The body of the American wife of one of Britain’s richest men rotted for more than two months before being found at their London home, a British court has been was told, in a case the judge has said shows the “utterly destructive effects” of drug abuse.
Eva Rausing’s husband Hans, heir to a fortune from the Swedish packaging firm Tetra Pak, was given a suspended 10-month jail sentence yesterday by the west London court for preventing the “lawful and decent” burial of his wife.
The couple lived at one of London’s most exclusive addresses but sank into a narcotic-fuelled squalor that ended with the death of Ms Rausing (48) from heart failure and the effect of drug.
Her body was discovered on July 9th after police officers stopped her husband for driving erratically and went to their six-storey townhouse in Cadogan Place in an upmarket area of the capital.
However a postmortem found that she had died more than two months earlier, on May 7th, and had cocaine and other drugs in her system, the court was told.
– (Reuters)