The life and death of Princess Beatrice’s first boyfriend Paolo Liuzzo

Paolo Liuzzo, the former boyfriend of Princess Beatrice who has died of a suspected drug overdose, grew up in luxury in Long Island, New York. The son of the Italian businessman Nico Liuzzo, he attended the $58,000-a-year (£46,000) College of the Holy Cross, a private university in Massachusetts, before meeting the Princess in 2005 through mutual friends, when he was 24 and she was just 17.

Described at the time as a “New York socialite”, he was Beatrice’s first real boyfriend and by all accounts made a good impression on her parents, the Duke and Duchess of York, and her friends. A palace source told The Sun he was “a wonderful, thoughtful person, and [the family] all like him very much”, while a friend of Beatrice told another paper he had been “very well brought up and treats Bea with incredible respect and kindness”. Liuzzo was then living in London, but so taken with him was Beatrice that she was prepared to attend a US university so that the two could have a long-term future.

However, Liuzzo’s past rang alarm bells with some. By the time he met her, he already had a criminal record after a fight he was involved in at the College of the Holy Cross in 2002 resulted in the death of one of his fellow students. Liuzzo, whose father had died the previous year, was convicted of assault and battery.

“[Paolo] was very open about his background when he and Beatrice became close,” the palace source told The Sun. “He is very honest about what happened to him, and he knows that nothing he will ever do will make up for it.”

It was not only Liuzzo’s history that raised eyebrows – so too did the couple’s seven-year age difference, although the Duchess of York said she was unconcerned. “We all have our own journeys and have to learn our way but Beatrice is a sensible girl, soon to be 18,” she said at the time.

The relationship became public when Liuzzo accompanied the family on a skiing holiday to an exclusive Swiss resort in 2006. But it was this trip that proved to be the couple’s undoing. Liuzzo had broken the conditions of his bail to join the family on holiday and was dragged back to the US to face a judge. His three-year probation was extended as punishment, making it difficult for the couple to see each other. It was Beatrice who ended the romance, despite once having wanted to introduce her boyfriend to Elizabeth II.

Beatrice was heartbroken, reports said, but other problems may have already surfaced by then. Liuzzo was a self-confessed “playboy” who had been unfaithful to Beatrice during their relationship. He would later cause the Royal family embarrassment by claiming that marijuana had been openly smoked in front of Beatrice and her younger sister Eugenie, as well as their mother, while on another family holiday in Jamaica.

After the split, Liuzzo found himself in trouble with the law again. In 2009, he was arrested in Australia for cocaine possession, after crashing a £40,000 Audi into a traffic light on the Gold Coast. He admitted his guilt and was fined $5,000.

Less is known about Liuzzo’s recent life. He had moved to the south of Florida, and his LinkedIn page lists him as the owner of a company called DNC Productions. A friend of his told The Sun that “Paolo was not doing great on a personal level” shortly before his death.

“He loved to party and gamble,” the friend added. “He began using a lot of pharmaceutical drugs but that later led to cocaine and harder drugs.”

Liuzzo was found dead at the age of 41 in a four-star hotel in Miami in February. It was just a stone’s throw from his own apartment, where he had been living while he worked as an art industry consultant. Liuzzo’s cause of death is still yet to be formally confirmed, but Miami police have said that his untimely end is being “investigated as an overdose death”.

A funeral was held on Feb 16 in Long Island. His death certificate showed that he had never been married.