Wife of fraudster's drowning death in pool was 'suspicious', friend tells court

The friend of a mother-of-one who drowned in a swimming pool on holiday in Denmark told a court she was 'suspicious' over her death.

Lynn Dale said Paula Leeson, 47, would 'never' go into a pool willingly, did not like swimming or getting wet and would not even go near water.

Convicted fraudster Donald McPherson, 50, who had taken out £3.5 million in secret life insurance policies on his wife Ms Leeson, was accused of her murder in 2017 and went on trial, but was found not guilty in 2021 on a judge's direction due to insufficient evidence.

While cleared of murder, Ms Leeson’s family have brought legal proceedings against McPherson at Manchester Civil Courts of Justice, asking a judge to rule he unlawfully killed her by drowning in the swimming pool so he forfeits any legal entitlement to benefiting from the life insurance policies or his late wife’s will and estate, worth £4.4 million.

READ MORE: There in body but not in spirit, they watched him lie lifeless for 15 torturous months

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.

Ms Dale was maid of honour at the lavish wedding of Ms Leeson and McPherson at a no-expense-spared ceremony at a Cheshire castle in 2014, following a “whirlwind romance.” He claimed to be a property developer and she oversaw the skip hire part of her family’s successful ground-working business her father Willy, 80, had built up in Sale, Trafford, after emigrating from County Wicklow, Ireland, in the 1960s.

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

McPherson told police he awoke to find Ms