Police end investigation into Peaches Geldof death
The identity of the drug dealer who supplied Peaches Geldof with the heroin that killed her could remain a mystery after detectives announced they have ended their investigation.
Police said they had “exhausted all lines of inquiry” 15 months after the 25-year-old journalist, model and television presenter took a fatal overdose of the Class A drug.
Mother-of-two Ms Geldof was found slumped on a bed in a spare room by her musician husband Tom Cohen at their family home in Wrotham, Kent, on April 7, 2014.
Detective Superintendent Paul Fotheringham, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said: “Our investigation into the supply of drugs to Peaches Geldof-Cohen has exhausted all lines of inquiry and has now concluded.
“If further information or witnesses come forward we will review the case, but I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Peaches’ family who have supported our inquiries during what has been a difficult time.”
Police found 6.9g (0.24oz) of “importation quality” heroin stashed in a black cloth bag inside a cupboard over a bedroom door with a purity of 61%, worth between £350 and £550, her inquest heard.
They also discovered a syringe containing residue of heroin inside a sweet box next to the bed, and other drugs paraphernalia including burnt spoons, syringes and knotted tights throughout the property.
At the inquest, North West Kent Coroner Roger Hatch said Ms Geldof’s death had been “drugs-related” and heroin had played a part.
He told the hearing that, although she had struggled to come off methadone, by November 2013 she was found to be free of heroin and reducing her methadone.
Mr Cohen told the inquest that he had gone to stay with his parents in south-east London with the couple’s two sons, Astala, two, and one-year-old Phaedra, in the days leading up to his wife’s death.
She had seemed fine when he spoke to her on several occasions over the weekend, he told the inquest. His father, Keith, had seen Ms Geldof when he dropped the younger child home to her and did not notice anything amiss.
Mr Cohen said he had last spoken to his wife at 5.40pm on Sunday April 6 but, after failing to get hold of her the next day, he and his mother returned to the property with Astala and found Ms Geldof’s body.
Her last known movements included posting a picture of herself with her mother Paula Yates on social networking site Instagram with the comment “me and my mum” and watching The Dog Whisperer TV show on YouTube.
Yates was also found dead from a heroin overdose at her London home in September 2000 in what a coroner at the time described as “foolish and incautious” behaviour.
Pathologist Peter Jerreat said at the inquest that evidence of injections had been found on Ms Geldof’s body during a post-mortem examination carried out on April 9.
There were puncture marks on her elbow and left hand and she had died of an “opiate intoxication” due to a “fatal level of heroin in the body”, the pathologist found.
In a television interview last year, Ms Geldof’s father, Sir Bob Geldof, said he “blames himself” for her death, saying: “You’re the father who is responsible and clearly failed.”
Sir Bob, the lead singer with the Boomtown Rats and noted anti-poverty campaigner, added: “For anybody watching, who has a dead kid and you’re a parent. You go back, you go back, you go back, you go back, you go back, you go over, you go over.
“What could you have done? You do as much as you can.”
