I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years writing about true crime.
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a twenty first century lens.
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
This is buried Bones.
Hi, Kate, how are you?
I'm doing well. I have wanted to ask you something for a long time. You cheat on me with another show.
That's one way to put it.
He cheats on all of us. Although you guys listen, I'm sure too. It's a small town Dick's great show. One of your co hosts is very, very famous, you know, Yardley Smith, who is Lisa Simpson and it does many other things I know, but is best known for Lisa Simpson on The Simpsons, and so I have not met her in person yet, but I've sort of awestruck that you can even put together a sentence when you're doing
a crime show with Lisa Simpson. I mean, she is just Yardly to you because you say you're not like some massive Simpsons fan like I am.
No, you know, I watched a few episodes when it first came out, and that may have even been I think it was the Tracy Allman Show, you know.
Back when they looked funny. I think, right, yeah, you know.
So that is thirty plus years ago, and I never really followed it since. And then I met Yardley out in d C for a true crime conference and Yardly and then her now husband Dan and his twin brother Dave were to interview me on stage, and then that's when I got to know him, and obviously we just clicked, you know, Dan, Dave and I being law enforcement, and Yardly, even with her celebrity status, is just so down to
earth and you know. And so that has been a great part of my life to get to know them and eventually become part of the podcast Smalltown Dicks.
And I think you all have like a very easy way of having a conversation but still being professional. Everybody's professional there and being very serious. But I feel like it seems like you're all very comfortable with each other, which is which is you know, how you and I are too.
I think, oh, yeah, no, you know, and I think that that really is what helps drive is success podcast is you know, the co host being able to relate to each other just in a very natural, friendly way. I am not a listener of podcasts, but I could only imagine that if there's awkwardness between the co hosts, that that probably doesn't come off very well. And so, of course, you know, our listeners hear you and I and the great relationship we have. But also a small
town dicks, it's just a natural thing. You know. We of course record the episodes, but even if we get together and it's we're not recording, we're just, let's say, hanging out in a hot tub.
All right. That's good to know. Well, I am jealous, very jealous, because I am a huge Simpsons fan and I try to get my kiddos into the Simpsons also they get looped into the Halloween specials, and so I really admire her as an actress and as a voice actress, and I just think it's great. I'm super happy, and I hear she's a super fan, maybe not a super fan, and she's a fan fan of Buried Bones, so that's good.
Yeah, she listens to Buried Bones. I think she's a fan of yours. So you know, let's see if you've got some sort of mutual thing going on there.
Well, what a wonderful way to start an episode. I like to start on a you know, positive note here, because you know, we now are pivoting into a well, I think is a really complicated kidnapping case, and we've had those before. I mean, I just feel like the more kidnapping episodes we cover, the nuttier these people get and the requests that they make it And I feel like, you know, we've covered kidnappings from all all different sorts of decades and we're going to be in the nineteen
seventies in England for this one. But the requests from kidnappers just get stranger and stranger. So I always am fascinated about your reaction. You always have like a quizzical look on your face. I wish listeners could see it every time we talk about some of these weird us that the kidnappers make. So this will be a good one for you.
Yeah, you know. And I can remember we had the one episode where the mail that was kidnapped and I was really suspicious of him, like he had staged his own abduction and turned out to be very very wrong, you know. But I do remember some of the requests in that particular episode were so bizarre. I'm like, oh,
this this just doesn't sound right. Well it turns out it was right, you know, And so I'm kind of curious to see, you know, this case and what kind of requests the kidnappers are going to make.
Yeah, well, let's go ahead and set the scene. So this is nineteen seventy five England, and this is a big, big, big, big one. I mean, there's lots of evidence, I have good photos, there's lots to talk about. It's a double episode, too big. Once I saw the prep document, I thought, man, this is really big. So this will be a good episode for us to really dig into. I think the way that kidnappers work and what they're thinking when they do stuff like this, so we won't like, you know,
dink around with this. As I say, my kids don't think around like this. We're not going to dink around this is let me tell you who the victim is, which just already sets me on edge. It is a seventeen year old girl, which is already you know, my kids are almost fifteen, so that's already I'm already kind of on edge to begin with with a story about a teenager. She's very small, she's five foot tall, and
that kind of plays into this. I mean, what would you say, Paul, So she's if you have a kidnapping victim who's small, five feet it's just like you're going to assume that this is somebody who's not going to put up as much of a fight.
I guess, well, I wouldn't necessarily say that. I mean, you could in terms of putting up a fight versus being effective at the fight as probably how I differentiate that. Then, of course, when you start dealing with evaluating the victim who's five foot nothing, you know, sounds like a petite seventeen year old girl. And let's say the kidnapper is
a more robust male. Obviously, the male has a size and strength advantage, which gives that offender greater latitude in terms of how to conduct the abduction versus you know, is it an offender who's having to use charm and lowering the victim versus an offender who could literally pick this girl up, sling her over his shoulder and walk
her out to a vehicle. You know. So that's going to be part of As I hear the details, I'm going to be starting to assess, well, you know, how did the offender approach the victim and how was she abducted? Because that speaks volumes to certain attributes of the offender.
Okay, yeah, well here we go. This was a case recommended by a listener. Thank you listener. This involves, as I said at petit seventeen year old girl. Her name is Leslie Whittle and she lives in highly Shropshire hopefully I said that right, which is a village in the West Midlands of England. She has a very comfortable life. We are talking upper class because her father is a businessman.
His name is George Whittell, and he runs a sizable and successful bus company coach company in the United States, we'd say bus company. When he died in seventy two, he left behind a fortune of three hundred thousand British pounds to his surviving family. This is I'm going to convert things to American dollars. This is like just south of five million, I would say four and a half million maybe dollars today. This includes his wife, Dorothy, she's in her fifties, and he has a son named Ron
who is in his early thirties. And then there's Leslie who's seventeen. So she actually gets a portion that is substantial eighty two thousand, which is you know, about a million pounds now, which is you know, one and a half million dollars. I would say, So she gets us at seventeen. Here's the problem. It's widely reported that she got this inheritance in local newspapers. I've never understood this, you know, I mean, don't you think that would make her a target? And I'm not, like I said, I'm
not dinking around with this one. She's the target here. So a seventeen year old who has about a million and a half dollars to day dollars in an inheritance.
Well, I think just the family wealth is driving any of them to be a target her inheriting the money. Of course, maybe an offender would be evaluating this as a seventeen year old girl. Is there a way I can steal from her, rob from her if in an abduction situation, it's not unheard of her offenders will force victims to withdraw from their bank right checks, you know,
so this is a direct robbery of the victim's financial assets. However, in this scenario, there's greater assets with the other family members. And so now is Leslie when she gets abducted. Is the offender or offenders utilizing her safety as leverage to get access to the larger sums of money that the family has.
Let's see what happens. This family's worth a lot of money. And now the patriarch has gone, and there is a son who's in his thirties but not around. It doesn't sound like he lives somewhere else. And then Leslie. This is January fourteenth, nineteen seventy five, and we are at the Wittell home. Dorothy is wondering, so this is the mother. Dorothy wonders why Leslie hasn't come down for breakfast yet.
That morning, she goes upstairs to look for Leslie, but she's not in her bedroom and she doesn't seem to be anywhere in the house. Dorothy is really nervous. She calls to the adult son, Ron, who lives nearby, but her phone isn't working, so she rushes over to Ron's house and returns to her own house alongside him, and together they start looking for Leslie, but they don't find her. They do discover that what you probably have silently suspected that someone cut the phone lines to the house.
Okay.
They also find a box of candy that has been left in front of the homes fireplace, which seems odd. They look in this box of candy and there are several messages created with a Dimo label maker, which is a device that punches letters and numbers onto a plastic tape, like you know, I mean, I have a label maker
at home. Yeah, so this is a message, right, and the message demands a ransom of fifty thousand pounds for Leslie's safe return, which is quite a lot of money today, about a million, maybe a little less than a million American dollars. I have a photo of the house, and I have a photo of this Dimo label maker message. If you want to see those, or if you want to keep going.
No, I'll go ahead and take a look at this.
Okay, So let's start with the house. You know, it's a big house. It's as fancy as I thought it could be. But still, I mean, you know, it's a big house. What do you think.
Yeah, Well, when you're telling me that Leslie is not inside the how and that it appears that the offender or offenders left this box of candy with the message, you know, the first thing I thought about is okay, so even with Mom Dorothy inside the house, it sounds like the offenders somehow gained entry into the house and took Leslie without Mom hearing a thing. So now I'm looking at a photo of this house, and you know, in the foreground it appears that there this is a
photo taken during some sort of search. There are men, numerous men with dogs that are out. I'm assuming this is the front yard. It's you know, doesn't look like a traditional street. And directly behind the men with the dogs is a fairly tall hedge, is how I describe it. And then beyond that hedge is a two story house. What strikes me about at least this side of the house, and I can't tell if this is the front side or not, but there's very large windows all across this side of the house.
I would bet Paul, this is the back because look that ugly antenna is right there, yeah, you know, sticking up above. I would bet this is the back. And I also wonder if there's a building to the upper left or if that's one of their buildings.
Yeah, you know, the to the left of the house, I'm guessing that's maybe a garage, maybe a detached garage. I think you're right, you know, this is likely the back of the house. I'm not seeing anything even that suggests that there is a a an entrance, you know, that would be what would be considered a front entrance. So the house looks like it has some size. It does appear that it's a visibility into the house. Is it's significant, you know, these large windows. I'm not seeing curtains.
It appears that at least with the windows that I can see that there's plane view into the house, and that would be a significant portion of the interior of the house and an offender could see from the outside. You know, this is a wealthier family. I'm assuming that this house is something that is fitting with their lifestyle. So the size of the house definitely aids the offender. If Leslie, let's say she was last seen going into her bedroom or in her bedroom. And Mom's bedroom is,
you know, on the other side of the house. And yes, I could easily see an offender coming in and abducting a petit seventeen year old girl, keeping her quiet either by force or fear, and getting her outside of the house.
And it's just these two women. It's Dorothy and her daughter. So that's it in this house. You know you had mentioned this hedge. This is what I would call a privacy hedge, and it is substantial. I mean it's tall and taller than these men who are standing next to it. I don't know if there's a wire above it or something. It definitely looks like some kind of privacy like security. There's a gate there. But then you're right, I mean, the upper floors are completely exposed right below the I
don't know if those are terracotta tiles. But let me show you this message, so I don't know. You see where the chimney is, which was on the left hand side of the house. I don't know if Leslie's room is right above where the chimney is. And you know, whoever took her went downstairs and just sort of dropped this candy box on the ground, but this is what was inside. So this is it says, well, why don't you read it? Tell me what you think.
So this is a single strip of this dimo plastic you know, and I remember utilizing these in you know, when I was much younger. You know, the offender is having to rotate a wheel and then press on a handle that causes like a crimping aspect where the plastic where it gets crimped. Now it changes color in the shape of the letter. So this is a dark background with white letters, single strip, and it says only after fifty thousand pounds has been cleared will victim be released.
So obviously this is an essence a ransom note in a very unusual format.
I mean, obviously he doesn't want to do this with handwriting, because it's seventy five. Everybody knows that there's handwriting analysis. This is an odd choice, right, I mean, I've seen kidnappers do everything from you know, newspaper clippings to make
the letters, to obviously using a typewriter or computer. I don't know if this choice is going to be significant using a label maker, but this is certainly what he did, and there's obviously more lines than just this one that they just wanted to just show an example here.
Sure, well, you know, this is an offender who is trying to think about physical evidence, and so in the offender's mind, by utilizing this DIMO device to craft the ransom note, he's avoiding leaving physical evidence. However, he's not knowledgeable enough about how forensics can actually get a ton of evidence from this type of material. You know, of course we're seeing the investigator's hands, assuming it's investigators are
some you know, authorities, hands with no gloves on. You know, this plastic is a very good surface for latent prints. It's so narrow that you'd only get partial prints. But of course now we have some contamination from whoever bare fingers are showing here to kind of hold on to this strip, you know, But this this device, there may be characteristics that, due to the wear of this device previously being used, might be unique to this particular device.
The finding of the source material for this ransom you know, plastic, if you will, if it's with the device and the fender's home, you know that significant fingerprints, of course could be recovered from this material. And in this ana, it also would be a source of DNA, but you know, it informs me that the offender is trying in his mind to limit the amount of evidence that law enforcement can use to identify him or her.
Okay, So these are messages that demand a ransom as you had read, of fifty thousand pounds for Leslie's safe return, and they instruct a member of the family to go to a specific telephone box like the classic red payphones that you find, you know, in the United Kingdom, at the Swan shopping center later that night. So this is in a town, at a shopping center that's about ten
to fifteen miles away from where they are. Once at the payphone, the family member has to wait for a call from the kidnapper, who will then give further instructions that will culminate in a ransom drop and Leslie's release. So the kidnappers call will come so time between six pm and one am on this night. You know that she's been kidnapped in January. There's another message printed on dimo tape that the kidnapper says, you are on a time limit if police or tricks death. What do you
think so far? Besides he doesn't want to type too anymore, and he's losing. He's leaving out a lot of words in these messages. I guess that's what happens when you use a label maker as your ransom note generator.
Yeah. Well, I mean this is, right now, pretty prototypical language. You know. It is leveraging Leslie's safety for money, the use of the dimo. You know. I remember having to, you know, twist each letter for the word crimp it off, go to the next letter. It is a kind of a time consuming process to do, and that possibly contributes to the curtness, if you will, of the message. But the message is effective. It's not like it's leaving out
any clarity of what the intent is. And at least with the previous strip, it looked like all the words were spelled correctly, you know, so that might indicate something about the offender too.
Okay, so we're thinking this one might be of the range of offenders that we've had, this might be one of the more intelligent ones. I guess we're going to find out then, right, Well.
I want to go that far. At least it's not so because we've had some you know, ransom letters in which the grammar and the spelling of the words is just so poor, and sometimes it's purposely done as a form of staging, so the offender is making him look like somebody else that he's not, or it's just that the offender is just not very well educated.
So Ron and Dorothy, so the mother and the son are prepared, they're ready to pay this ransom. But despite the threat, they always call the police. You know, despite the threat from the capers, Ron decides he's going to call the police. And I'm never quite sure what the right answer is here, because we have never seen anything good come from calling the police in any of our ransom stories. But you know, Ron calls the police and
they start quietly working with the police. So what do you think about that it's always a good idea to call investigators. I'm assuming I.
Think, yeah, you know, I think in most instances, you know, to have the types of resources that authorities have in order to be able to investigate and monitor, you know, do surveillance. I think there's a greater ability with bringing law enforcement in right off the bat of being able to possibly catch the offenders prior to the loved one suffering harm or more harm. You know, it would be
a tough one though. You know, if your your loved one is abductive and now there's threat of that loved one's life if you do notify authorities, you know, you kind of are You've got to be second guessing. Well, how are the offenders monitoring me?
You know?
Could I do something that inadvertently I have no idea that the offenders would be able to find out, and now my loved one is hurt, so I can see where the dilemma is. My position would be is, yeah, I think it is more favorable to pull in law enforcement up front than to try to handle this situation just as a family.
Well that's what Ron wants to do. So they called the police. They start working with the family. The officers don't find very much physical evidence at all. They think that Leslie was basically taken right from her bedroom, and they said the only items that Dorothy say are missing from the room were Leslie's blue robe and her pair of slippers. It's the dead of winter, it's very very cold, so they said she didn't even have a She is not willingly leaving the house with a boyfriend or some
you know anything. She was taken. They really feel pretty strongly about that. There's no substantial clothing taken along. So once the police become involved, then the press becomes involved. And this is the big problem. And we've seen this with other stories too. There is a leak somewhere. Somebody is leaking in all of our stories. Somebody leaks to the press just hours after she's discovered missing. Paul, listen
to this. The BBC breaks in on the evening news because she's an heiress, very wealthy, young teenage girl, an heiress, and she is missing, and the BBC breaks in and the police freak out, as would anybody, and they say, this obviously is going to spook the kidnapper, and they call off the plan to have Ron wait at this designated payphone with the ransom money. So you know, the kidnappers had given him specific instructions, and the police say,
we're not going to do that. I'm not sure that's a great idea, But what do you think.
Yeah, I'm not sure why they would have him not do it unless the media got a hold of the information as to which telephone booth and that window of time that he was supposed to receive a phone call. I would imagine with the high profile nature of this family that now you know what we've seen over there in Britain with the paparazzi. You know, they're very, very aggressive.
So I imagine you possibly have media that's following we're on around you now that they know about it, and that maybe why law enforcement is saying, okay, hold on, you know, we can't have this. This just isn't going to work because the media is going to see what telephone booth we're on is going to and that he has I mean, the kidnappers said anywhere. I think he said like from six pm to one am, like some huge window of time that they might be calling within
that whole plan is shot. I'm now understanding why law enforcement would call this off.
Okay, so now we kind of have to deviate into a little bit of a different storyline that works with the main storyline. So Ron does not call one am passes A few hours after that, in the very early hours of January fifteenth, there is a security guard named Gerald Smith. He's on shift at a rail yard in Dudley, which is about twenty five miles east of highly He's forty four, and during his shift he sees a man driving around the property and he approaches this guy. He
doesn't belong here. It's unclear if at this point the man is in the vehicle or if he's outside of it, but Gerald confronts him, says, you're not supposed to be here, it's late, and he is shot six times. The gunman then flees on foot, leaving the car that he was driving behind, and I have a picture of that car.
It is related to this case. Gerald survives, He makes it back to his office and he calls for help, and the newspaper reports say that what the gunman wanted and why he acted with such ferocity when challenged is puzzling to police. And then they start searching for this, you know, countrywide hunt for this man. Of course, they're not quite connecting it. I know they're connected, but they're
not quite connecting this yet. So we have had some really dumb kidnappers, you know, where things have happened and it's they've been sort of not accidental, but they're kind of bumbling kidnappers. These are connected, and this is violent. So this is somebody who is using a gun and almost killed someone.
Well, I think it's you know, we're talking over there in Britain where there aren't a lot of guns. Right, of course, I'm kind of curious if the security guard got a description of the type of firearm, description of the offender who shot him. You said, you have a photograph of the car, you know, so this is in
many ways. Of course, you know, law enforcements treated it as a standalone seeing a standalone case and know it's related to Leslie's subduction, But there could be a lot of evidence that could help solve who this offender was in the security guard shooting.
I'll show you the car in a second, because I have a second photo that goes with the car that makes the connection for us between Leslie's kidnapping and this shooting of this guard at this freightline yard. Okay, so the kidnapper does not apparently know that the police are working with this family, so he connects with the family. So he kidnaps her on the fourteenth of January. Two days later, he gets in touch with the family with a phone call to her house. You know, he cut
their phone lines. We're assuming so I guess he thought they were getting him fixed. He calls Dorothy's house and instead, so listen to this instead of talking to the family. He when they pick up, he plays a tape recording of Leslie's voice, which must have just been terrifying. Sure, I'll tell you what she said, but you tell me what you think first.
Well. I think using the victim's voice in part is to try to convince the family that Leslie is still alive and is still cognisant. However, by using a tape recording, you know, that is something that could have been recorded earlier and Leslie could have suffered harm where she is no longer alive, you know, Yet the offender can utilize that recording to convince the family to move forward with the ransom aspect. Of course, you know, the offender is
also using Leslie's voice to pull out the heartstrings. You know. Okay, there's my loved one is on the other end, and I have to double down and get the money out so I can get Leslie back. Is probably part of
the reason to use her voice and the offender. By recording Leslie as opposed to having Leslie just talk on the phone, the defender has absolute control over what is said over that phone call, versus Leslie blurting something out that the offender doesn't want blurted out during let's say a live phone call.
Well, this is terrifying, I'm sure to her mother. This is what the taped message says in Leslie's voice, Mum, you are to go to the Kidsgrove Post office telephone box. That's another town. The instructions are inside behind the backboard. I'm okay, but there's to be no police and no tricks. Okay. And he plays it twice. So what do you think about that?
It's completely in line with the first instructions that had been left that weren't followed through on. This appears to be a process that the offender has got worked out in his head that he's comfortable with. And I wonder, you know, the these telephone booth they have a they're somewhat spread out, right, you know, because they're they're standalone.
You don't have like a cluster of these where you have a bunch of people, you know, like we'll see like banks of payphones back in the day here in the United States, and so you have people that are just constantly flowing up to these payphones. These telephone booths are stand alone, and I would imagine that he's selecting telephone boosts that he can observe without being seen himself, just to see is let's say Dorothy alone and if it's not him, you know, do we have do we
have a group that's involved with this? Is is there a member of the group that would be able to observe this telephone booth from afar and see and evaluate whether or not Dorothy's following instructions and doesn't appear that there's any law enforcement or any any shenanigans going on on Dorothy's.
Part, Well, let's continue on. They put a wae him, which I'm not sure in seventy five, what do you think that would have been, Like, what's a wire from the police in seventy five, Well.
You know, it would be a microphone that would feed into a recording device. And back in the seventies, likely some sort of cassette tape. And I'm not sure if this would have been you know, the standard size cassettes that we used to buy our music on, or they actually had microcassettes. You know that they could at least have a smaller device on there, but I don't think they had anything more sophisticated than that. In the mid seventies.
Well, Ron must be petrified. Also, they put a wire on him and he has to drive to this payphone in kids Grove as instructed and according to the Stoke on Trent Live news website, this is sixty miles away. Police discreetly, I mean discreetly. I have no idea if they're really doing that. They discreetly follow him as he goes along and Ron gets lost. He doesn't get there until three am, and then it takes him another half an hour to find the instructions behind this you know,
phones backboard. When he finds him, he's directed to another location. It's a really pretty spot in Bathpool Park and the kidnapper leaves this message for Ron. So he finds this message. Go to the top of the lane and turn into no entry, so I'm assuming the lane that says no intrigue. Go to the wall and flashlights. Look for torch. Run to torch. Further instructions on torch is a flashlight in the UK. Ron is totally confused by this and I'll just stop here. He does not know and it's not
just you. Ron is also confused by this message.
Yeah I'm not sure. So Ron is to drive basically down this what we would say here in the United States, you know, wrong way road, and then come to a dead end and flash his headlights. If flashlights would be signaling him back by being turned on and off, I mean, that's kind of what I gathered, but then there would be further instructions after those flashlights.
That's what Ron thinks. But nothing happens when he does exactly what she just said. He doesn't see one. He's very frustrated, and after about an hour of flashing his lights and waiting for a signal, which I mean, I know he's in a more isolated area, but flashing your lights at three in the morning is going to get somebody's attention. No response. He says that he gets out of the car. The police watch him do this, and
he screams, this is Ron Whittle. Is anybody there? And nobody responds smartly, He eventually leaves without dropping the ransom money or obviously finding Leslie. So this has become a mess, what the police involved and this kidnapper, These kidnappers who don't know what they're doing obviously, I mean, they're making it difficult for him to find the message in the phone booth to begin with, and then they leave behind a confusing message. It's like cloak and Dagger, but sort
of the stupid version. I guess.
Well, that's kind of what I'm debating in my head is you know, how incompetent are these kidnappers? You know, on one hand, you know, the way that they are having Ron take these steps obviously is they're not getting what they're after. The money isn't showing up because they're making it too hard, and Ron getting lost on the
way to you know that one location with the telephone booth. Well, I mean, yeah, you know, you think about before Google Maps and if he had just as a paper map, and you know the types of roads that are out there in England. You know, I think it would be expected that he would struggle to find the right location. However, you know, something that I'm chewing on is this this kind of this wrong way road that they have Ron turned down. Was this a counter surveillance move that they're doing?
You know? Was the configuration of where Ron had to drive to get to that road and then go onto that road such that if there had been you know, law enforcement somewhat tailing him from Afar, that it would kind of expose that that tale was present, that there was some active surveillance of Ron occurring by law enforcement, you know. So that would tend to suggest that the offenders are are thinking, Okay, hold on, we got we got some issues with this whole kidnapping and the ransom demands.
What is going on with the family, Let's do something to see if we can expose is law enforcement involved or not?
Yeah, and this is turned into a nightmare. I feel like the police are making questionable decisions. Let me tell you what they do next, and you tell me what you think. So they feel like this place, Bathpool Park, where they were directed, is a hotspot. They feel like Leslie could be here or there is a big clue here. They were drawn here and the police have a discussion with the family, and the police decide they're going to do a discrete sweep of Bathpool Park the next morning.
So this is probably four hours, seven maybe five hours after the family goes home. They don't find anything useful. So when we say discrete, we mean they are not doing a full on search, you know, for this young woman in the park. They are concerned that a big, high profile operation like that would make the kidnapper aware of their involvement. On the other hand, if she's there and alive, wouldn't a full scale search maybe find her.
We would discover her, you know, I think, you know, if it is a full scale search, the concern would be they don't know where she's at. They make their presence obvious. Now the offenders have the advantage going up law enforcements here, and now you know, Leslie could be killed and the offenders you know, run off. So I can understand where using a more discrete option might be preferable, though obviously you can't be as thorough in any location.
I just kind of question when they say discrete, you know, I is this you know, where they just have a few people that are milling about and kind of you know, knocking on some doors. Are we talking about full blown spy versus spy where now you have what appears to be utility work going on with men in uniforms, and they're having to notify all the neighbors, Hey, we're about to shut down your electrical or your phone lines, whatever else.
And now they can actually be much more aggressive in terms of thoroughness by contacting all these places because they're using a full blown ruse that might throw off the offenders from suspecting this is a law enforcement operation.
Let's go with option number one, okay, which is men in playing clothes, probably with sticks, poking around at bushes. I do not think that is the kind of operation that this police force is unfortunately operating under, because you know, they are trying to be discreete they're scared. They don't know what they're doing. I don't know why. You know, Scotland Yard or someone bigger is not involved. But let's
keep going. So Dorothy and Ron are really really, of course upset, and they're getting desperate, so they turn to the media, hoping to issue a plea to the kidnappers directly. Unfortunately, what happens is, you know, they say, of course we've got you know, we've got ransom money here for you. What ends up happening is scammers and hoaxers and they are derailed because of this situation. And I know you're nodding your head. And that is the risk with going to the media sometimes, isn't it.
No, Yeah, you know, And now this is where the general population nut jobs who want to have some notoriety because they inserted themselves into the investigation just can cause this case to go off the complete rails, you know.
You know, the complexity in this case, of course, is early on the media got a hold of this, and now, you know, law enforcement is trying to work behind the scenes without alerting the media of what their operations are and work with the family, and then family gets frustrated with however, how these things are turning out, and now it's just like, okay, you know, poor Leslie. At this point, I think the killers, you know, this is where they
should be cutting bait and running. You know, they just either leave Leslie or probably kill her to eliminate her as a witness and get the hell out of Dodge.
Basically, well, that's not what happens with these guys. So let's move forward. We're going to go back to Gerald Smith, poor Gerald who was shot. So no idea why this is happening, I guess you know, they have not made this connection yet between the man who shot Gerald Smith the guard at the railroad yard. They have not made that connection yet. They have not searched this stolen car that had been abandoned. The man who shot Gerald had a car there. They finally searched it eight days later,
and listened to what they found. There's a gun that was used to shoot Gerald, There's a box of bullets, a foam mattress, a flashlight, several unused Dimo labels, a tape recorder with cassettes, and her parents confirmed Leslie's slippers. So now they've made the connection eight days later, and I have photos of the car and of the tape recorder.
Is this the same law enforcement jurisdiction handling both Leslie's abduction as well as this shooting.
That's the impression I'm getting.
Yes, Okay, yeah, I'm surprised, you know, I mean, especially in Britain, when you have a shooting of a security guard, I would have thought that that would be a high priority case. And they don't pursue the evidence, you know,
search the offender's car for eight days. It's like, Okay, either they really drop the ball on that inexcusably, or is so much law enforcement resources being tied up with Leslie's abduction that they don't have the manpower to do some of what should be timely and routine tasks in the investigation of the security guard shooting.
And keep in mind, this is not London, I mean, and this is not a major city. This is a series of small towns with I don't know how experienced these folks are. I'm not reading the description Scotland yard anywhere on this document, so you know this is not as sophisticated I think as we think it could be, or we wish it could be.
Yeah, and that's my guess. And I mean both types of cases, the abduction of a seventeen year old girl and a shooting, particularly a shooting in Britain, these are cases that would be probably once in a career for most of these investigators for this small department, So you know, they may be just kind of fumbling around because they've never experienced anything any one of these cases at a time, let alone both of these types of cases. Kind of concurrently.
Let me show you the car. It's kind of a cool little car. So there's the kidnappers car. It's stolen. You know, he left it there, He shot the guard and left it there. We don't know why he was at this railway yard to begin with. We don't know.
Okay, well I'm you know right now, I'm just seeing a picture of a looks like an old style four doors at Anne that has the brand Morris on the front grill. I just see the headlights, the bumper, the windshield, The windows are rolled up. I was half expecting to see some damage from bullets passing out of the vehicle at the security guard. So maybe you know, a window was down or the door was open. I don't know, you know, but this is just its nondescript to me.
It just looks like a car that's just sitting, you know, in a parking lot.
Yeah. So here down here is the tape recorder. You'll probably recognize this type of tape recorder.
I had one pretty close to that, you know, when I was younger.
This does date you, yes, So this is.
A photograph of a standard cassette player from from back in the day. Yeah. I can't tell if there's a cassette in there. Maybe there is a cassette. Yeah, in fact, I think there is a cassette in that photograph, but I'm not entirely sure, you know. So, this obviously would be how they could record Leslie's voice to say that message and then replay it several times during the phone call. Yep, obviously they found, you know, evidence that's tying this car
to the abduction. But I mean in terms of the evidents to identify the offender who's involved in the shooting, you know, from Layton print processing on and inside the car, Layton print processing on that cassette recorder. You know, there's scores of evidence, you know that could be pursued, you know, using the technologies of the mid nineteen seventies. And is this car even registered to the person that's that abducted Leslie or is it a stolen vehicle?
Yeah, I mean, this is really it gets so convoluted. Now you know why this is a double episode. I have a confusing thing piece of evidence here. Remember I told you there are cassettes in this car, So they did not discover anything inside this car until eight days after Gerald was shot. They find the cassettes in the car. The cassettes play more messages in Leslie's voice, which instruct the family to head to a specific payphone in another
English town. One says this, please, Mum, go onto the M six north to junction ten and onto the A five four five towards Walsall instructions are taped under the shelf of a telephone box. There's no need to worry, Mom, I'm okay. I got a bit wet, but I'm quite dry now. I'm being treated very well. Okay. So one, I need your reaction to the reassurance he's obviously trying to make her say to her mother. But number two, I'm not quite sure what the point of these cassettes
are because they're laying. I know they were recorded, they're laying in this car. They haven't been delivered. These are undelivered instructions essentially.
Well, it sounds like the offenders had several different plans depending on the circumstances that they were going to be confronted with as the days went on. So they had Leslie pre record Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, whatever it was, and then implemented one of those plans with the actual phone call with Leslie's voice telling Dorothy, this is what I want you to do now right now.
Of course, we don't know why they chose that particular plan over the others, but this gives me a little bit of concern, you know, I know Leslie's voice is saying that she's being treated well. That only she got a little bit wet, which I'm assuming is during the abduction. Maybe it was raining that night or something. No, it
was winter, Okay, yeah, January. But to record these plans, all these plans ahead of time and right now, maybe I'm exaggerating in terms of the number of plans that they recorded, But are they capturing Leslie's voice because their plan was that she was going to be dead very shortly afterwards. You know, That's where I'm getting a little bit concerned about that.
Well, there's even more to be concerned about. So there are some fingerprints that they are able to match from Jerald's crime scene where he has been shot, to a series of violent robberies that include murders starting in nineteen seventy four. These are all postal workers. These are all murders that were connected, like I said, through fingerprints and
some ballistics. They said, so the last postal worker who was murdered, robbed and murdered was killed in November of seventy four, and that's just two months before Leslie was kidnapped. So these are really, I mean, it sounds like just like awful violent robberies. And because these have all been nearly identical and there are at different locations across the country, the investigators believe the perpetrator is the same man they're just they all feel the same, and of course now
they have these fingerprints. He's eventually dubbed the Black Panther by the press because of his knack for wearing all black, including a you know, like a head covering that covers you know, his entire head except from two eye holes, and witnesses he says he moves very swiftly during the robberies.
You know, the press loves a good moniker. So the bottom line is now the main suspect here, who's connected to the car, who's connected to Gerald, who is still in critical condition but awake, connected to the kidnapping of Leslie. All of these surround this one man that they've dubbed the Black Panther.
Yeah, so they're finding Layton's from these various robbery scenes and homicide scenes of postal workers that they are able to interconnect. They don't know who this man is, this black Panther man. And then now with the security guard shooting, they get latens I'm assuming either from the car or from objects that they collect out of the car that have that they're able to connect to these prior robberies and homicides of the postal workers. So now black Panther
is suspect number one. They just don't know who black panther there is. When you think about these robberies, you know, robbery is typically a financially motivated crime, you know, And why go after postal workers? Are you going after you know, paychecks that are in the mail? Are you going after other items of value that these postal workers would have had in on their routes?
You know?
But typically it's a financially motivated crime, and of course this kidnapping if Leslie, is a financially motivated crime, even though it's a it's a very different type of financially motivated crime, but the fundamental motive is there, you know. And now you have you have fingerprints that are are matching everything up.
Yep.
It's just who is it? Who is this black panther?
That's what we're going to have to find out next week, Paul, Who is it? And where is Leslie? Where is she? What happened? Does he ever make a connection with the family. Again, Ron and Dorothy are just beside themselves. The police are not doing a great job. It sounds like I things are going to get better, but we're going to have to find out next week.
Yeah, things are not looking good for Leslie because you have the black panther who is willing to kill prior is he willing to kill her? So I will wait and hear the rest of the story.
Okay, I'll be back with you in a week.
Sounds good.
This has been an exactly right production for our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Barry Bones Pod.
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of and the race to decote the criminal mind, is available now
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold Cases is also available now