The trial of man accused of murdering his wealthy wife after taking out seven insurance policies on her life has collapsed. Donald McPherson, 47, stood to gain £3.5m on the death of Paula Leeson, the heiress of a skip hire business whom he married in 2014, Manchester crown court was told. McPherson was charged with murdering Leeson, 47, after she drowned in a shallow swimming pool while the couple were on holiday in Denmark in 2017. He denied the charge. On Wednesday in a move that can only be reported now for legal reasons, Mr Justice Goose halted the proceedings citing insufficient evidence to convict. The decision prompted tears and shouts from Leeson’s family in the courtroom. One said: “You are making a big mistake.” On Thursday, when the family was absent, Goose formally directed the jury to return a not guilty verdict. He said: “I have come to the conclusion that as a matter of law that the evidence in relation to how Paula Leeson came to drown is not sufficiently strong to allow you to reach a proper verdict in relation to the defendant causing it by killing her.” McPherson, who been held in Salford’s Forest Bank prison, was told he was free to go. The judge added: “I understand how difficult it will be therefore for the family to accept from their point of view the loss of a daughter. This court has obvious sympathy for them, but the law must be applied equally.” The prosecutor David McLachlan told the court there were no grounds for appeal. Leeson, described as an otherwise healthy mother of one, drowned in a 4ft-deep swimming pool at a Danish holiday cottage in June 2017. Pathologists found 13 separate injuries on Leeson’s body, which jurors heard may have been sustained while being restrained or in a rescue and resuscitation attempt. The day after her death, McPherson transferred £27,000 from his joint account with his wife to his personal accounts to help clear his £67,000 debts. Seven days later he joined a group, Widowed and Young, he described as “Like Tinder for widows”, jurors were told. Goose said there were two possibilities of how Leeson died. First, McPherson could have restrained his wife under water or overcame her in a struggle or pushed her to cause her to drown. Or, second, Leeson drowned in an accident. He added: “Whilst the first of those alternatives is clearly more likely, that does not mean that a jury, on the face of the pathological evidence alone, could be sure of it.” Leeson’s family had told the jury McPherson “appeared out of nowhere” and after a “whirlwind romance” the couple wed two years after meeting. In the four years before her death, McPherson had taken out the seven life insurance policies and by 2016 was paying £464.47 a month on premiums. McPherson told Danish police his wife had complained of stomach ache and toothache and she had been sick and they had both been in bed. When he awoke, his wife was gone and he found her fully clothed, face down in the swimming pool, not moving. McPherson, in a statement through his solicitors, said: “A tragic accident is what it was and it saddens me, deeply, that the events in question should ever have been seen differently and that I was ever suspected of playing a part in Paula’s death.”