Dr Tozer was a North Shore GP and well known in the area due to his cricketing prowess: representing Sydney University and New South Wales. Tozer was the 1920s equivalent of Ian Thorpe, without the pearls and underwear label, except for one skeleton he kept in his closet — a lover named Mrs Dorothy Mort of Lindfield who was married with children.

With place in the Australian team looming, he decided to end the affair with Mrs Mort by visiting her in person at her Lindfield home.

The two soon to be ex-lovers entered the drawing room and closed the doors. Ten minutes into their meeting gunshots were heard, which aroused the suspicions of the housekeeper, Florence Fizzelle.

Mort reassured Fizzelle that everything was alright, but more gunshots were heard 10 minutes later. After some time, Mrs Mort locked the doors to the drawing room and took herself to bed. The ever dutiful Fizzelle knew that something was awry and forced her way into the bedroom to find Mrs Mort heavily sedated on laudanum and nursing a gunshot wound to her breast.

As for Dr Tozer, he sat in the drawing room with a few wounds of his own; bullet holes in his chest, temple and the final, fatal shot through the back of his head.

Crime writer Peter Doyle uncovered this tale of love-gone-wrong when he was searching through old police records at the Justice and Police Museum, the photo immediately grabbed him.

"It was an incredible photo for the police to have taken at the time," Doyle explains. "It was common to take photos of the actual crime scene, but it was rare that they would actually leave the victim in the photo."

The presence of Tozer could be attributed to his celebrity status and has ensured the story of Dr Tozer has lived on.

A tale that features sex, drugs, violence and "has so many sub-texts that it sounds like a story that could have been written for crime fiction," says Doyle.

Other photos that Doyle has uncovered are part of City of Shadows collection, which will be on display until November 2006 at the Historic Houses Trust's Justice and Police Museum at Circular Quay.