Passing Notes PT 1
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This is exactly right.

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Hey, lovely listeners. My newest historical true crime book is now available. It's called The Sinners All Bow, One Murder, Two Authors, and the Real Hester Prynne. It's the real murder case that became the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. I'm reinvestigating the case alongside the nation's first true crime author, a woman who died 150 years ago. The Sinners All Bow is available now wherever you buy books.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved 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.

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Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. I have wanted to ask you something for a long time. You

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, to Small Town Dicks. Great show. One of your co-hosts is very, very famous. You know, Yardley Smith, who is Lisa Simpson and 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'm 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 Ullman show, you know? Back when they looked funny, I think, right? Yeah, you know, so that was 30-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 Yardley 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 Yardley, even with her celebrity status, is just so down to earth, 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, Small Town 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 how you and I are too, I think.

Oh, yeah. No. You know, and I think that that really is what helps drive a successful podcast is, you know, the co-hosts 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 with 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. She's a fan fan of Barry Bones, though, so that's good.

Yeah, she listens to Buried Bones. I think she's a fan of yours. So, you know, 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, what I think is a really complicated kidnapping case. Yeah.

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. And I feel, you know, we've covered kidnappings from all different sorts of decades. And we're going to be in the 1970s 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 requests 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 it was the male that was kidnapped. And I was really suspicious of him. Like he had staged his own abduction scene

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 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. Sure.

So this is 1975 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, oh, 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 to my kids. Don't dink 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 17-year-old girl, which is already, you know, my kids are almost 15. 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 is 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 17-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 luring 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, a petite 17-year-old girl. Her name is Leslie Whittle.

And she lives in Hyley, 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 Whittle, and he runs a sizable and successful bus company, coach company. In the United States, we'd say bus company.

When he died in 72, he left behind a fortune of 300,000 British pounds to his surviving family. This is, I'm going to convert things to American dollars, this is like just south of 5 million. I would say 4.5 million maybe dollars today. This includes his wife, Dorothy. She's in her 50s, and he has a son named Ron, who is in his early 30s. And then there's Leslie, who's 17. So she actually gets a partnership

portion that is substantial, 82,000, 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 17. 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 17-year-old who has about a million and a half dollars, today 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 is a 17-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 where offenders will force victims to withdraw from their bank, write checks. 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.

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Whittle home. Dorothy is wondering, so this is the mother, Dorothy wonders why Leslie hasn't come down for breakfast yet. It's 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 home's fireplace, which seems odd.

They look in this box of candy, and there are several messages created with a Dymo 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 50,000 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 Dymo 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 those. Okay. So let's start with the house.

You know, it's a big house. It's not 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 house 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 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 area.

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 how that ugly antenna is right there, 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 there.

or if that's one of their buildings. Yeah, you know, 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 an entrance. That would be what would be considered a front entrance. So the house looks like it has some size. It does appear that its visibility into the house is significant. These large windows, I'm not seeing curtains. It appears that at least with the windows that I can see, that there's plain view into the house.

And that would be a significant portion of the interior of the house that 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 on the other side of the house, then yes, I could easily see an offender coming in and abducting a petite 17-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. It's 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 this. I don't know if those are terracotta tiles.

Let me show you this message. So I don't know, you see where the chimney is, which is 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 Dymo document.

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...

with white letters, single strip, and it says, only after 50,000 pounds has been cleared will victim be released. So obviously this is a, in essence, a ransom note in a very unusual format.

I mean, obviously he doesn't want to do this with handwriting because at 75, 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. There's obviously more lines than just this one that they just wanted to 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 Dymo 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, I'm assuming it's investigators or 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 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 in the offender's home, you know, that's significant.

fingerprints, of course, could be recovered from this material. And in this day and age, 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 50,000 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 pay phones 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 10 to 15 miles away from where they are.

Once at the pay phone, 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 kidnapper's call will come sometime between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m. on this night, you know, that she's been kidnapped in January. There's another message printed on Dymo 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 many words. 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.

It is leveraging Leslie's safety for money. The use of the demo, I remember having to 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 messages.

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 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 that

And sometimes it's purposefully 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. Right.

But despite the threat, they always call the police. You know, despite the threat from the kidnappers, 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. Yeah.

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 loved one is abducted and now there's threat of that loved one's life, if you do notify authorities, you know, you kind of are, you 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 call 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 were 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 jacket. 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 issue.

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, a very wealthy, young teenage girl, an heiress. And she's

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 am 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 Ron around, you know, now that they know about it. And that may be why law enforcement is saying, OK, 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 Ron is going to. And that he has, I mean, the kidnapper said anywhere, I think he said like from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., 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, which

So Ron does not call. 1 a.m. passes. A few hours after that, in the very early hours of January 15th, there is a security guard named Gerald Smith. He's on shift at a rail yard in Dudley, which is about 25 miles east of Hiley. He's 44. And during his shift,

He sees a man driving around the property, and he approaches this guy who 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 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. 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.

So this is, in many ways, of course, law enforcement treated it as a standalone scene, a standalone case, and we know it's related to Leslie's abduction. 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 the shooting of this guard at this freight line yard. Okay.

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 14th 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. And 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 cognizant. 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 at 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 offender 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. Mom, you are to go to the Kids Grove 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, these telephone booths, they're somewhat spread out, right? You know, because they're standalone. You don't have like a cluster of these booths.

where you have a bunch of people, you know, like we'll see like banks of pay phones back in the day here in the United States. And so you have people that are just constantly flowing up to these pay phones. These telephone booths are standalone. And I would imagine that he's selecting telephone booths 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 a group that's involved with this? 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 is following instructions and doesn't appear that there's any law enforcement or any shenanigans going on on Dorothy's part? Right.

Well, let's continue on. They put a wire on him, which I'm not sure in 75, what do you think that would have been like? What's a wire from the police in 75? Well, you know, it would be a microphone that would feed into a recording device. And back in the 70s, likely some sort of cassette tape. And I'm not sure if this would have been, you know, the standard tape.

cassettes that we used to buy our music on or if they actually had micro cassettes 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-70s. Well, Ron must be petrified also. They put a wire on him, and he has to drive to this pay phone in Kids Grove as instructed. And according to the Stoke-on-Trent Live News website, this is 60 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 3 a.m.,

And then it takes him another half an hour to find the instructions behind this, you know, phone's backboard. When he finds them, 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

and turn into no entry. So I'm assuming the lane that says no entry. 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. 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. The 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 flashed.

That's what Ron thinks, but nothing happens when he does exactly what you 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 3 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 missing.

So this has become a mess with 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?

On one hand, 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 that one location with the telephone booth, well, I mean, yeah. You think about...

before Google Maps, and if he just has 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 kind of this wrong way road that they have Ron turn 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 tail 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 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 has 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 discreet sweep of

of Bathpole 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 discreet, 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

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, oh, law enforcement's here. And now, you know, Leslie could be killed and the offenders, you know, run off. So I can understand where...

using a more discreet option might be preferable, though obviously you can't be as thorough in any location. I just kind of question when they say discreet, you know, I'm

Is this where they just have a few people that are milling about and kind of knocking on some doors? Or 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 or 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 plain 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 discreet. They're scared. They don't know what they're doing. I don't know why, you know, Scott Linyard 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? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You know, and now this is where the general population nutjobs 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. Then family gets frustrated with how these things are turning out. 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 I have 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 search it eight days later and listen 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 Dymo 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, search the offender's car for eight days,

It's like, okay, either they really dropped the ball on that inexcusably, or is so much of 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.

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 17-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 the 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 kidnapper's 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, right now I'm just seeing a picture of what looks like an old-style four-door sedan that has the brand Morris on the front grille. 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 what? This is just, it's 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 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 evidence to identify the offender who's involved in the shooting, you know, from latent-print processing on and inside the car, latent-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-1970s. And is this car even registered to the person 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, Mom, go on to the M6 North to Junction 10 and on to the A545 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, um,

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,

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 here,

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 Gerald's crime scene where he has been shot to a series of violent robberies that include murders starting in 1974. 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 74. 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 they're 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 on

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 witness testimony 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's

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 latents 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 latents. I'm assuming...

either from the car or from objects that they collect out of the car 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 is. When you think about these robberies, robbery is typically a financially motivated crime. 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 on their routes, you know, but typically it's a financially motivated crime. And of course, this kidnapping of Leslie is a financially motivated crime, even though it's a very different type of financially motivated crime, but the fundamental motive is there, you know, and now you have fingerprints that are matching everything up. It's just, who is it? Who is this Black Panther? Right.

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 hope 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 was willing to kill Pryor.

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.com slash buriedbonessources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked: A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases is also available now.