Wealthy heiress ‘killed by husband’ in plot to cash in on £3.5m insurance pay-out, court hears

A wealthy heiress was killed by her husband in a plot to claim £3.5m in secret life insurance policies planned “almost the minute” they met, a court heard.

Convicted fraudster Donald McPherson, 50, was found not guilty of the murder of his wife Paula Leeson, 47, on a judge’s direction to the jury halfway through his trial in 2021.

Ms Leeson, who was set to inherit her father’s ground working business with her brother, drowned in a swimming pool while staying at a holiday cottage with McPherson in remote western Denmark.

McPherson had told police he awoke to find Ms Leeson face down in the shallow pool.

The judge in the trial ruled that despite circumstantial evidence, a jury could not be sure to the criminal standard – beyond reasonable doubt – that he had killed her.

But since then, Ms Leeson’s family has brought civil legal proceedings, asking a judge to rule he unlawfully killed her so he forfeits any legal entitlement to benefiting from his late wife’s will and estate, worth £4.4m.

McPherson had taken out multiple secret life insurance policies on his wife before her death, worth £3.5 million.

“The defendant is a morally corrupt individual and that dishonesty permeates every aspect of this case,” Lesley Anderson KC, representing the Leeson family, said in her closing speech following a four-week hearing Ms Leeson’s family at Manchester Civil Courts of Justice.

“In our case, this was a plan almost the minute he met Paula. The defendant went about setting up policies with indecent haste.

“He killed her because of the significant motive of the insurance policies.

“This case is extra-ordinary because the defendant lies to almost everybody in this case.

“All of the facts, taken together, make it substantially more likely that he killed Paula.”

Ms Anderson said McPherson, despite running out of money, was paying around £500 a month on insurance policies.

Ms Leeson, who was 5ft 5in tall, drowned in the pool that was less than 4ft deep, though she could swim and was an otherwise healthy mother-of-one.

Lawyers for the Leeson family argue to save herself from drowning she could simply have stood up, so must have been choked before being put into the water unconscious.

The couple wed at a no-expense-spared ceremony at a Cheshire castle in 2014 after a “whirlwind romance”.

Born Alexander James Lang and originally from New Zealand, McPherson met Ms Leeson in 2013, using a “cover story” of being an orphan to hide his past after serving jail time for an £11 million bank fraud in Germany, the court heard.

He claimed to be a property developer and Ms Leeson oversaw the skip hire part of her family’s successful ground-working business her father Willy, 80, had built up in Sale, Greater Manchester, after emigrating from County Wicklow, Ireland, in the 1960s.

Ms Leeson and her brother Neville stood to inherit the business.

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.

McPherson told police he awoke to find Ms Leeson face down in the shallow swimming pool at a holiday cottage in remote western Denmark he had booked for the couple, on June 6 2017.

Her death was initially treated as a tragic accident by the Danish authorities – though she had suffered 13 separate external injuries.

Within hours he was transferring thousands of pounds from her accounts to cover his debts, the court heard.

Soon after, McPherson cleared their home in Sale of his late wife’s possessions and joined a bereavement group, Widowed And Young – that he called “Tinder for widows.”

He was later arrested in the UK as police looked into his financial background.

McPherson has always denied any involvement in his wife’s death and after he was acquitted of murder, in a statement through his solicitors, described it as a “tragic accident”.

His lawyers had argued Ms Leeson’s injuries could be a result of her rescue from the pool and resuscitation attempts and pathologists could not rule out that she could have fainted or accidentally fallen into the pool and drowned.

McPherson contests the Leesons’ court application but is not present or legally represented at the hearing, and is believed to be living somewhere in the South Pacific.

Mr Justice Richard Smith is expected to rule on the Leesons’ application later this year.