Author(s): Samantha Battams

True Crime

Was Lee a callous murderer, or innocent as he maintained?At the end of the First World War, Alexander Newland Lee was accused of poisoning his wife and three children.Born at World's End, Lee was a destitute labourer who severely injured his hand in a farm accident. Recovering at The Willows Hospital in the Barossa Valley, he fell in love with nurse Dolly Scholz, an attractive young woman of Prussian-German descent. The setting was post World War I, a time when her community was ostracised.When Lee was arrested for murder at Rhynie and put on trial, the case attracted strong interest from members of the community. They crawled over the gates of the Supreme Court to try to get a seat in the public gallery and a glimpse of the accused. It was deemed one of the most sensational criminal cases in South Australian history, and people waited outside the court in their hundreds to learn of Lee's fate.Strangely, a generation earlier, his Auntie Martha Needle, known as 'The Richmond Poisoner,' was hanged in the Old Melbourne Gaol for a similar crime. Did Lee know about his infamous Auntie?Alexander always maintained his innocence, claiming that his wife had committed the crimes.Lee's death sentence led to the first protest against capital punishment in South Australia, in what the press dubbed a 'Proposed Execution Holiday.' The date of the hanging was set for 15 July 1920, the day H.R.H. Prince of Wales was visiting the state.This story explores Lee's crimes and trial set amidst the post WWI social context.