A MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3704, 15 October 1927, Page 3

A MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY.

SYDNEY GRAZIER SHOT.

Sydney, October 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 in the morning. The same evening the car Was found standing on a road off the main Western road near Blaxland. Leslie was inside the car, dead, with three bullet Avounds in the chest. He had apparently been dead for some time.

It was first thought to be a case of suicide, but as no Aveapon was in evidence the police noAv regard the case as one of murder.

There is no clue. The money and valuables on the body Avere intact.

Police inquiries in connection with the death of Leslie 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 motorcar containing tAvo men. As the car approached, she heard a number of reports which she took to be the ear back-firing. Then one man threw up his arms and lurched forward and collapsed in the seat. She 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 hat has since been found to have belonged to Leslie.

The spot Avhere the woman Avas standing is about four miles from where the body Avas found. A black tracker investigating discovered a blood-stained o\ r ercoat hidden in a hollow log, but it did not belong to Leslie. The police consider three men Avere concerned in the tragedy; that Leslie picked up one of them in his car and the other tAvo 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 to the turn-of where it was found. An examination of the body shoAVed three bullet wounds, all shots having been fired from behind. *"