Missing earl was 'beaten to death'

French investigators believe that the missing Earl of Shaftesbury was battered to death by his brother-in-law during a quarrel about money.

The 67-year-old earl's third wife, accused of his murder, has told investigators her brother beat him to death and abandoned his body in a forest, the newspaper Le Parisien said.

"I didn't want him to die. I just asked my brother to intimidate him so he would continue my allowance," the newspaper quoted Djamila M'barek, 37, as having told detectives in Nice.

"But [the earl] didn't want to listen. A violent fight broke out. I went out of the room because I couldn't bear to look."

Other judicial sources have said that M'barek has admitted to being involved in the "criminal disappearance" of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, last seen in Cannes in November. Last weekend she was placed under formal investigation for "homicide volontaire" or murder.

Her brother Mohamed M'barek, 41, has been arrested in Germany. Judicial sources said that he will be formally accused of murder once he is extradited to France, which may take a month or more.

Djamila M'barek, a bar hostess of Tunisian and Dutch origin, married the playboy earl in 2002. According to leaks from the investigation to the French press, he decided to divorce her last year

. He is said to have met another club hostess, Nadia, 32, and installed her in a flat in Vence, a town in the hills just behind the French Riviera. When Nadia became pregnant, Le Parisien reported, the earl was "mad with joy" and decided to divorce Djamila M'barek.

His estranged wife's lawyer, Maitre Franck de Vita, told journalists that relations between the two remained good and there was no quarrel over money.

According to the transcript of Djamila M'barek's statement to investigators, quoted by Le Parisien, the earl's body was placed in the boot of a car and then abandoned in a forest.

- INDEPENDENT