MOTOR CAR TRAGEDY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 14 October 1927, Page 5

MOTOR CAR TRAGEDY

MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES.

WEALTHY MAN FOUND SHOT. WHAT A WOMAN SAW. BY CABLE— PRESS ASSOCIATION —COTYB.'OHT. SYDNEY, Oct. 13. A mysterious tragedy is reported. Ronald* Lachlan Leslie, a grazier and a man of means, left his home in Manly by motor car alone to visit one of his country properties at eight o’clock in the morning. The same evening the car was found standing on the road, off the main Western Road, near Flaxland. Leslie was inside, dead, with three bullet wounds in his chest. He had apparently been dead some time. It was at first thought to be a case of suicide, but as no weapon was in evidence the police now regard the case as one of murder. There is no clue. Money and valuables on the bodv were intact.

A later message states: Police inquiries resulted in their locating a woman at Valley Heights. She 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 ear backfiring. Then one man threw up his .arms, lurched forward, and collapsed in the seat._ The woman did not attach 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 reading of the tragedy, handed it to the police. The bat was since found to belong to Leslie. The spot where the woman was standing is about four miles from where the body was found. Black trackers discovered a blood-stained overcoat hidden in a. hollow log, but it did not belong to Leslie. The police consider that three men are concerned in the tragedy, that Leslie picked up one of them in the car and the other two followed in another car. 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. An examination of the body showed three bullet wounds, all the shots havirg been fired from behind.