10th Earl of Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1938-2004)

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, was separated from his third wife and was planning his fourth marriage when he was murdered - possibly precisely because he intended to divorce and wed anew.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper was educated at Eton and Oxford, inherited his title at the age of 22, and married an older Italian divorcee when he was 28 (she was 40). Born Bianca de Paolis, her earlier marriage was to American movie producer Jack Le Vien. The marriage lasted ten years and ended in divorce.

His second wife, Christina Casella, was the daughter of a Swedish diplomat. She bore him two sons, Anthony and his younger brother Nicholas, who became the 11th and 12th Earls. This marriage also ended in divorce.

His third wife was Jamila M'barek, whom he met when he ordered a companion for the night from an escort service. Of Tunisian descent, she had previously been married to a Dutch millionaire.

Twenty years younger than Ashley-Cooper, she was attractive and shapely, and they married on 5 November 2002. In their two years together, they had no children.

While married to Jamila, Ashley-Cooper met, fell in love with, and proposed marriage to another escort woman, Nadia Orche. She accepted. Ashley-Cooper told friends and his fortune teller that he hoped to have children with Nadia.

Educated at Eton and Oxford, Anthony Ashley-Cooper was 22 when he inherited his title - 10th Earl of Shaftesbury - on the death of his grandfather. With the title came the family seat at Wimborne, Dorset and its 9,000-acre estate.

After his father's death, his mother moved to France, where Anthony and his sister grew up. Her death emotionally devastated him, although he was in his early sixties at the time. He ended his marriage to Christina and pursued younger women, many of them through escort agencies.

The dark side

The Riviera is "a sunny place for shady people," according to ex-pat British writer W Somerset Maugham, who knew the area well. Ashley-Cooper's Riviera was one of drink, drugs and prostitutes, not sophisticated glamour.

Ashley-Cooper owned properties in Ireland and France as well as Britain. A month before he married Jamila, he made a new will leaving a substantial amount of property to his soon-to-be bride. Marriage generally invalidates previous wills. In this instance, he presumably made the will in contemplation of his pending nuptials, which would make it valid after the wedding.

On 5 November 2004, the second anniversary of their marriage, Ashley-Cooper visited Jamila to discuss their divorce. He was never seen alive again. Five months later, his skeleton was located in a remote rubbish-strewn bit of wasteland outside Cannes. He had been strangled and had broken ribs.

Final anniversary

The discovery of his body hit Jamila hard in her pocketbook.

If Ashley-Cooper's remains had never been found, eventually he would have been presumed to have died and, as his widow, Jamila would have inherited an estate worth millions. As his ex-wife, she would have received much less.

In 2007, she and her brother Muhammad were convicted of the murder. Jamila was sentenced to 25 years in jail, reduced on appeal to 20 years.

The trial included testimony from a fortune teller and from Catherine Gurtler, the escort service manager who assigned girls to Ashley-Cooper. Outside the court, she claimed that a cheque from Ashley-Cooper had bounced and she presented it to his son for payment. He apparently refused.

Ashley-Cooper had given Jamila substantial amounts of money and a flat in Cannes. When  he visited Jamila to discuss the divorce, her brother, Mohammed, was present. Jamila told the police that her husband was drunk, argued with Mohammed and then physically clashed with him. Mohammed said that he killed Ashley-Cooper accidentally.

Police wiretaps revealed that Jamila had given Mohammed c. £100,000 (100,000 euros). Mohammed had also been in Germany on the day of the murder, but police established that he had driven overnight to Cannes. His presence in Germany had been to establish an alibi.

After murdering Ashley-Cooper, Mohammed carried his body to his car in broad daylight and drove to the outskirts of Cannes. Jamila followed in her own car (significant in that mobile phone records indicated her presence in that location) but turned back before Mohammed pulled over on the side of the road and pushed the body down an incline. If he had buried the body, it might never have been found.

Ashley-Cooper's eldest son, Anthony, became the 11th Earl on the death of his father, but shortly after the body of his father was discovered, the new Earl died suddenly, reportedly of a heart attack. He was 27.