14 DAY TRIAL // An inquiry into the death of Peaches Geldof, daughter of famous musician Bob Geldof, has determined that the model and TV personality succumbed to a heroin overdose. Peaches had had drug problems before, but she managed to stay clean for a while before she started using again at the beginning of the year.
The coroner confirmed that Peaches succumbed due to a fatal dose of heroin, which was discovered in a box containing sweets, according to the Telegraph. Peaches was just 25 years old at the time of her death and also was the mother of two young children.
When she was found dead in the spare bedroom of her home in Kent, she was at home with her 11-month-old son Phaedra, who was still in the next room. Tragically, Peaches had managed to beat her heroin addiction just months before but she relapsed in her addiction in February this year.
This relapse was going to prove fatal because one month later, in April, she would be found dead in her home, something which at first baffled investigators, because there was no sign of foul play or any indication that she had committed suicide.
The investigation revealed that police officers found several grams of high-purity heroin in her house after her death, hidden away in a cloth bag in a cupboard. In another part of the house, they found close to 80 needles and a number of burnt spoons, indicating that Peaches had indeed become a regular user again.
The syringe with which she injected the lethal dose of the drug was found in a sweets box near her bed. In a weird twist of fate, Peaches' own mother, Paula Yates, died in a similar manner, also of a heroin overdose in 2000.
What the investigation found strange was that prior to her own death, Peaches had posted a photo of her and her mother together on social media, which many took as a form of premonition.
In the end, police investigators came to the conclusion that the overdose was accidental and that it was caused by the fact that the tolerance to the effects of heroin is reduced during a period of “staying clean.” Peaches had no idea that the quantity she was injecting was going to prove deadly to her after her break.
Death was also caused by the fact that the model used a high-concentration drug, close to 61% purity, which made the injection fatal. Street heroin usually has a purity no higher than 26%, and since the sample Peaches had was nearly three times over that threshold, it turned out to be a deadly quantity.