- A Kiwi man with multiple identities has lost a civil trial where he was accused of murdering his wife so he could cash in on multiple insurance policies.
- Born Alex Lang of Takapuna, the former Westlake Boys student was known as Donald McPherson to Paula’s family, who say it’s a “huge relief” to know her sister’s suspected killer would not benefit from any of her 14 insurance policies.
- Journalist David Fisher studied the evidence and interviewed witnesses for this 2022 investigation, updated and republished now as he has been found to have unlawfully killed UK heiress wife Paula Leeson.
Have you seen Alex Lang? Or Donald McPherson, as he was known when he stood trial in an English courtroom for the murder of his wife, Paula Leeson.
Paula's brother Neville Leeson wants to know if the man he knew as McPherson really is in New Zealand.
The last heard of McPherson was just before Christmas 2021 at a hearing leading up to the inquest into Paula’s death. McPherson didn’t turn up to court. Instead, he said through his lawyer he had returned to New Zealand and would testify at the inquest hearings by video link.
For Neville, it's a promise from a man who has lied so often. If he keeps that promise, perhaps Paula's family will finally get answers about the events leading up to her death.
“I don’t know where he is,” he tells the Herald from Greater Manchester.
"I have no idea at all."
He claims you “can’t believe a word,” McPherson says.
Paula died in June 2017 during a weekend break with McPherson from Manchester to Denmark.
Danish police wrote it off as a tragic holiday accident but Neville Leeson suspected something was awry.
Those suspicions led to the discovery that messages and photographs from the holiday had been deleted from Paula’s phone and then detectives from Greater Manchester Police digging into McPherson’s life.
They found he wasn’t the orphaned foster child from New Zealand he had claimed to be.
Instead, he was Alex Lang, born in Takapuna in 1973, then growing up on Auckland's North Shore with his parents and two sisters.
Since then, he has adopted at least five other identities, had 27 convictions for dishonesty in New Zealand and a jail term in Germany for embezzlement worth around $35m.
They also discovered that ahead of the trip to Denmark with Paula Leeson, his wife of three years, he took out more than a dozen insurance policies - some with forged signatures - putting him in line for a $7m payout from the death of his wife.
"We can't ever get over what has happened," Neville says.
"You can't live with it, can you? But we have to try and live with it."
"I don't understand how people like him are allowed to walk around free."
McPherson was charged with murder in April 2020 and went on trial a year later in the Crown Court at Manchester. When the prosecution case closed, the judge hearing the case aborted the case.
He did so saying McPherson had likely murdered Paula but the evidence wouldn't allow a jury to find beyond reasonable doubt that he was the killer.
“It just doesn’t seem right,” says Neville. “Paula can’t appeal her sentence – she’s dead now. It doesn’t seem fair at all.”
The story police were told
On June 3, 2017, McPherson and Paula travelled to Denmark for a short, early summer break. Flying out from Manchester to Copenhagen, they had a three-and-a-half-hour drive across Denmark to the coastal tourist town of Norre Nebel and two nights at a country cottage.
It was a holiday location at odds with what Paula’s family knew of her – she could swim but wasn’t keen on water, avoiding the beach and swimming pools. The cottage had an indoor swimming pool, albeit one that was barely four feet (1.2m) deep.
Paula died on June 6, the day the couple were due to fly back to Manchester. McPherson's only formal account of what transpired that day was given to Danish police.
By his account, he put their packed suitcases in the rental car ready for the drive to the airport, then had a swim. Paula hadn't been well that day, he told Danish police. She had been sick, he said, using the toilet next to the swimming pool, and had spoken of a stomach ache and toothache. McPherson said he had been tired so returned to the bedroom to sleep, where he was joined by his unwell wife.
McPherson said he woke alone, went looking for Paula and found her face down in the swimming pool, fully clothed and not moving. McPherson described jumping into the pool, trying and failing to lift Paula out. She was heavier and taller than he was, he said, and he suffered pain from an injury to his right shoulder.
McPherson described leaving Paula in the pool to seek help at two neighbouring properties, finding no one home so returning to again try to pull Paula from the pool.
This time he was successful. With Paula out of the pool, he called emergency services and followed instructions on performing CPR while waiting for paramedics. Attempts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful.
McPherson rang Neville to break the news. Danish police closed the case, ruling the death accidental drowning.
In the months and years following Paula’s death, the Leesons learned of McPherson’s descent into a financial hole following his marriage to Paula in June 2014. And they learned Paula’s life was heavily, repeatedly insured – with questions over the authenticity of signatures on the documents.
By now they discovered there was something very wrong about the man they had welcomed into their family.
The trial that fell apart
As the prosecution case drew to an end, McPherson's lawyer John Ryder QC zeroed in on a key weakness.
The case, Ryder said, was one of circumstantial evidence. The exception was the pathologist's report, and that wasn't going to help the Crown.
At the time of Paula's death, Danish pathologist Professor Peter Leth had recorded Paula's death as "accidental".
He later told the court: "The cause of death was, in my opinion, drowning. We found water in her lungs and she was found in the swimming pool. Also, we did not find any other causes of death."
Leth recorded 13 injuries to Paula’s body – three bruises or abrasions to her face, six to her arms and hands and another three to the legs. There was also evidence of internal bleeding to the back of Paula’s neck.
"We found that there were more lesions than we would normally see, but there may have been injuries caused in the resuscitation," Leth testified.
After Manchester police began investigating, Leth discovered the pool wasn't six feet deep, as he had believed, but four feet deep. He learned, too, of the circumstantial evidence police would come to rely on. The "accidental" finding was changed to one of "undetermined".
In court, he would say: "Violence inflicted by another person cannot be completely ruled out."
But there was simply no certainty. Under cross-examination, he conceded the bruising on Paula’s arms could have been to restrain her – or in the attempt to save her. The same could be said of injuries to her chest and neck. None of the injuries was serious, and none consistent with a fight or struggle. She could have fainted and fallen, he said.
Justice Julian Goose said the “accidental” theory of Paula’s death was possible – although less likely. The evidence, he said, held out two possibilities. The first, that McPherson had held Paula under the pool surface, or done something, that meant she drowned. Or it could be that her death was a terrible accident.
"Whilst the first of those alternatives is clearly more likely, that does not mean that a jury, on the face of the pathological evidence alone, could be sure of it."
Under law, he explained, the prosecution had to prove Paula's death was not an accident and the evidence wasn't able to dismiss that possibility. The weight of the circumstantial evidence would not be enough, Goose told the court. At best, "it only makes it less likely that the deceased died by accidental drowning".
Goose dismissed the case. Paula's family was stunned. "Oh God. Oh God. Unbelievable," cried her dad, Willy Leeson, as her mother Betty was overcome with tears.
Neville shouted across the courtroom: "God Almighty. You are making a big mistake."
The man Paula loved
McPherson came into Leeson's life after meeting a builder in Egypt who did business with the family's civil engineering firm outside Manchester. It was a connection he picked up after moving to Sale, a town inside the Greater Manchester boundaries, where the Leeson family had settled after moving from Ireland in the 1960s.
McPherson set about buying, renovating then selling properties. By the time he and Paula married, he had eight properties worth $1.8m – a portfolio that was actually heavily mortgaged.
It was said to be a whirlwind romance. Paula, who had a son, had never married and fell head over heels for the New Zealander.
"He wanted to marry her within a few months of meeting her," says Neville. It was so quick, he says her parents asked her to wait before marrying.
Paula heeded her parents’ wishes and waited for a year. “Family is important – she wouldn’t do anything to upset them in any way.”
When they did marry, it was a glamorous wedding paid for by the Leesons and held at the grand Peckforton Castle, near the village of Peckforton, Cheshire. While the close-knit family packed out the bride's side of the church, there was no one present from McPherson's family, in line with his false story of being an orphan who was fostered.
Their married life reflected the closeness of the Leeson family. The couple bought a house around the corner from her parents. Almost every Sunday, Paula would cook dinner for the family, who gathered at the couple’s home.
"Paula was devoted to him," says Neville. "Paula wanted him to be accepted by us. She brought him into the family." And yet, he recalls McPherson as distant and disconnected. "He never got involved, just sat there and said nothing." Attempts to draw him into conversation elicited "one-word answers".
Despite being heavily overdrawn, McPherson spent $34,000 on flying lessons to get his private pilot's licence. The court heard testimony from a friend of McPherson's of how he would pretend to be working on a property if Paula called while he was at the flying school. "He would get a call and play his drill and say, 'I'm just in the loft Paula, I will ring you back,'" the witness told the court.
McPherson also set about securing his financial future in the event Paula died. When Justice Goose summarised the circumstantial evidence of McPherson's guilt, it showed the accused had obtained a "disproportionate level of life insurance".
In the three years before Paula died, McPherson bought seven life insurance policies, paying around $1000 a month despite sinking deeper into debt.
Evidence, he said, had shown that McPherson had insured his and Paula's life for "substantial amounts which the deceased appears to have been unaware of".
While McPherson claimed she was aware of the policies, worth more than $7m, they were never mentioned in Paula's handwritten statements of assets in the event of her death, all of which were intended for her son.
McPherson also increased the life insurance cover, said Goose, by lying about owning five properties in New Zealand. The web of circumstantial evidence also included McPherson's repeated checks with the insurers that the joint life policies would see the money go to whoever survived the other. Also part of the picture, said Goose, was McPherson directing some of the insurance documents to one of his properties, rather than the home he shared with Paula, "apparently in an attempt to hide them from the deceased".
Goose also detailed how some of the life policies - and Paula's second will in 2014 - had false witness signatures, although some bore Paula's actual signature.
One witness during the case was shown documents that would have seen about $1.5m diverted from Paula's son to McPherson. Examining the documents, she told the court: "I can categorically state this is not my signature and not my handwriting, I have no knowledge of ever having been asked to complete this."
As McPherson’s financial situation worsened, the court heard he lied to his financial adviser about the scale of the mortgages on his properties in order to get more life insurance. And when filling out forms for life and travel insurance, he lied when answering questions about whether he had other, similar, policies.
The court also heard McPherson, ahead of the trip to Denmark, got two travel insurance policies and changed his bank account to qualify for free travel cover. It meant when the couple took off for their short break, Paula's life was covered by an additional three insurance policies.
For the Leesons, there were few - if any - surprises watching this play out in court. It was Neville Leeson's suspicions that led to the police investigation and the detectives working on the case had kept the family briefed.
“You just can’t comprehend it,” says Neville. “To find this is the monster Paula married – it’s very hard to come to terms with.”
He has no doubt what would have happened had she known the truth. "Paula wouldn't have gone within a mile of what he was."
Who was Donald McPherson?
Donald McPherson was born in Takapuna, Auckland in June 1973 to Laurie and Pamela Lang. He was no orphan but the youngest of three children and a sought-after boy following two girls.
One relative didn't hold back when asked what he was like, expressing the opinion he was "a total shit, from the day he was born".
It was his arrival that, according to the relative, skewed the family dynamic so much that within 20 years he was gone and the family spread across Australia.
"He became the golden child. Before then [one of his sisters] held the princess role but Alex became the golden boy. He couldn't do one thing wrong."
By the relative's account, his mother doted on the boy and overlooked matters that might spur other parents to act. An example that stuck with her was Alex burning the newspapers he was meant to deliver.
He sold himself well, the relative recalls, offering gardening services around the neighbourhood. "He would get paid first and never do the work."
His mother would proudly boast of his capabilities – how he applied to Nasa aged 12 and delved into the sharemarket when he turned 13. There was a brief spell at Rosmini College before three years at Westlake Boys High. The school magazine has no record of him in seventh form and his family doesn’t recall him pursuing tertiary education.
At some stage between 1990 and 1996, Lang/McPherson accrued 27 dishonesty charges. He then headed overseas, first to Australia then onward to Europe.
By 2000, McPherson was in Germany under the name Donald Somers, working at Commerzbank, a major German bank based in Frankfurt. It was there he played a key but minor role as one of two inside men who fraudulently transferred about $35m from the bank.
The money wasn’t discovered missing for a year, by which time McPherson and his accomplice had left the bank. And it took years for German authorities to track him down – and even longer to find the money.
McPherson was extradited from Cairns, Australia in 2005 where he was living with his wife, Ira Kulppi, and their 3-year-old daughter, Natalie. A year later, as he was serving a 39-month prison sentence, Kulppi and Natalie died after a fire in the family home.
Detectives investigating the fire were spurred by McPherson to investigate the possibility of murder. His fear, he told police, was that their deaths were linked to the bank fraud. The answer was simpler and sadder. Just over a year after Somers was extradited, Kulppi started the fire that killed her and their daughter, an inquest found.
By the time Somers was released and returned to New Zealand, authorities were still trying to trace and recover the embezzled funds. Court documents show the money had its own extraordinary story, passing through tax havens into the hands of and ultimately winding up with an English estate agent arrested over allegations of involvement in an international cocaine smuggling ring.
None of the money appears to have travelled with Somers, who was sent back to New Zealand from Germany. “You appear to me to be someone who lives by your fraudulent and criminal acts,” the Southland Times recorded Somers being told by the judge when he appeared for a $6000 fraud.
That was 2009. A year later he was in Egypt, by which time he had changed his name from Donald Somers. Other names used over the years include Alexander Long, Alan Atkins and Rob Jones.
Now, though, he was Donald McPherson, the man Paula Leeson would fall in love with.
Searching for justice
"He came across as the innocent husband," says Neville of McPherson's dealings with Danish police.
"Can you believe a woman was found where Paula was and they never once questioned who he was or his background?"
If they had, he says, they would have learned enough to treat the house as a crime scene.
In Neville’s opinion, the place and time of his sister’s death were part of a plan. “He chose Denmark as a backwater in the middle of nowhere. It’s got the lowest murder rate in the world. There’s no experience in dealing with murders.”
During the murder trial, the court heard evidence of how McPherson left Danish police, broke the news to Neville, then drove to a hotel where he ordered a large steak dinner and began transferring thousands of pounds out of their joint account.
Before returning to Manchester, McPherson applied to join a support group called Widowed and Young. A witness at the case later testified McPherson called it "a Tinder for widows". Then at the trial, it was claimed he had formed a new relationship four months after Paula's death.
McPherson remained adamant Paula's death was an accident, and that she knew of the insurance policies which were in place to cover his mortgage debts. At the conclusion of the aborted murder trial, McPherson issued a statement through his lawyer Shaun Draycott in which he described Paula's death as a "terrible accident".
"A tragic accident is what it was and it saddens me, deeply, that the events in question should ever have been seen differently and that I was ever suspected of playing a part in Paula's death."
Requests to Draycott by the Herald for confirmation McPherson is in New Zealand, and to be able to speak with him went unanswered. In the new case before the courts in 2024, McPherson was not present in court and his whereabouts remain unknown.
In the ruling, delivered at the High Court in Manchester last week, Justice Richard Smith said the businesswoman had been unlawfully killed by her husband. This will block McPherson from inheriting her estate.
After hearings earlier this year, Justice Richard Smith ruled last Friday local time that McPherson had killed his wife.
Giving his ruling, he said: “Don deliberately and unlawfully killed Paula by compressing her neck in an armlock, 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.”
Justice Smith said the “critical question” was how Leeson came to be in the water, which was only 1.2m deep, and unable to save herself. He said she must have been unconscious, and the distribution of her neck injuries suggested compression from an armlock by her husband.
He added: “It is no exaggeration to say that lies and dishonesty pervade every aspect of Don’s life. Don lies to anyone if it might serve his interests. I cannot begin to comprehend the pain and heartache that the Leesons have experienced as a result of Paula’s death.”
After the ruling, Leeson’s brother, Neville Leeson, told the Herald the journey to justice was not over yet as they focused on a fresh criminal trial.
He said it was a “huge relief” to know her sister’s suspected killer would not benefit from any of it.
Neville said their family had always thought McPherson was “very strange”.
“It was like he had dropped from space when he met Paula … he had no friends … he said he was from a foster home and he never had any parents and all this.”
Neville said with the new evidence that had come to light during the civil trial, including from a previously locked laptop, they believed they had a “good case” for a new criminal trial.
He said he was sending pleas around the world, but specifically to those in the Southern Hemisphere, to let their family know if they see McPherson.
However, he warned about getting too close.
“The most important thing is that we want people to stay away from him because he’s a very, very dangerous individual.
“So if anyone sees him, you need to be very, extremely careful but if you do, then please let us know.”