Lady Beth Douglas died of a drug overdose earlier this year. Photo/Facebook.
Lady Beth Douglas died of a drug overdose earlier this year. Photo/Facebook.
A troubled 18-year-old aristocrat who died of a drug overdose earlier this year worked as a prostitute to make ends meet, her boyfriend has claimed.
Lady Beth Douglas, also known as Ling Ling, was the youngest daughter of Lord David, the 12th Marquess of Queensberry.
She was found unconscious in a Notting Hill apartment by her boyfriend Jenan Herzog Karagoli following a two-day drug and alcohol binge in early March, and died soon after. Last week, an inquest into Lady Beth's death heard she and Karagoli attended a party on March 6.
Karagoli left his girlfriend of ten months to buy a bottle of wine at 8pm and found her asleep on the couch when he returned, The Sun reported.
He also fell asleep but woke at around 1.30am and realised something was wrong.
He called emergency services, but Lady Beth could not be saved. The inquest found she died due to cardiac respiratory failure and cocaine and heroin poisoning.
Speaking with the Mail on Sunday, Karagoli said Lady Beth, a talented violinist, had made money from prostitution and online sex videos before her death as well as from selling her underwear online for $NZ56.
"I knew about all this adult work, escorting, so on and so forth — but I kept my mouth shut," he told the publication.
Karagoli, who also used drugs, said the couple had fought about her sex work, which he was "disgusted" by.
"I knew something had been happening but my mind was too clouded from the drink and drugs," he said.
"I told her: 'I know what you're doing, you can talk to me about it. You don't have to hide things from me and, if you're desperate for money, I'll help.'"
He said in the months leading to her death, Lady Beth performed dominatrix webcam shows and spoke to him about selling her underwear online.
"I now think all of this was a gateway to her seeing men in person," Karagoli said.
According to The Sun, the inquest heard Lady Beth had a history of drug and alcohol abuse and lived with several mental illnesses including bipolar disorder and emotionally unstable personality disorder.
However, her father Lord Queensbury told the coroner he believed Lady Beth had not taken heroin before her death.
"I am almost certain that this is the first occasion in which my daughter, who had taken a lot of drugs, but she had not had intravenous heroin before as far as I know," he said.
"No one takes their first intravenous injection of heroin without assistance. Someone helped her and nobody seems interested as to who that is."
Lady Beth Douglas died of a drug overdose caused by heroin and cocaine. Photo/Getty Images.
Karagoli also told the Mail his partner "had her demons".
"A lot of it stemmed from losing her half-brother Milo. She loved him and would often tell me he was the only sibling to truly accept her," he said.
She also claimed her family was afflicted by a "Queensberry curse" which dated back to 1298 when ancestor Sir William Douglas died in the Tower of London after joining William Wallace against the English.
Since then, a number of descendants have experienced tragedy and misfortune, including Lady Beth Douglas' half-sister Lady Alice Douglas, married a convicted armed robber who cheated on her with an eu pair, and half-brother Milo Douglas, who took his own life in 2009 aged 34.
