Peter Nash was only two years old in 1935 when his father, first class constable Leslie Andrew Nash, was discovered dead in the bathroom of Hurstville police station with a single gunshot wound to the head.
His service revolver lay beside him. It had one empty shell in it, and four live cartridges. The officer who discovered him in the early hours of April 15, a constable Harvey, told investigators at the time that Nash had asked him to pick up “a pound of butter” not long before the discovery.
Peter Nash, whose father, Leslie Andrew Nash, was found dead at Hurstville Police Station in 1935, has fought for a “lifetime” to have a coroner’s finding of suicide overturned. Credit: Paul Harris
There was no autopsy, and Nash was buried the next day at a cemetery in Woronora. The death was quickly assumed to be a suicide. Newspapers, including The Sydney Morning Herald, reported he had been in “ill health” and was concerned about a police exam he had been due to take.
A fortnight later, the NSW coroner made it official, finding Nash died from a bullet wound “wilfully inflicted” on himself.
The finding left an indelible mark on his family. Now, 90 years later, it is set to be overturned.
First class constable Leslie Andrew Nash’s death was reported as a suicide in 1935.Credit:
In an extraordinary Supreme Court judgment this week, Acting Justice Derek Price ordered that the 1935 finding of suicide be quashed, and directed that a new inquest take place. There was, Price wrote, “a real possibility” the coroner’s decision was “erroneous”.
Forensic pathologist Johan Duflou told the court there were “many other possibilities”, including “a shooting accident” or “the actions of another person”.
For Peter Nash, now 91, the ruling has lifted a lifetime sense of injustice. As Justice Price wrote in his judgment, a finding of suicide in 1935 brought “disgrace and shame to the family”, with severe financial and reputation consequences.
“We had to put up with the jibes of people about our father, it never stopped,” Peter Nash told the Herald.
“My father’s pension was cancelled. My mother had five children and was eight months’ pregnant with the sixth.
“I can assure you, when something like that happens, it never, ever leaves your memories.”
Under the NSW Coroner’s Act, further inquests can be ordered for cases “within the last 100 years”. Though there have been other historical cases reopened after several decades, no expert contacted by the Herald could point to an older example.
At the heart of Price’s decision is the “insufficiency” of the original coroner’s findings in 1935. The lack of an autopsy and the speed with which Nash was buried following his death were “troubling”, he wrote, and there were other pieces of evidence, including the “pound of butter” Nash had asked constable Harvey to buy him.
Harvey told investigators that, after their shifts began at 5am, he told Nash he was “going to look around the shops and would be back at 5.30am”. He returned to find Nash lying “with a wound over [his] right eye, blood on his face and floor”.
In the context of a suicide, the request for butter was “unusual” given Harvey had already told him he was visiting the shops.
Most chilling, though, was the very different story Peter Nash grew up hearing about his father.
In stark contrast to the newspaper accounts, Peter’s mother insisted Leslie Nash “did not have any ailments and was not suffering any injuries”, had “always provided for his family”, and was believed to be “mentally stable”.
He had been worried, though.
In Peter’s mother’s telling, Leslie Nash had been subpoenaed to give evidence in a looming criminal trial that allegedly involved fellow police officers who had been accused of committing a series of robberies in Hurstville.
Nash’s wife told her son that, before he died, he had given her a revolver and said words to the effect of “I want you to keep this at home to protect yourself”.
“No one ever talked about it,” Peter Nash remembered.
“I was the only one who pestered my mother about it from time to time. The general feeling was, there was no way Les would do that to himself.
“The whole thing smacked of something being wrong here. Why didn’t they do an autopsy? Why was he buried the next day?”
Members of the family had repeatedly sought a fresh inquest in the past, but were turned down in part due to a lack of new evidence. Peter Nash said he had been waiting “a lifetime” for Price’s ruling.
He eventually sought help from law firm AFL Solicitors, a private investigator and a forensic expert to convince the court that the original findings should be overturned.
“There is a public interest in correcting historical errors,” AFL Solicitors director Tony Nikolic said.
“These stories have sat with the family now for many, many decades. It’s about justice.”
The case was opposed by a delegate for the NSW Attorney-General, in part because of the impossibility of making “evidence-based findings” after such a long time.
In his judgment, Justice Price conceded there was “undoubtedly a public interest” in not pursuing verdicts of “such antiquity”.
But Nash’s lawyers presented evidence that raised significant questions about the 1935 findings.
Duflou, for example, told the court that the lack of a post-mortem examination, failure to conduct any ballistics examination, and otherwise “very limited” information about the death, meant it was impossible to say whether Nash died by suicide, accidental discharge of his weapon or by “the actions of another person”.
Price agreed. In his judgment, he said the historical stigma attaching to suicide meant “there was a presumption against” such a finding, and that it “should never be presumed”.
In ordering a fresh inquest, he accepted the only likely finding is an “open verdict”, meaning there is insufficient evidence to determine how he died.
But that is all Peter Nash wants.
“People in the past looked down on us for what happened. I just would like the record corrected.”
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