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Overdose of drugs may have killed Shah's daughter

Shyam Bhatia
India Abroad Correspondent in London

A drugs overdose is believed to have killed Leila Pahlavi, youngest child of the late shah of Iran, whose body was discovered on Monday by the staff of the west London hotel in which she was staying.

A post-mortem carried out on Monday night at Westminster mortuary proved inconclusive and police are awaiting toxicology test results.

Scotland Yard confirmed that letters and documents, including a possible suicide note, were found alongside the body in the £3,500 a week suite of the hotel where she always stayed on her visits to London.

Leila Pahlavi also had homes in New York and Paris.

Though the Pahlavi family fortune was severely depleted when they were forced into exile in 1979, Leila, her mother and siblings still had enough to live in style for the rest of their lives.

But for Leila in particular, her father's exile and death from cancer was a blow from which she never fully recovered. "My father is always in my dreams," she used to tell friends.

She also missed her native Iran and told journalists last year, "I have spent nearly all my life abroad, but I have also remained Iranian as if I never left my country."

In her last magazine interview with Spain's Hola, Leila was asked if she would ever find the man of her dreams. She replied, "The most important thing is to find yourself, to find a reason for existing, to find a direction in life, a goal.

"I have many aptitudes, many hobbies and different interests. But now I would like to find something long range or far-reaching."

Asked again about finding love, she said, "Things happen simply, you can't plan them. At times I look at someone and say to myself, 'no way', just before falling in love.

"I don't want to appear a pessimist, but the most important thing in the end in a relationship is respect and tolerance, not passion."

Leila was only nine years old when the Iranian revolution forced Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Empress Farah, brothers Crown Prince Ali Reza and Reza and sister Massoumeh into exile.

After the shah's death in a Cairo hospital, the rest of the family based themselves in New York and Washington. Leila, educated at a private high school and Brown University, gradually succumbed to a life of eating disorders and severe depression.

Much of the family's money was entrusted to a cousin who promised to invest it for them. Instead he helped himself to tens of millions of dollars before returning to Iran.

A close friend was quoted as saying of Leila, "First she lost her country, then she lost her money. Bit by bit, her world crumbled around her until there was nothing left."

EARLIER REPORT:
Shah of Iran's daughter found dead

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