Vast wealth didn’t shield Eva Rausing from drug death

The story of billionaire Eva Rausing (48) lying dead in her smart Belgravia home in West London, possibly for up to a week before being discovered by police, reads like a modern-day Greek tragedy. U.S. born Eva (daughter of a Pepsi executive) and her husband were wealthy philanthropists who both battled against drug addiction. Her husband was an heir to the Swedish Tetra Pak (laminated drink container) fortune. She had been arrested in 2008 for smuggling cocaine and heroin into the US Embassy in London. In 2007, Eva Rausing reflected on her life and her drug addiction in an entry on MySpace. "I don't work but probably should," she said. "Or at least think of a constructive way of using my life. I fell back into the same hole as before and have been there for nearly seven years." She became fascinated by hard drugs as a pharmacology student at Occidental College in California, a private liberal arts college, which she attended at the same time as President Obama who is several years older. The press have revelled in the couple's seeming globe-trotting ennui. "It takes billions to buy this much boredom," ran one headline. "Drugs and a couple so rich they don't know what to do with their lives," went another...

Eva Rausing in happier times

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