DOUBLE MURDER IN LONDON

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27277, 18 February 1954, Page 11

DOUBLE MURDER IN LONDON

Man Sought By Police • Believed Dead

(Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, February H. Scotland Yard is still carrying out investigations into a double murder at Ealing, London, in spite of the discovery yesterday of a body thought to be that of Ronald Chesney, aged 45, a former New Zealander, who was wanted for questioning about the murder.

Chesney, who was an international criminal and smuggler, was found shot yesterday in a wood near Cologne with his pockets stuffed with newspaper cuttings about the murders of his wife, Isabel, and her 73-year-old mother, “Lady” Mary Menzies, in a home for elderly persons at Ealing. Chesney was born in Levin in 1908. His real name was John Ronald Merrett. He went to England fts a boy and returned to Oamaru at the end of World War I. He lived there with his mother until 1924, when he again returned to England. Chesney, a war-time naval officer, imagined himself a rriodern pirate. He even Wore golden earrings dangling from his ears, and indulged in swash* buckling talk as he smuggled everything from guns to coffee beans between a variety of countries. He was imprisoned in France several times for currency racketeering, Belgium deported him in 1949, and he was sent to prison in Britain in 1951 for 12 months for trying to smuggle a car out of Britain packed With pound notes and coffee beans. him with international gangs in France, His gun-running activities involved Belgium, Germany, and Egypt. Tried for Murder From his early youth he loved a gay life ana was unscrupulous in getting money for it. At the age of 19, while a student at Edinburgh University, Chesney forged a cheque in his mother’s name. Then she was found shot in her Edinburgh home. He was arrested and brought to trial in 1927 for the murder of his mother. The jury brought in a verdict of not proven, which, under Scottish law, meant that they were in doubt about his guilt, but left the way open for his retrial if the police secured more evidence. He went to prison for a year for forgery. A few years after leaving grison he married Isobel Bonar. a eautiful blonde daughter of a‘widow. . By that time he had changed his name to Ronald John Chesney. The widow herself was married again soon afterwards to Thomas Chalmers Menzies, a Scottish typewriter salesman, who insisted that he was the heir to a defunct baronetcy. He and his wife called themselves "Sir Thomas and Lady Mehties, though the authorities laughed at their claim. Chesney and his wife lived like high society. They spent holidays on the Riviera, rented yachts, and threw lavish cocktail parties. They were believed to have quarrelled about a smuggling business.