To many outside of North East England the name wont mean much but to me like many the name still haunts Tyne & Wear.
On a spring afternoon 11-year-old Wesley went out on his bike, like thousands of other little boys did every day.
But the youngster was never to return to his Newcastle home on June 5, 1998.
Instead he was lured to his death by twisted paedophile Dominic McKilligan.
Its now possible that his killer after 20 years could be freed after a life sentence.
When in 1998 a child was murdered, shockwaves reputed through Tyne&Wear even with a distance Between Newcastle & Sunderland people we were in panic
It was a quick result compared to the Sunderland serial killer..
However Dominic McKilligan is a cold blooded child murderer
We hope this sick twisted sex offender is never allowed to roam the streets again.
Family’s horror as evil child killer Dominic McKilligan could be released from jail this month.
Dominic McKilligan lured 11-year-old Wesley Neailey to a derelict garage near his home in the Arthur’s Hill area of Newcastle
Evil child killer Dominic McKilligan could be set free this month.
Wesley Neailey was just 11 when he was snatched by the twisted pervert, who then killed his victim and dumped his body.
McKilligan was jailed for life after being convicted of the 1998 murder, which sent shockwaves of fear across Tyneside.
But now after serving the 20 year minimum term of his sentence, the killer has applied for parole.
And Wesley’s family have been warned he is likely to be released this July
His mum Liz told of her fears McKilligan could strike again.
The 53-year-old said: “This has come out of the blue for us. I don’t want him out.
“I don’t want another family going through what we went through. He’s not the type that can change. He is a monster.”
Fun-loving schoolboy Wesley vanished from near his home, on Croydon Road in Arthur’s Hill, Newcastle, on June 5, 1998.
At first Liz thought her son might have just run into some friends.
But as darkness fell she knew something dreadful must have happened to him.
“I had a horrible feeling straight away,” said Liz.
“At first I thought he was just playing out with his friends and had lost track of time.
At first Liz thought her son might have just run into some friends.
But as darkness fell she knew something dreadful must have happened to him.
“I had a horrible feeling straight away,” said Liz.
“At first I thought he was just playing out with his friends and had lost track of time.
“But when it started getting dark I knew something was the matter because he wouldn’t put us through that.”
However, Wesley was initially treated as a missing person. In the days that followed Newcastle West End’s community, who knew Wesley well, came together to search for him.
Posters were put up in the windows of homes and shops. And the Sunday Sun even staged a reconstruction of Wesley’s last movements.
Meanwhile Liz, who feared her boy had been abducted, became more and more frustrated.
“The police had him down as a ‘runaway’ and this, that and the other. And they thought he was working himself,” said Liz.
“I was told by a young policeman that I was being an ‘over-anxious’ mother’. But I knew my son. We were a very close knit family. I relive those conversations all the time now.
“My hopes started to fade after two days, but I was praying he was still alive.
“The police had it wrong from the beginning, saying that he was a runaway. That was doing our heads in.
It wasn’t until 21 days that we got a senior officer on the case and things started picking up.”
Tragically though it was all too late as it would be revealed that Wesley was dead within hours of disappearing.
Detectives began to focus their attentions on Dominic McKilligan, an 18-year-old convicted sex offender from Bournemouth who had been housed in Newcastle after being held at Aycliffe Young People’s Centre in Durham.
When officers searched his flat on Fenham’s WingroveRoad they found a torn-up cheque for £150 made out to Wesley.
McKilligan told police a number of stories in a bid to cover his tracks.
However, he eventually took police to a remote spot in Healey, in the Tyne Valley, where he had dumped Wesley’s body. The schoolboy had been strangled.
On July 23, 1999, a jury at Newcastle Crown Court took just two hours 50 minutes to find McKilligan guilty of murder and rape at the end of a three-week trial.
He was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years.
However, McKilligan later successfully appealed his rape conviction meaning that he will not be on the sex offenders’ register following his release.
Liz was visited by a victim’s liaison officer last month who told her McKilligan had now applied for parole and had a hearing scheduled for July 6.
The devastated mum-of-two was warned that if successful the killer would be released on July 21.
And the thought of her son’s murderer walking the streets fills Liz with dread.
“Twenty years isn’t a punishment for what he has done,” she said.
“The victim’s officer said he’s done his time for his crime and that he’s got a good chance of getting out.
“How many strikes has he got to have. He shouldn’t get a second chance for that. He should spend the rest of his life in jail. But he has been cunning all his life. He’s probably working the system.
“He knows what I look like and what my family looks like, but I don’t know what he looks like now. She said he could come back round here. I could walk past him in the street and not know.
“I more or less said; ‘Who’s going to take the blame if he does it again. I have talked to the community and they have said we will start a petition. They said ‘there’s no way he can get out’.”
“What annoys me is he’s not going to be on the sex offenders’ register, so he’s still going to be very dangerous. But he’s still a young man. He can start his life over.”
McKilligan’s vile actions have destroyed Liz’s life and that of her second son, Robert.
“It doesn’t feel like 20 years ago. It just feels like yesterday,” she said.
“There’s not a day goes by I don’t think about him. As soon as I open my eyes he’s there. And there have been many times I have just wanted to give up. I just relive it everyday.
“Wesley was just fun-loving. He could see no harm in anybody. The whole community stood out for his funeral because he helped a lot of refugees.
“He was really good at fixing things. He would find old vacuum cleaners mend them and give them to them.
“He wanted to join the army, but he was epileptic. I always think about what he would have been like now. I just think he would have been a gentle giant.”
Robert, 24, said: “I can’t remember anything before being seven-years-old. I can’t remember my brother. I have never had a childhood.”
And Liz added: “I kept him in. I wouldn’t let him out. I don’t ever let Robert out my sight even when he goes out now I’m on the phone constantly. He hasn’t had a childhood.”
Child killer Dominic McKilligan will not be released if he still poses a risk to children
Parole Board has vowed to make safety the ‘number one priority’ when looking at case of Wesley Nealey’s murderer.
Public safety will be the ‘number one priority’ when the parole board decides whether child killer Dominic McKilligan is released.
The board has vowed that the murderer will not be released if he is still thought to pose a risk to children, after Wesley’s mum told how she feared he may strike again.
McKilligan who snatched and killed Newcastle schoolboy Wesley Neailey 20 years ago, was jailed for life.
But the Chronicle revealed in May that he had applied for parole.
Today a spokeswoman for the parole board said they were still examining evidence in a bid to determine whether or not McKilligan is safe for release.
She said: “We can confirm the parole review of Mr Dominic McKilligan has been referred to the Parole Board and is following standard processes.
“The job of the Parole Board is to determine if someone would represent a significant risk to the public after release. The panel will carefully look at a whole range of evidence, including details of the original evidence and any evidence of behaviour change. We do that with great care and public safety is our number one priority.”
Wesley’s mum Liz has written an impassioned victim impact statement in a bid to prevent McKilligan from walking free.The 53-year-old said: “I’m still praying it won’t go his way. Who will take responsibility if he does it again. It’s not going to bring my son back, but if it can save other people’s children I think Wesley would want that.”
Fun-loving schoolboy Wesley vanished from near his home, on Croydon Road in Arthur’s Hill, Newcastle, on June 5, 1998.
But as darkness fell she knew something dreadful must have happened to him.
Wesley was initially treated as a missing person.
In the days that followed Newcastle West End’s community, who knew Wesley well, came together to search for him.
Posters were put up in the windows of homes and shops. And the Sunday Sun even staged a reconstruction of Wesley’s last movements.
Tragically though it was all too late as it would be revealed that Wesley was dead within hours of disappearing.
Detectives began to focus their attentions on McKilligan, an 18-year-old convicted sex offender from #Bournemouth who had been housed in Newcastle after being held at Aycliffe Young People’s Centre in #Durham.
When officers searched his flat on #Fenham’s #WingroveRoad they found a torn up cheque for £150 made out to Wesley.
McKilligan told police a number of stories in a bid to cover his tracks.
However, he eventually took police to a remote spot in Healey, in the TyneValley near Hexham, where he had dumped strangled Wesley’s body.
On July 23 1999, a jury at Newcastle Crown Court took just two hours 50 minutes to find McKilligan guilty of murder and rape at the end of a three-week trial.
He was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years. However, McKilligan later successfully appealed his rape conviction meaning he will not be on the sex offenders’ register following his release.
Retired detective, Trevor Fordy, who lead the murder investigation also told the Chronicle of his fears over McKilligan’s release.
And The detective who put child killer Dominic McKilligan behind bars has revealed fears over his possible release.
It has now been 20 years since the calculating paedophile lured schoolboy Wesley Neailey off the Newcastle streets and strangled him.
Now, after serving the minimum term of his life sentence McKilligan has applied for parole and is set to learn his fate following a hearing, due to take place early next month.
The former detective, who led the investigation into McKilligan’s heinous crime, has told of his hope that the killer will remain behind bars.
Lifting the lid on one of the most difficult inquiries of his 34 year police career, retired Northumbria officer Trevor Fordy has revealed how McKilligan is one of the most dangerous killers he encountered.
The 68-year-old said: “I have never met anyone like this man before. I had dealings with lots of murderers, but I had never met anyone like that, and I had come across some very dangerous people.
“I’m not an expert, but I don’t think he is someone who could be rehabilitated.”
Wesley was just 11-years-old when he vanished from near his home, on Croydon Road in Arthur’s Hill, after going out on his bike.
Police initially treated Wesley as a missing person – despite his tender years.
In the days that followed Newcastle West End’s community, who knew Wesley well, came together to search for him and posters were put up in the windows of homes and shops.
As attempts to find the boy proved fruitless, Northumbria Police put experienced murder detective Trevor on the case.
“I wasn’t initially involved because it was classed as a missing person inquiry,” Trevor explained. “I was just asked to have a look at it and give an opinion as to what I thought.
“The police had been inundated with sightings of Wesley, if I remember rightly there were something up to 100 sightings of Wesley, many by people who knew him.”
Despite the number of people reporting seeing Wesley alive, Trevor feared the worst.
“I had been an SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) dealing with suspicious deaths and homicides for seven years,” Trevor explained. “The over-riding thing from my perspective is usually you are confronted with someone seriously injured who subsequently dies, or a body. Then thereafter you meet the family briefly. However, on this occasion it was the opposite way around. I got to know the family for something like a month before we had confirmed it was a homicide.
“Obviously we had all these sightings, but I spent quite a bit of time with the family members and they were saying he was so attached to his bike that he rarely let it out his sight and it had been found abandoned.
“I then proceeded to interview all the people who had apparently sighted him. Many of them were school pals and they maintained their position so I took it upon myself to go and see them one by one myself and they gradually withdrew their sightings.
“In fairness to the family, because he hadn’t come home, I think they expected something untoward had happened. They were a very close-knit family.”
s hope that Wesley would be brought home alive began to fade, police began looking into potential suspects in the area. McKilligan, an 18-year-old convicted sex offender from Bournemouth who had been housed in Newcastle, became of particular interest to Trevor.
“There was a lot of people in the frame because information was coming in about sex offenders all over the West End of Newcastle,” the former top cop explained. “There was a hostel somewhere in the West End dealing with sex offenders and paedophiles. Then a social worker from the Blyth area put McKilligan’s name into the mix. He was just one of many.
“However, I was able to determine he was one of them that actually put a sighting in, notwithstanding the fact he was saying he didn’t know Wesley, he said he recognised him and he had seen him. That was important to me and we set about looking at him.
“I had casually driven past his house on Wingrove Road and saw him cleaning his car outside, but that was the nearest I had got to him at this point.
“I reviewed his apparent sighting and decided to bring him in for questioning. I was given a hard time by his solicitor who suggested we were picking on him because of his past. “He denied any knowledge of Wesley. He was quite confident and extremely plausible.
“I don’t know what it was but I just felt something about him, so I decided to take his clothes for a forensic examination and to have his house examined.
“There was no evidence to charge him but I took over the house where he lived and we put surveillance on him. While he was under surveillance he went out and bought some razor blades and some aspirin and put false plates on his car.
“I didn’t want to take the chance of what he was going to do. I thought he was either going to abduct somebody else or take his own life, so we arrested him again.”
During searches of the Fenham property officers found a torn up cheque for £150 made out to Wesley.
But McKilligan continued to tell police a number of stories in a bid to cover his tracks.
“He was calm and collected to the point of being arrogant,” said Trevor. “He actually said he had filled out a number of blank cheques and someone else had written Wesley’s name on, but I was able to match the ink and the hand-writing.”
The killer then told police he had in fact abducted Wesley, but claimed he had handed the little boy over to other paedophiles and that he was still alive.
Trevor and his team decided they could not take any chances and had to act quickly if there was a possibility the boy’s life could be changed.
“He was playing with us. That changed the complexion of the inquiry all together,” said Trevor. “The recovery of Wesley alive became the priority over the conviction of the suspect.
“He was very convincing, but he was playing with us. He’s a liar, but he’s very very convincing. It was his whole demeanour, there was no remorse whatsoever.”
“It was a bit like a psychological thriller like you would see on the telly, but you don’t often get that in real life.”
Sadly, just days after McKilligan made his sensational claims the killer took Trevor to the remote spot where he had dumped strangled Wesley’s body in Healey, in the Tyne Valley near Hexham.
Trevor, who was a Detective Superintendent when he retired in 2001, says he will never forget the moment he saw that Wesley was dead.
“He took me to the spot, he pointed me to the location where Wesley was,” he said. “It was totally the reverse to what I had been used to. When I came back I think McKilligan realised I was quite upset.
I had got to know the family really well. I had to go back and tell them that we had found Wesley and that was really difficult. I was still hoping he would be found alive.”
On July 23 1999, a jury at Newcastle Crown Court took just two hours 50 minutes to find McKilligan guilty of murder and rape at the end of a three-week trial.
He was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years. However, McKilligan later successfully appealed his rape conviction meaning he will not be on the sex offenders’ register following his release.
Liz, 53, was visited by a victim liaison officer in April who told her McKilligan had now applied for parole and had a hearing scheduled for July 6.
The devastated mum-of-two was warned that, if successful, the killer would be released on July 21.
And Trevor says, from what he knows of McKilligan, the prospect of the killer being released is a frightening one.
“The big issue for me is that while on remand he had been assessed by a number of psychology experts in the field of paedophiles. I got a telephone call from a well-known expert. They were able to assess his psychopathic nature on a scale and he was at the top or towards the top of the scale,” he said.
“During the course of the trial I was contacted by an expert who had been party to all this who said that his offending hadn’t reached a crescendo and that he was more dangerous now, and if he was acquitted he could go on and commit more serious crimes.”