DONALD Neilson, the serial killer known as the Black Panther, died yesterday after being taken from Norwich Prison to hospital with breathing difficulties, prison sources said.

Neilson, who murdered heiress Lesley Whittle in 1975 and also shot dead three sub-postmasters - including Donald Skepper in Harrogate, North Yorkshire - during armed robberies, in 2008 applied for the setting of a minimum jail term that would have given him a chance of parole.

But Mr Justice Teare, sitting in London, announced that Neilson's whole life tariff must remain.