'Paolo was not doing great on a personal level. He loved to party and gamble.'
Princess Beatrice’s ex-boyfriend has been found dead from a suspected overdose in a hotel room.
41-year-old Paolo Liuzzo was aged 21 when he dated 17-year-old Princess Beatrice back in 2005.
Miami Police found Paolo’s body after being called to a room in the citizenM Miami Worldcenter hotel at 3.22pm local time on February 7.
The cause of death has not yet been disclosed due to records laws in Florida, but Officer Michael Vega from Miami police say it was ‘investigated as an overdose death’, adding that the investigation is ‘open and ongoing’.
Sources told The Sun he had struggled with drugs and racked up gambling debt, and had several run-ins with the law including over cocaine possession.
Paolo’s death certificate said he had been working as an art industry consultant, had never married, and lived at an apartment building near the hotel.
His body was flown back to his home of Long Island, New York, for a funeral on February 16.
It’s been reported that Beatrice, now 35 and daughter of disgraced Prince Andrew, found out about Paolo’s death soon after her mum Sarah Ferguson’s skin cancer diagnosis.
She and Paolo started dating when she was aged 17 in 2005, but they separated a year later. They’d kept their relationship a secret until he joined her family’s ski holiday to Switzerland in 2006.
A friend of Paolo’s told The Sun: ‘Paolo was not doing great on a personal level. He loved to party and gamble.
‘He began using a lot of pharmaceutical drugs but that later led to cocaine and harder drugs.
‘It was a very fast lifestyle and we all feared it would catch up with him eventually.
‘He was always borrowing money to pay loans. It became a vicious cycle.’
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