A man accused of killing his heiress wife to claim £3.5 million on her life insurance told lies “beyond Walter Mitty territory” and has 32 convictions in three different countries, a court was told.
The family of Paula Leeson, 47, has accused her husband, Donald McPherson, of an “acquisitive killing” after she was found dead in a Danish swimming pool in 2017.
McPherson, 50, was found not guilty of murder halfway through his trial in 2021 after a British judge told jurors that the prosecution was not able to disprove his defence that Leeson drowned in an accident.
• Heiress drowned, husband’s murder trial was halted — but we’ll never give up, say family
However despite McPherson having been cleared of murder, Leeson’s family has brought civil legal proceedings against the man they have accused of demonstrating a “consistent pattern of dishonesty”.
At a hearing beginning this week before a judge at the Manchester Civil Justice Centre, lawyers for Leeson’s family asked for a ruling that McPherson was unlawfully responsible for his wife’s death by drowning.
If they succeed, McPherson will forfeit any legal entitlement to benefit from her will and estate, which is said to be worth £4.4 million.
The court was told on Tuesday that McPherson had changed his name multiple times, had 32 convictions spanning 15 years in three countries and that his previous wife and their child had died in a house fire.
McPherson was said to have taken out £3.5 million in “secret” life insurance policies on Leeson.
Representing Leeson’s family, Lesley Anderson KC, told the court that what had happened in Denmark was “an acquisitive killing”.
She said the “systematic setting up of policies was deliberate” and had been in McPherson’s mind since 2013.
She said McPherson had a history of telling lies that “goes beyond Walter Mitty territory” and demonstrated “a consistent pattern of dishonesty in furtherance of a financially acquisitive objective and to protect himself when he needs to”.
After his wife’s death, McPherson told police that he awoke to find her face down in the shallow swimming pool at their holiday cottage in a remote area of western Denmark.
The mother of one, who was 5ft5ins tall, healthy and able to swim, drowned in the pool that was less than 4ft deep.
Lawyers for her family argued that Leeson could have saved herself from drowning by simply standing up in the pool — and therefore must have been choked before being put into the water unconscious.
Anderson told the court that data from a health app showed both Leeson and McPherson moving around in the period leading up to her death.
The court was told that McPherson had previously claimed that the couple had spent the day sleeping and had not done anything except pack their suitcases.
Anderson said that the health app “shows [Leeson] and the defendant walking about” and “is not consistent with her or both of them being in bed”.
The court heard a telephone call between McPherson and the emergency services.
Anderson said that the “the suggestion in that call was that [Leeson] was still breathing”, which she said was “inconsistent” with the health app data.
The legal team also told the court that on the day after Leeson’s death, McPherson began taking significant sums from her bank accounts to clear his debts. Several days later he also joined Widowed and Young, a group described as “Tinder for widows”.
In the first week of the case, which is expected to last 20 days, Anderson set out details of McPherson’s past, including his involvement in a multi-million pound fraud.
He had lied on his CV to land jobs trading equities in banking, she said, including at Citibank in London.
In 2005, McPherson was arrested in Australia and extradited to Germany, where he was jailed for three years after admitting involvement in an £11.8 million fraud against Commerzbank, with McPherson standing to gain a cut of £2.5 million.
In 2006 police came to his German prison cell to tell him his common-law wife and three-year-old daughter had died in a fire in Australia, which McPherson said was the result of a criminal blackmail plot against him.
McPherson was born Alexander James Lang in New Zealand. The lawyer for Leeson’s family said that he met her in 2013, using a “cover story” of being an orphan to hide his past.
The court was also told that the month after Leeson died, McPherson sent emails under another name saying he was planning a sailing trip.
Anderson said: “He wanted to circumnavigate the world. He didn’t want to be found.”
McPherson was not present at court in Manchester and is believed to be living in the South Pacific.
Last week, Leeson’s brother, Neville, told The Times that her family would “never give up” their fight for justice.
The hearing continues.