After fighting for nearly a century, a beloved police officer's family has had their day in court to correct the record about how he died.
Alma Nash was a young girl when her father, first class constable Leslie Andrew Nash, was discovered with a fatal bullet wound above his right eye in April 1935.
The 37-year-old's body was released in just 12 hours and he was buried the next day.
A coroner ruled two weeks later that Nash had taken his own life with his service revolver, despite having five children and a sixth on the way.
"I well remember the police coming to our house ... and I heard (my mother) cry out when they gave her the bad news," Alma Madden nee Nash said in a 2025 recording played in court on Tuesday.
"I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral ... I think I kicked up a stink."
There was no post-mortem conducted on Nash's body, and no records of the revolver or bullet were kept or acknowledged in the coroner's report.
Tireless work from his family, particularly Madden and brother Peter Nash, led to the overturning of the original coroner's ruling in the Supreme Court in 2025.
Acting Justice Derek Price ordered the near-century-old findings be quashed and a new inquest be held, saying there was a real possibility the verdict was wrong.
Peter Nash died months after the Supreme Court decision and before the fresh inquest could be held.
But Madden, 96, was present on Tuesday with more than a dozen of her nieces and nephews, and Peter Nash's son Michael, as the second inquest opened in the NSW Coroner's Court.
She told the court there was never any suggestion her father was unwell or stressed professionally leading up to his death, despite multiple media reports alleging so at the time.
In a recording played in court, Madden said her family struggled greatly for necessities such as food after her dad was ruled to have committed suicide.
Her mother Catherine was denied a widow's pension by NSW Police due to suicide being a criminal offence at the time.
Several new possibilities are being explored in the inquest, including that Nash was the victim of a homicide or that he died from a misadventure when he was tending his gun.
"An inquest 91 years after a death is ... exceedingly rare," counsel assisting the inquest Peita Ava Jones said.
"I'm not sure there has been another one of this antiquity."
Jones praised Nash's family for their dedicated pursuit to correcting the record so many decades after he died.
"They are curious, engaged and earnest in their united desire to finish Peter's work," she said.
The inquest will conclude on Tuesday and findings will be delivered at a later date.
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