PAULA YATES' TRAGIC DEATH

HOW HER OVERDOSE ROCKED THE FAMILY TO ITS CORE

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To the public, Paula Yates was a wild child who lived a rollercoaster life of sex and drugs and rock and roll. But what drove her to a fatal drug binge 20 years ago?

Three years after the death of her partner, INXS rocker Michael Hutchence, a shattered Paula Yates died of an accidental heroin overdose on September 17, 2000, aged 41. Heartbreakingly, it was Paula and Michael’s then 4-year-old daughter Tiger Lily Hutchence who was found alone with her mother’s body.

And tragedy has shadowed Paula’s family, with her other daughter, Peaches Geldof, also dying of a heroin overdose in 2014.

Paula – who was also mother to daughters Fifi and Pixie – was sober for two years prior to her overdose. But the stress of moving back to London saw her falling back into bad habits.

On the morning of September 17, Paula’s friend Josephine Fairley Sams had telephoned to remind Paula it was her daughter Pixie’s 10th birthday, only for Tiger Lily to tell her: “Mummy was still sleeping”, and she wouldn’t wake up.