For the past seven years, the family of Paula Leeson have fought to prove she was murdered by her husband, a serial liar and convicted fraudster who they dubbed ‘the devil incarnate’.
And today a High Court judge ruled the Walter Mitty conman had unlawfully killed her – in an attempt to pocket her £4.4million from insurance policies.
As the only daughter of Willy Leeson, who founded a multi-million pound civil engineering business in Manchester after leaving his native Ireland in the 1960s, she was known for her financial prudence and simple tastes.
Responsible for handling invoices at the family firm – which she and her brother Neville stood to inherit – her modest pleasures were a weekly visit to the hairdresser with her mother Betty then a trip to the shops.
But her life was to be transformed when she was introduced to a stocky New Zealand-born self-proclaimed property developer going by the name Donald McPherson via a client of her family’s firm.
‘Serial liar’ Donald McPherson, 50, unlawfully killed his wife, a judge today ruled
Heiress Paula Leeson died in 2017 and was found in a swimming pool in Denmark
Paula died in a swimming pool at a remote holiday chalet in Denmark (pictured) in 2017
Despite the fact that his 47-year-old wife ‘hated’ swimming and preferred city breaks, in 2017 McPherson booked them a property with an indoor pool (pictured) in a remote part of Denmark, Manchester Crown Court heard
After a ‘whirlwind’ romance, they married at Peckforton Castle – a stately pile set in rolling Cheshire countryside – in 2014 in what a court would later hear was ‘a grand affair’ with ‘no expense was spared’.
While a ‘besotted’ Ms Leeson’s family were out in force after swallowing their suspicions about him, no relatives of McPherson attended the ceremony.
This he variously put down to being an orphan or growing up in a foster home – just some of his many lies.
The couple bought a three-bedroom detached house in the comfortable Manchester suburb of Sale – later worth £650,000 – just around the corner from her parents’ house, a gated £1million property.
However his lavish lifestyle soon began to arouse suspicion – falsely claiming to be doing up his properties while paying in cash for flying lessons, and running up thousands of pounds in debts.
Unbeknown to his wife, he had taken out insurance policies worth £3.2million on her life – in addition to trust funds worth £800,000 and joint money and property worth £506,000 from which he also stood to benefit.
Despite the fact that his 47-year-old wife ‘hated’ swimming and preferred city breaks, in 2017 McPherson – by now £65,000 in debt – booked them a property with an indoor pool in a remote part of Denmark.
Before leaving for the trip, Ms Leeson – who was in robust health – told her family she wasn’t even planning on buying a swimming costume.
But on the day they were due to fly home, McPherson called an ambulance, saying he had found his wife’s lifeless, fully-clothed, body in the 4ft deep water.
Paula’s elderly father Willy Leeson outside Manchester Civil Justice Centre today
Brother Neville, who long campaigned for justice for Paula, was seen today, too
Neville (left) and Willy (right) were inside with Paula’s son Ben when the judgement was given
Paula’s brother and dad, pictured in 2021, have been fighting for years to prove her death wasn’t an accident
A paramedic called to the scene in Nørre Nebel on June 6, 2017, was surprised to see McPherson’s ‘very bad’ efforts at resuscitating her, Manchester Crown Court was told.
After breaking the devastating news to her horrified family in an ‘unemotional’ phone call, McPherson checked into a hotel, where he began transferring around £20,000 out of a joint account operated by his wife.
He finished the evening by ‘tucking into’ a steak dinner, a murder trial would later hear, also joining online support group Widowed and Young which the jury heard he later referred to as ‘like a Tinder for widows’.
Willy Leeson was convinced that his daughter had been murdered by her shady husband as soon as he heard the tragic news, saying: ‘He’s killed her, he’s killed her, 비아그라 정품 he’s killed her.’
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Wealthy heiress found dead in pool was unlawfully killed by her husband, High Court judge rules
After her body was returned to England, her brother Neville viewed the body along with Mr McPherson – and said he was shocked to see ‘a big black mark on her head’.
He asked the mortuary assistant if it could have come from the post mortem – ‘She said no, you don’t bruise when you’ve died.’
He was also able to examine her phone after successfully guessing the passcode – and discovered that photographs and messages from the trip had mysteriously been deleted.
A pathologist in Denmark concluded she had drowned accidentally – despite 13 injuries being found on her body including bruises and grazes to her head, arms and legs.
As a result the case was closed by the Danish authorities.
But Greater Manchester Police began their own investigation and McPherson was charged with his wife’s murder.
However halfway through a trial at Manchester Crown Court in March 2021, in a rare legal move, Mr Justice Goose directed jurors to find him not guilty.
He explained that he had no choice because the prosecution had been unable to disprove his claim that her death had been an accident – but in a sensational intervention, the judge made it plain that it was ‘clearly more likely’ that the serial liar had killed her.
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In court, Willy Leeson could not contain his anger.
Looking across to the dock he shouted: ‘Shame on you Don!’
Then, directing his fury at the judge, Miss Leeson’s brother Neville shouted: ‘God Almighty. You are making a big mistake.’
For 비아그라 정품 his part, after being cleared, McPherson insisted his wife’s death had been ‘a tragic accident’ and said it ‘saddens me, deeply’ that he was suspected of involvement.
Following the dramatic outcome, a Daily Mail investigation made a string of discoveries about the past of the man Paula Leeson knew as Donald McPherson but who was born Alexander Lamb.
Unbeknown to the jury in his murder trial, he had adopted the name under which he was to marry after being jailed over a £12million bank fraud in Germany in 2006.
At that stage he was calling himself Donald Somers.
In addition, his previous wife Ira Kulppi died along with their four-year-old daughter during a mysterious fire while he was behind bars.
On July 24, 2006, police found the bodies of Miss Kulppi and her daughter, with investigators concluding that the 35-year-old mother deliberately started a fire.
This was all kept secret from Ms Leeson and her family.
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Heiress found dead in a Danish swimming pool was drowned by her convicted fraudster husband 비아그라 구입 to cash in on £4million insurance pay-outs, court hears
Neville Leeson later told the Mail people should be given a legal right to know if a new partner has a serious criminal past under a previous identity.
‘If we had known his identity and his past, Paula would have run a mile,’ he said.
‘She would still be alive now.’
He said the family had been ‘destroyed a second time’ when the judge stopped the trial.
The court has heard McPherson being described as a ‘Walter Mitty’, ‘who had changed his name multiple times, had 32 convictions spanning 15 years in three countries, and whose previous wife and their child died in a house fire.
After moving into an apartment in Manchester, McPherson later returned to New Zealand before moving to the South Pacific where he is said to be sailing around and leading a ‘nomadic’ lifestyle.
Meanwhile the Leeson family turned to the civil courts in a bid to prevent McPherson from cashing in on Paula’s death.
At the High Court in London they last year successfully challenged a coroner’s ruling that a forthcoming inquest should only focus on the time the couple spent in Denmark.
Senior judges ruled it was an ‘impermissibly narrow’ approach and that the ‘scope’ should be extended.
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The Leeson family hope that the hearing – for which a date has yet to be fixed – will conclude that Ms Leeson was unlawfully killed after examining his deceit in taking out life insurance policies worth millions.
They also took a separate High Court claim asking a judge to rule that she had been unlawfully killed by her husband.
In April, Lesley Anderson, KC, for the family, told a judge in Manchester that Mr McPherson was ‘a morally corrupt individual’ who had planned to kill Ms Leeson ‘almost from the minute he met her’.
Far from being the property developer he posed as, Mr McPherson was £65,000 in debt – yet he managed to maintain monthly repayments on the life insurance policies totalling almost £500-a-month in the run-up to his wife’s death.
This ‘deterioration of his finances’ plus the ‘assiduous amassing of insurance policies’ – not to mention allegedly forging her will to benefit him – provided ‘a compelling motive for the unlawful killing of Paula by him,’ Ms Anderson argued.
By 2017 he was ‘running out of options to fund his extravagant lifestyle without Paula’s largesse’, she said.
McPherson did not attend court and was not legally represented after failing in an attempt to have the claim struck out.
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In his statement to the trial, her son Ben, 36, said he didn’t think his mother owned a swimming costume and ‘didn’t like getting wet’.
He said he was surprised when he learnt she and McPherson had booked a holiday to a remote part of Denmark as she preferred city breaks.
Ben – who along with his mother worked for the family firm – said McPherson’s behaviour when he returned to England was ‘strange’, recalling that he ‘wasn’t crying’ and ‘seemed neutral’.
On visiting their marital home to collect some of his mother’s possessions, he noticed a list of insurance policies on a worktop.
In his own statement, Ms Leeson’s brother Neville said that on learning of her death, their father Willy, 81, began shouting: ‘He’s killed her.’
Asked by Mr Justice Richard Smith why he had brought the case, Willy Leeson said: ‘So he just doesn’t benefit from my daughter’s death – a financial benefit.’
Giving evidence, Neville Leeson, 49, recalled how after his sister’s death he correctly guessed the passcode to her mobile phone.
He found all the photographs she had taken in Denmark had been moved to the ‘deleted’ folder the day after her death.
‘I thought this was very strange,’ he said.
‘The only person who had Paula’s phone was Mr McPherson.
‘I couldn’t understand why would he delete Paula’s last photos he had before she died.’
After not ‘getting any answers’ from the Danish authorities he contacted police in Manchester about his suspicions.
A cleaner who visited the house shortly after her death found opened packet of Viagra and empty champagne bottles.
She also noticed bedding stuffed behind the headboard of the spare bed – Karen Mairs said she suspected this had been done to stop it banging against the wall.
She was ‘was very shocked by this and suspected that Donald had been sleeping with someone’.
Her suspicions were heightened when McPherson accidentally sent her husband a photograph at 2am showing a ‘fancy champagne bucket with a nice looking bottle of champagne in it’, she said in her evidence.
Born Alexander Lang, McPherson changed his name multiple times and amassed 32 convictions spanning 15 years in three countries, the trial heard.
Concluding her argument, Ms Anderson said: ‘This was planned almost from the minute he met Paula.’
And today, following hearings earlier this year, Mr Justice Richard Smith on Friday ruled McPherson had killed his wife.
Giving his ruling he said: ‘Don deliberately and unlawfully killed Paula by compressing her neck in an arm lock rendering her unconscious and causing her body to enter the pool to ensure her drowning and death.
‘Don’s motive for unlawfully killing Paula Leeson is clear: money.’
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