Fraudster 'planned killing' of heiress - lawyer

Paula Leeson died after drowning during a Danish holiday

A convicted fraudster planned the killing of a wealthy heiress "almost the minute" after meeting her, a court has heard.

Paula Leeson, 47, from Sale, was found to have 13 injuries after she was discovered in the pool at the Denmark holiday property she was visiting with her husband Donald McPherson in 2017.

McPherson was cleared of her murder in 2021.

But Ms Leeson's family wants a judge to rule he unlawfully killed her.

He would then forfeit any legal entitlement to her will and estate, worth £4.4 million.

The family has now brought legal proceedings against McPherson at Manchester Civil Courts of Justice.

Ms Leeson, who was 5ft 5in tall, drowned in the pool that was less than 4ft deep.

But she could swim and was an otherwise healthy mother-of-one, the court heard.

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

They want a judge to rule, using the civil standard of a balance of probabilities, that McPherson unlawfully killed her by choking her unconscious and drowning her in the swimming pool.

'Tinder for widows'

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

He told police he woke to find Ms Leeson face down in the holiday cottage pool on 6 June 2017.

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

Soon after, he cleared their Sale home of Ms Leeson's possessions and joined a bereavement group called Widowed And Young, which he described as "Tinder for widows".

"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 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 extraordinary 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."

Paula Leeson was discovered in the pool at a holiday property in Denmark

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.

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

McPherson was 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.

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.

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

'A tragic accident'

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 was 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.