He was the self-professed New York playboy who became Princess Beatrice’s first love when she was 17 – and despite the seven-year age gap her parents are said to have ‘encouraged’ the relationship until his past caught up with him.
Paolo Liuzzo, who has died in tragic circumstances aged 41, revealed he was asked to kneel in the drawing room of their Windsor mansion for a mock knighting ceremony where the Duchess of York gave a ‘bizarre’ impersonation of the Queen and nicknamed him: ‘Sir Fixit’ after he bailed out Prince Andrew with $10,000.
Paolo, the son of an Italian plastic resin tycoon, was an almost total stranger to the Royal Family when he was offered astonishing access to the Duke of York’s home.
In his year with ‘Bea’ he became so close to Fergie that she called herself his ‘second mother’ and would come out drinking partying with her daughter and boyfriend in London and New York – even though her daughter was underage, he claimed.
In fact he said the relationship was so comfortable that marijuana was smoked in the presence of Beatrice, her sister Eugenie and their mother while holidaying in Jamaica.
He also enjoyed a close relationship with Prince Andrew – so much so that he claimed the Duke of York woke him up early one morning to ask for $10,000 and a removal firm in New York to move his on-off girlfriend Angie Everhart from the home she shared with her then fiance.
Princess Beatrice with her then boyfriend Paolo Liuzzo on holiday in Jamaica, where he claimed marijuana was smoked in from of Beatrice, Eugenie and their mother
Paolo Liuzzo at a probation hearing in the US after a holiday with the Yorks in Switzerland got him in hot water
Paolo Liuzzo watches the court procedings before his arraignment for attempted murder. He later admitted assault in an altercation where a boy died
Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Sarah, Duchess of York, where claimed to have initially approved of the relationship
In recent years, Liuzzo has been living a ‘very fast lifestyle,’ according to his close friend. Insiders have revealed that Liuzzo struggled with gambling as well as drugs, and claimed he had racked up debts with loan sharks before he died
After the rescue mission was completed – Paolo said that Fergie joking knighted him in front of a laughing Prince Andrew and Princess Beatrice, declaring: ‘I name you Sir Fixit!’
Mr Liuzzo claimed that Andrew never fully paid him back after he learned that his daughter’s boyfriend had a criminal record after being charged with manslaughter before pleading guilty to assault following a drunken brawl in which another youth died.
Rumours of his weakness for women and cheating were also circulating.
‘I’m not a bad person. But it’s like putting heroin in front of Pete Doherty. Women are my flaw’, he said later.
Paolo and Beatrice, who he called his ‘best friend’ Bea, managed to keep the relationship secret for almost a year – but they split in May 2006 when reports of the manslaughter charge surfaced, causing a sensation.
He claimed that the Queen – who he had been close to meeting – had stepped in and called a crisis summit with the Yorks and Beatrice, who was ordered to break off the relationship.
When he chased the debt he called the Duchess of York who apparently told him: ‘Paolo, call the Duke. Calm down’ – to which he replied: ”I did him and Angie a favour because you were my girlfriend’s mother. Have a nice life. F*** off’.
Today Beatrice is said to have been left ‘heartbroken’ by the drugs overdose found dead from a suspected overdose in a Miami hotel room. And no doubt Beatrice’s close family will be upset too – having brought him into their inner circle.
Paolo apparently inherited millions after the death of his Italian father, who passed away in 2001 at the age of 62.
Paolo claimed he let Prince Andrew borrow $10,000 to help Actress and model Angie Everhart – an on-off girlfriend
Princess Beatrice’s ‘first love’ Paolo Liuzzo (left) was found dead inside a Miami hotel room of a suspected overdose aged 41 after a long battle with drugs, gambling and violence
Despite a seven year age difference and Liuzzo’s questionable history, Prince Andrew and his wife Sarah Ferguson (pictured left with her daughter Beatrice) approved of the pair’s relationship
Beatrice (pictured here with her parents Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson) was reportedly heartbroken when their romance ended and she returned to Goldsmiths, which is part of the University of London
In recent years, Liuzzo has been living a ‘very fast lifestyle,’ according to his close friend. Insiders have revealed that Liuzzo struggled with gambling as well as drugs, and claim he had racked up debts with loan shark.
He didn’t appear to be working in the family business – and claimed to run a film production company.
His death in February was a tragic end for someone who could perhaps have found himself marrying a royal had his life choices been different.
The New Yorker and the British royal, then fifth in line to the throne, met through mutual friends and started dating in July 2005 when he started working in London and was living in the largest and most exclusive square in London.
In that year he said he became best friends with Beatrice – but hinted later on that she was more keen than him.
‘We’d started joking about getting married and having kids’, he said.
‘I wasn’t sure I wanted to get in that deep with Bea. I loved her but I wasn’t in love with her.
‘Sometimes another lady friend of mine would come over to my place at Eaton Square in London. It was just messing around, never anything more, and I felt so bad afterwards because of Bea’.
In an interview with the Mail in 2007, he said by the end of 2005 their affair was being taken so seriously by Beatrice that she spoke longingly of introducing her boyfriend to ‘Granny’.
‘She said, ‘I’d love you to meet Granny’,’ Liuzzo recalled at the time. ‘But she said Chelsy [Harry’s then girlfriend] wasn’t allowed to meet her and usually you don’t get introduced to her until you are engaged.
‘Bea wanted to fly to New York to visit my mother but, I’ll be honest, I’ve never brought a woman back to my house to meet my family unless it was someone I would be proposing to’, he said.
He also described a bizarre scene when he went down on one knee on the drawing room floor and a giggling Sarah Ferguson stood in front of him and raised her arm above his head.
With Prince Andrew and Princess Beatrice looking on – and both laughing heartily – Fergie brought down her hand, tapped Paolo on each shoulder and jubilantly proclaimed: “I name you Sir Fixit!”
And the fact that it was Fergie’s way of ‘rewarding’ Paolo for helping out one of the Duke’s girlfriends, flame-haired American model Angie Everhart, made it even more peculiar.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, he claimed Andrew had woken him and asked him to help move his girlfriend Angie – and lend her $10,000, promising to pay him back.
Liuzzo was found dead on February 7 in a room at the citizenM Miami Worldcenter hotel
Princess Beatrice is pictured with her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi
Describing what happened he said: ‘I woke at about seven to a tap on my shoulder. The Duke was standing over me.
‘He said, “There’s a dear friend of mine who may or may not be my girlfriend. She needs to get out of her relationship with her fiance. It’s an unbearable situation.
“Her stuff is at his place and she wants to get it out of there while he is at his office. At 9.30am New York time she needs a moving company to collect her belongings and put them in storage.
‘”And she needs $10,000 in cash to be brought to her in New York. Can you action this for me?”.
Paolo went on: ‘I got in touch with an old school friend. He arranged for a truck and I gave my name as a guarantee for the storage people.
‘I told my friend to pay the rental downpayment which was nearly $700 and I’d pay him back, and then I called my mom and said, “I need $10,000”.
‘She said, “What is this about?”
‘I said, “It’s to do with Bea’s dad. I can’t go into it”. She got the cash and gave it to my friend who delivered it to Angie.
‘Andrew kept coming and asking me, “How is it going?”. Finally, I told him it was fixed.
‘Later that weekend, we were all in the drawing room. I went down on one knee and Sarah swung her arm like it was a sword and hit me on the shoulder. “Now you are Sir Fixit!’, she said. “Rise and be recognised”.
‘Andrew and Bea were laughing and Bea goes, “Sir Fixit!”. And Andrew says, “You really fixed it! Well done!”.
Paolo says the Duke made no immediate attempt to repay him for the favour, saying: “The Duke said, ‘Just give me your wiring details,’ but nothing happened.”
The reason that ‘nothing happened’, he said, may have something to do with the fact that, a few weeks after the drama involving Ms Everhart, the Duke discovered to his utter shock that his daughter’s suitor had a criminal record.
He began his relationship with Beatrice during a Jamaican holiday where, he claimed, her mother sanctioned their affair and allowed the Princess and her sister, Eugenie, then 15, to attend debauched parties where guests smoked cannabis and drank a tea made of magic mushrooms.
Only after Paolo and Bea started their relationship did he confess to her that, just one year earlier, in 2004, he had been put on probation for assault following a drunken brawl in which another youth died.
He also took Fergie into his confidence, he claimed, assuring her that, though he pleaded guilty in the case, he was really innocent and just wanted to spare his mother the stress of a trial.
‘I assumed Fergie told the Duke so I was really surprised when I discovered she hadn’t’, he told the Mail on Sunday.
Months later Andrew found out – but the he didn’t ask his daughter to end the affair.
He claims the Duchess of York had told him: ‘He [Andrew] understands. Everything is fine.’
‘But I think that may be why he didn’t want to wire the money he owed to me’, Paolo said.
‘I didn’t bring the money up'[with the Duke]. I have class. But I think Bea reminded him, and one day when we were about to sit down to Sunday lunch, he goes, ‘Oh, I forgot something.’
‘He tried to slip a roll of dollar bills into my jacket pocket. But it was a new Gieves & Hawkes suit and I hadn’t slit the stitches yet, and he goes, ‘For God’s sake! You haven’t got the stitching out!’. So he slid it into my inner right pocket instead.
‘I assumed it was everything he owed me but when I counted after lunch it was only $5,000. Bea said, “Maybe Papa made a mistake”‘.
By February 2006, after he returned to London with Beatrice from another foreign holiday together, this time in Switzerland, the press had learned of the affair.
It had also emerged that his probation order permitted him to travel outside the US only for business purposes. These hardly included a romance with a Princess on a ski trip.
Paolo said, ‘The Queen was so concerned that a scandal was about to engulf yet another young Royal that she ordered the Duke, Fergie and Beatrice to attend a secret summit with her to discuss the situation’.
Whether the Queen learned anything about the wild times the Princess had experienced under her mother’s eye is unclear.
He went on: ‘I gave a kiss to Bea and they went off to see the Queen.
‘Bea called afterwards and I asked, “How did it go with Granny?” She replied, “It’s OK”. She said the Queen said if Andrew and Sarah and Beatrice had taken me in, and they knew about it, then obviously I didn’t do those things they were saying about me.
In March 2006, however, Paolo was found in breach of his probation, which a judge then extended by six months, to April 2008.
Then came a declaration by a spokesman for the Duchess of York, saying the romance between Paolo and Beatrice was over. It stated: ‘They are not going out any more’.
Paolo says that, under Fergie’s orders, Beatrice did break off the relationship. ‘Bea was heartbroken by what happened to us’, he said later.
The relationship ended but the risk of scandal still loomed over the unpaid debt of $5,700.
After two calls to Beatrice’s mother he says the following day and assistant visited and handed him an envelope containing $4,700 – leaving him $1,000 short of the money he had spent on the Duke’s rescue mission.
Paolo claimed that the full debt was never settled.
Today the world learned of his death in his early 40s. He was said to be single and working as an art dealer.
In recent years, Liuzzo as been living a ‘very fast lifestyle,’ according to his close friend. Insiders have revealed that Liuzzo struggled with gambling as well as drugs, and claim he had racked up debts with loan sharks, according to The Sun.
‘Paolo was not doing great on a personal level. He loved to party and gamble. He began using a lot of pharmaceutical drugs but that later led to cocaine and harder drugs,’ a friend claimed.
Liuzzo is pictured here with an apparent former girlfriend Arianna Pappas, who captioned the photo ‘Beso Beach with my Babe! @paolo.liuzzo’
Liuzzo was constantly borrowing money to pay back loans – which became a vicious cycle, according to the friend.
According to his Linkedin profile, Liuzzo was the owner of DNC Productions LLC. He moved from New York to South Florida and has been pictured attending art gallery events in Miami.
Beatrice’s ex-boyfriend originally hailed from Woodbury, New York, and grew up in Long Island. He attended College of the Holy Cross – a liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts.
It was during his college days that Liuzzo had his first serious run-in with the law.
In 2002, Liuzzo was convicted in connection with a fight that killed a fellow student, 19-year-old Jonathan R. Duchatellier.
Reports of the May 6 fight claimed that the men involved, including Duchatellier and Liuzzo, had been drinking alcohol on the night of the off-campus brawl.
Liuzzo was initially charged with manslaughter but later pleaded guilty to a charge of assault and battery. His co-defendant, Daniel K. Clark, did the same and manslaughter charges against them both were dismissed. They were both placed on probation for three years.
Several years later, in 2005, it was announced that Liuzzo, who was referred to as a ‘U.S. socialite,’ and Beatrice had been caught up in a secret romance for months.
Friends of Beatrice said that Paolo was ‘Bea’s first real boyfriend,’ and revealed that he had been living in London for several months, but that Beatrice planned to go to university in America so the pair could continue their romance.
It was during his college days that Liuzzo had his first serious run-in with the law. In 2002, Liuzzo was convicted in connection with a fight that killed a fellow student, 19-year-old Jonathan R. Duchatellier
Liuzzo was initially charged with manslaughter but later pleaded guilty to a charge of assault and battery
Despite a seven year age difference and Liuzzo’s questionable history, Prince Andrew and his wife Sarah Ferguson approved of the pair’s relationship.
The couple were spotted at a skiing retreat at the exclusive Verbier resort in Switzerland, alongside Beatrice’s parents. However, it subsequently emerged that Liuzzo had flouted the conditions of his probation to holiday with the Queen’s granddaughter and her family in Switzerland.
As a result he was hauled back to the U.S. where he had his three-year probation extended by the courts as punishment, forcing Beatrice to end the fledgling romance in 2006.
Beatrice was reportedly heartbroken when their romance ended and she returned to Goldsmiths, which is part of the University of London.
His relationship with the law didn’t get any better as years went by, and he was arrested on a trip down under in 2009 over a string of offences including possessing cocaine.
The arrest took place on the Gold Coast on September 27, 2009, and came after he crashed an $90,000 black Audi hire car into traffic lights.
The then-27-year-old also failed to pay for accommodation and restaurant bills at Conrad Jupiters casino.
n law enforcement charged Liuzzo with fraud, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, possessing two grams of cocaine and driving without due care and attention. Liuzzo pleaded guilty and was fined $5,000.
Liuzzo was found dead on February 7 in a room at the citizenM Miami Worldcenter hotel at 3.22pm, according to officer Michael Vega, of the Miami Police Department.
The cause of death has not officially been reported, but officer Vega said: ‘It was investigated as an overdose death. The investigation is open and ongoing.’
Liuzzo’s death certificate revealed that he had been working as a consultant in the art industry and had never married.
His body was transported to Long Island, New York, where he grew up and a funeral was held on February 16.