MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 17, 14 October 1927, Page 11

MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY

GRAZIER FOUND SHOT IN MOTOR-CAR

(Rec. October 13, 7 p.m.)

( Sydney, October 13. A mysterious tragedy is reported. Ronald Lachlan Leslie, a grazier, a man of means, left his home in Manly by a motor-car alone to visit one of his country properties at 8 o’clock in the .morning The same evening the car •yas found standing on a road off the Main Western Road, near Blaxland, and Leslie was inside dead, with three bullet wounds in his chest. He had apparently been dead for some lime. It was at first thought to be a case of suicide, but as no weapon was in evidence the police now regard the case ns one of murder There »<s no clue. Money and valuables on the body were intact. THREE MEN BELIEVED TO BE CONCERNED (Rec. October 13, 9.45 p.m.) Sydney, October 13. Police inquiries in connection with the death of Ronald Leslie resulted in their locating at Valley Heights a woman who states she was standing near the railway station at Valley Heights when she noticed a motor-car containing two men. As the car approached she heard a number of reports, which she took to be the car backfiring. Then one man threw up his arms, lurched forward, and collapsed in the seat. She djd not attach any significance to the happening, thinking the man was intoxicated. As the man collapsed his hat fell out of the car to the road. She picked it up, and later, on reading of the tragedy, handed it to the police. The hat has since been found to have belonged to Leslie. The spot where the woman was standing is about four miles from where the body was found.

A black tracker who was investigating discovered a blood-stained overcoat hidden in a hollow log, but it did not belong to Leslie. The police consider that three men •were concerned in the tragedy, and that Leslie picked up one of them in. his car, and the other two followed in another car, and that when the man in Leslie’s car shot him the other car approached and brought Leslie’s car back along the main road until the turn-off where it was found was reached. An examination of the body showed three bullet wounds, all the shots having been fired from behind.