the few people still willing to speak to him. ‘When the booze took hold, I couldn’t control myself,’ he said from Wakefield Jail. ‘Claire stirred something within me. There’s something evil inside me that comes out when I’ve had a drink. When I was sober everything was fine between me and Claire but after a few drinks the arguments and violence would start. All her friends hated me – they wanted her to stop seeing me, but I quite enjoyed defying everything; that’s the bad side lurking in me.’

  Donna told the News of the World: ‘He doesn’t like to dwell on the past, but he said that he and Claire rowed on the day he killed her, and he flipped and went on to murder them all. It was the booze more than drugs that sent him over the edge, Mark says so in his letters.’ Hobson made no apology for killing Claire and Diane, or for slaughtering the frail Mr and Mrs Britton. He concedes only that: ‘As I try to sleep, I remember what I did. I get nightmares; it haunts me.’

  When on remand awaiting sentence for the murders, Hobson wrote to Donna, saying: ‘I wish I’d done more thinking and less drinking.’ He said the educational facilities inside were excellent, that he’d gained a B-grade in A-Level English and hoped to achieve a similar grade in GCSE maths. He boasted: ‘I’ll have more qualifications than Stephen f**king Hawking when I get out.’ But, of course, he’s going nowhere.

  ‘THE BLACK PANTHER’

  ‘The enormity of the crimes you have been convicted of puts you in a class apart from all other murderers in recent years.’

  Mr Justice Mars-Jones

  Name: Donald Neilson

  Crime: Quadruple murder

  Date of Conviction: 1 July 1976

  Age at Conviction: 38

  On the evening of Monday, 13 January 1975, 17-year-old Lesley Whittle climbed into bed after a hard day studying for her A-level exams. Her widowed mother, Dorothy, was out, but returned to their palatial home in the isolated village of Highley, Shropshire, at 1.30am and looked in on Lesley to find her fast asleep.

  Dorothy Whittle rose at 7.30 the next morning and went to wake her daughter for college. But the bed was empty. Lesley’s clothes for that morning were still lying neatly folded by her bed, untouched. At first she thought her daughter might have gone for a walk – she had taken sleeping tablets that night and so she would not have heard Lesley go out. After an hour, she became increasingly anxious and went to phone her son, Ron, and his wife Gaynor. Finding the phone line dead, she drove half a mile away, panic-stricken, to their home and banged on the door. Ron had the day off from the family coach business and was expecting to drive Lesley to college that morning.

  The three of them raced back and found Lesley’s college books still lying on the table in the lounge. Then Dorothy noticed that a vase usually sitting in the fireplace had been moved to the middle of the carpet. On top of it was a Turkish Delight box and inside were strips of black Dymo-tape embossed with capital letters. Ronald read the note out loud:

  NO POLICE £50000 RANSOM TO DELIVER FIRST EVENING WAIT FOR TELEPHONE CALL AT SWAN SHOPPING CENTRE TELEPHONE BOX 64711 64611 63111 6PMTO 1AM IF NO CALL RETURN FOLLOWING EVENING WHEN YOU ANSWER CALL GIVE YOUR NAME ONLY AND LISTEN YOU MUST FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS WITHOUT ARGUMENT FROM THE TIME YOU ANSWER THE TELEPHONE YOU ARE ON A TIME LIMIT IF POLICE OR TRICKS DEATH.

  A second strip read:

  £50000 ALL IN USED NOTES £25000 £1 £25000 £5 THERE WILL BE NO EXCHANGE ONLY AFTER £50000 HAS BEEN CLEARED WILL VICTIM BE RELEASED.

  The notes sent their minds racing. Why had this happened to them? They were a wealthy family, well-known in the area for their successful coach and bus company, Whittle’s Coaches. In May 1972, a local newspaper reported a dispute about Lesley’s father George Whittle’s will, citing the family as being worth over £250,000. It was also known that Lesley had been left £82,500 by her father.

  Despite the chilling warning not to involve the police, Ron went to do just that, but quickly learned that the phone line outside the house had been cut. Instead, he drove home to make the call.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Booth, Head of the West Mercia CID, later said: ‘I have never seen a mother so distraught in all my life.’ He added: ‘It was clear that this was a genuine ransom demand by people who had forced Lesley, possibly at gunpoint, into the night, naked apart from her mother’s dressing gown. We can only imagine the terror and embarrassment she must have felt.’

  It was arranged for Ron Whittle to go to the phone box in Kidderminster with the £50,000 ransom. Undercover officers were watching closely nearby, poised to record the telephone call, but the kidnapper’s call was never answered. As Ron was preparing to set off, the operation was aborted because the police learnt that the story had been leaked to the media. A journalist in
Kidderminster had been tipped off about the kidnapping and leaked the details to the BBC, who broke the story on The 9 O’Clock News. On learning this, the police were certain the kidnapper would abandon his plans to call the phone box, but they were wrong. This was the start of a catalogue of communication mix-ups and police blunders that were to blight the case.

  On day three of the investigation the kidnapper got in touch again. Len Rudd, a family friend who worked for the Whittles’ coach business, took the call. On the other end, he heard Lesley’s voice. As he frantically asked her how she was and where she was, Lesley’s voice talked over him: it was a tape recording. The message repeated explicit instructions. ‘Mum, you are to go to Kidsgrove Post Office telephone box. The instructions are inside, behind the backboard. I’m OK, but there’s to be no police and no tricks, OK?’ The tape played twice to ensure instructions were fully understood.

  Ron Whittle, fitted with a police radio transmitter, was to make the journey to the phone box. He travelled the 75 miles to Kidsgrove and found the booth easily, but it took almost an hour of searching to find the new message tucked right behind the backboard. It read:

  GO TO THE TOP OF THE LANE AND TURN INTO NO ENTRY GO TO THE WALL AND FLASH LIGHTS LOOK FOR TORCH RUN TO TORCH FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS ON.

  Ronald followed the instructions, which led him to a Staffordshire beauty spot called Bathpool. He turned into the lane marked ‘No Entry’ and drove slowly, looking for the wall. There, he flashed his lights as instructed and looked out for the signal. After an hour, he got out of his car and cried: ‘This is Ron Whittle, is anybody there?’There was a deathly silence. Devastated, he made his way home.

  Little did they know that Lesley had been within walking distance of his car, concealed in a 60-ft damp sewer shaft, screaming for help, tethered like a dog, naked and cold.

  The police were confused as to why the kidnapper had not shown up. Ron Whittle had been alone with no sign of police involvement and had followed the instructions to the letter. Bob Booth and his team regrouped to make their next move. After a brief, discreet surveillance of the park, police decided against a full-scale search, believing such a high-profile operation would make the kidnapper aware of their involvement. That decision would later prove to be a tragic mistake.

  In desperation, the Whittles made a direct appeal to the kidnapper through the media, urging him to get back in touch. This attracted huge press attention and inevitable calls from hoaxers and frauds, wanting to collect the ransom money. Days passed and they were no nearer to finding Lesley. Then police attention was diverted to an abandoned stolen green Morris 1300, standing in a car park near the Freightliner depot at Dudley. It had been dumped there two nights after Lesley went missing. The security guard at the depot, 44-year-old Gerald Smith, had been shot six times when he confronted the driver of the car, who then fled the scene. Miraculously, the guard survived. The car had been left eight days after the shooting before police went to examine it and this delay may well have cost Lesley her life.

  Inside, police officers found several suspicious items linking the driver to Lesley Whittle’s disappearance. They discovered a gun, heavy-duty black plastic sheets, a torch, a foam mattress, a cassette tape-recorder with microphone and cassette tape and a number of Dymo tapes embossed with ransom demands. They also found details of a ransom run involving telephone boxes all over the West Midlands.

  With an overwhelming sense of dread, Bob Booth put the cassette into the machine and pressed ‘Play’. Lesley’s voice was heard saying: ‘Please, Mum, go onto the M6 North to Junction 10… and onto the A454 towards Walsall. Instructions are taped under the shelf of a telephone box. There is no need to worry, Mum. I’m OK, I got a bit wet, but I’m quite dry now. I’m being treated very well. OK?’

  Booth quickly realised this was the car used to kidnap Lesley and the shooting of the security guard meant that they were dealing with a man who was not afraid to kill. Details of the ransom run showed the route Ronald Whittle would have taken, had he not missed that vital phone call made to the telephone kiosk at the Swan Centre on the first night of the kidnapping. When Ron had been waiting in the phone box hoping for a call on the second night of the kidnap, the abductor had been laying ransom notes to lead to a drop-off point at Dudley Zoo. It was a well-hatched plan. A worse discovery was to come. As police questioned the wounded security guard, a picture of the kidnapper emerged. Forensic examination of the bullets found in Mr Smith’s body proved to be a direct match to those used in murders carried out by Britain’s most wanted man, The Black Panther. This left Booth in little doubt that Lesley Whittle’s life was in grave danger, if she was alive at all.

  The Black Panther was wanted for many armed robberies, mainly of sub-post offices in the North and the Midlands. He had shot dead three sub-postmasters within nine months. Donald Skepper, 54, was killed when a hooded gunman broke into his Harrogate post office in February 1974. Six months later, Derek Astin, 44, was met by a hooded intruder in his post office, near Accrington and after a struggle he was murdered. Then Sidney Grayland, 55, sub-postmaster in Langley, Worcestershire, was shot as he confronted the man in black. His wife, Peggy, was ferociously battered with a pistol and left for dead. The killer earned his nickname by always wearing a black hood.

  Before Lesley’s kidnapping, Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Dolby, leading the investigation into the postmaster killings, made clear at a press conference the brutality of the man-at-large: ‘My impression of this man is a person who is quite cold, utterly ruthless if he meets the slightest opposition at all. He is a man with no compunction about taking human life. Any member of the public who has any thoughts at all about having a go with this man, my advice to them is: DON’T. I REPEAT: DON’T.’

  It was now more urgent than ever that Lesley Whittle was found. Bob Booth was becoming increasingly anxious for her welfare: ‘In my heart I was convinced Lesley was living on borrowed time.’ There had been no contact from the Panther and so they decided to use the media again. Ron Whittle and Bob Booth agreed to be interviewed together on TV about the kidnapping: Ron began to describe his visit to Bathpool Park and Booth acted surprised, saying he knew nothing of the ransom run. The intention was to deceive the kidnapper into thinking that the police had not been involved until now. It gave them a legitimate reason to launch a thorough search of the area.

  The new search yielded many clues missed during the first inspection. Officers found tape near to a drain that read: ‘Drop suitcase into hole’. Then a torch that the message had been attached to was discovered, as well as a spanner used to unscrew bars on a drain. DC Philip Maskery was brought in to search the network of underground shafts at the park. A bolt had been loosened on one of the manhole covers and so colleagues lowered him into the dark shaft below. Descending the 60-ft ladder and using a torch to survey his surroundings, DC Maskery saw a notepad, pens, batteries and a tape recorder. Dropping down onto a platform, he found a sleeping bag and a foam mattress. Then he spotted a piece of clothing hanging off an iron girder. It was Lesley’s dressing gown. On the platform he saw a wire trail lead over the edge. He followed the wire, leant over to see where it went and came face-to-face with Lesley Whittle, dead and naked. She was hanging by a noose made from the wire and appeared to have been dead for a while.

  If the stolen car and Bathpool Park had been searched earlier, she might still have been found alive. Bob Booth was distraught: ‘I think she must have been absolutely terrified. Anyone would be, man or woman, let alone a teenager. To think that she could hear people walking above and she screamed with all her might for help and mercy, and nobody came to her rescue. It must have been a horrifying ordeal.’

  Around this time, a young couple contacted the police to say they were at Bathpool Park on the same night that Ron Whittle was there and they had seen a flashing light in front of their car and what they thought was a police vehicle. After hearing about the ransom run in the press, they quickly realised they had been caught in the middle o
f the operation. The abductor must have thought the couple’s car was Ron Whittle’s and then having seen the ‘police’ car, he panicked and quickly left. In his panic, he had returned to the shaft, where Lesley was hidden and pushed her over the platform edge to her death.

  Commander John Morrison was put in charge of the investigation. For months after Lesley’s body was found, the hunt went on and yet the Black Panther continued to elude the police. Then, on the bitterly cold winter’s night of 12 December 1975, two police officers, PC Tony White and PC Stuart McKenzie, were in their panda car in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and spotted a man acting suspiciously outside a sub-post office and stopped to question him. As they quizzed the man, he drew out a double-barrelled shotgun and pointed it at them, snarling: ‘Don’t move! Any tricks and you’re dead.’ He demanded they get back into the car, whereupon he sat in the passenger seat with the gun pressing into PC McKenzie’s ribs. The policeman was told to drive through deserted countryside to Blidworth, a village eight miles away.

  As they sped along the winding country roads, the gunman asked if they had any rope. PC White pretended to look and noticed that the shotgun was no longer pointing at his colleague. He seized his opportunity and pushed the gun upwards. As he did so, PC McKenzie slammed on the brakes, causing the car to swerve, and the gun to be fired through the roof of the car. PC McKenzie was thrown out of the driver door onto the road, while PC White grappled with the gunman.

  They were outside The Junction Chip Shop in Rainworth and four miners ran from the queue to assist. Locals attacked the suspect so ferociously that the police ended up having to protect him. The two constables handcuffed the battered and bruised gunman to railings.