These days, people seem kindly disposed to Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, because of the cheerful way she’s carried on with life even amid her recent diagnosis with skin cancer and the ongoing fallout of Andrew’s public disgrace due to his friendship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
But the reported death of their daughter Beatrice’s ex-boyfriend, an American “playboy” named Paolo Liuzzo in Miami, has renewed questions around some of the parenting choices that she and Andrew made with regard to their oldest daughter.
The Sun reported that Liuzzo died in early February of a suspected drug overdose at a Miami hotel, but his death only became publicly known this week. The Daily Mail cited a friend who said that the Long Island native, the heir to a plastics fortune, had been living a “very fast lifestyle” in recent years, which included drug abuse, gambling and being in debt to loan sharks.
As the public has been reminded, Princess Beatrice, now 35, and Liuzzo dated in 2005 — when she was 17 and he was 24. While Beatrice and Liuzzo initially kept their relationship under wraps, Sarah publicly supported the romance after it became known in 2006, Page Six reported. She and her husband, the Duke of York, also invited him to join in a family skin vacation in Switzerland.
This voice of support came even though some would question such an age difference when it involves a teenage girl, and even though Liuzzo had what the New York Post in 2006 called “a checkered past.” Four years earlier, in 2002, he had been charged with manslaughter in the death of a fellow student at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. A 19-year-old freshman was killed in a drunken, off-campus brawl, the Daily Mail said.
Liuzzo’s lawyers eventually got the manslaughter charges dismissed, the Daily Mail reported. Prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge of assault and battery in 2004, which led to a suspended sentence and community service rather than jail time.
Liuzzo, who once confessed to having a weakness for women, met Beatrice, then fifth in line to the British throne, in July 2005. They were introduced by mutual friends while he was working in London. In expressing her support for her daughter’s fledgling romance, Sarah said, according to The Sun, “We all have our own journeys and have to learn our way but Beatrice is a sensible girl, soon to be 18, with many friends including Paolo.”
About the year that Luizzo dated Beatrice, he later told the Daily Mail that he became close enough to the family that Sarah called herself his “second mother.” Sarah also would go out drinking with him and Beatrice in London, even though the princess was under-aged at the time. He said the duchess also was known to smoke pot around him and both her daughters when they all vacationed together in Jamaica, the Daily Mail reported.
Prince Andrew, moreover, developed a close relationship with his daughter’s boyfriend, the Daily Mail reported. Liuzzo said that Elizabeth II’s son, who reportedly was always cash-strapped, once woke him up to ask to borrow $10,000 to handle some personal matter involving model Angie Everhart, described as his on-off girlfriend.
When news of his romance became public, Liuzzo told The Sun that he felt as though he had been “given a second chance” in life with Beatrice. “I’m not going to blow it,” he said.
One of Beatrice’s friends also told The Sun that he was her first real boyfriend. The princess even considered going to university in the United States so they could be together.
However, as the romance increasingly become public fodder, scandal erupted over the terms of Liuzzo’s probation from the manslaughter case, the Daily Mail reported. His probation only permitted him to travel outside the United States for business, not for personal reasons, such as going on a Swiss ski trip with his girlfriend’s family.
Liuzzo had to return to the United States, where his probation was extended, due to the violation, the Daily Mail reported. The queen herself summoned Andrew, Sarah and Beatrice to lunch to discuss the romance, the Daily Mail reported. After that, Liuzzo said that Sarah told Beatrice to call off the romance.
In a later interview with the Daily Mail, Liuzzo claimed that his feelings for Beatrice actually were never that serious; he said she was more “keen” on him than he was on her. “I loved her but I wasn’t in love with her,” he said.
Beatrice moved on, marrying Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, a property developer and English-born Italian noble, in 2020. Their daughter, Sienna, was born in 2021.
But it may be no coincidence that Beatrice’s romance with Liuzzo — with all the blurring of parent-teen child boundaries — took place around the same time that Andrew and Sarah were blurring boundaries in other ways — by allowing the duke’s financier friend, Jeffrey Epstein, to become a fixture in the family’s life.
As early as 1998, Andrew and Sarah reportedly brought their daughters with them when they vacationed on Epstein’s private island in the Bahamas. The Yorks had divorced in 1996, but remained on friendly terms, especially around matters of co-parenting.
In 2006, the ex-spouses also invited Epstein and his socialite friend Ghislaine Maxwell to attend the lavish, Victorian-themed 18th birthday party they threw for Beatrice at Windsor Castle. The gala cost nearly $500,000 and featured female guests donning opulent Victorian-style gowns with corsets and bustles, the Daily Mail said.
The gala also took place eight days before Epstein was first arrested by U.S. law enforcement officials during an original sex trafficking investigation that led to him pleading guilty in 2008 to solicitation of a minor. The conviction meant that Epstein had to register as a sex offender.
Eleven years later, the financier died by suicide in a Manhattan prison after he was arrested on new federal sex trafficking allegations. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted of recruiting underage girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
