Paperback: The scandalous debauchery of the playboy 10th Earl of Shaftesbury sent seismic shock waves through the British aristocracy.
One of the riches men in the country, he abandoned his loyal wife and two sons for a depraved life of drunken orgies, cocaine, and bed-hopping in the South of France. His riotous romp plumbed the depths when he divorced the mother of his children to marry a foreign prostitute, whom he treated lavishly.
Within two years, however, he was planning to divorce her to install another from his stable of swingers as Countess and chatelaine of his Dorset mansion and estates.
But ugly fate caught up with him first.
After being reported missing in November 2004, his skeletal remains were found several months later among household rubbish in what had once been a beauty spot on the ritzy French Riviera.
The Countess and her psychopath brother were convicted of the premeditated murder, committed in a desperate attempt to retain the titled status and a lion's share of the inheritance before the Earl had changed his will. The full, tawdry story has never been told - until the publication of this book in 2016. People privy to the Earl's darkest secrets have been tracked down and have filled in vital gaps never revealed or published before. Hollywood superstars and a reigning monarch were even cited at the trial. In this meticulously researched book, the author has unearthed truths beyond the most warped imagination.
The Murder of Lord Shaftesbury: The True Story of the Passionate Love Affair that Ended in High Society's Most Shocking Murder (2016) is the shocking true account of how an ancient and distinguished aristocratic family found its reputation blackened almost beyond repair.
The book can be purchased from Amazon.
About the author: Michael Litchfield is the author of several true-crime and current-affair books. His background is rooted in investigative journalism. He worked as a crime correspondent for several national newspapers and was contracted to Time/Life magazine to investigate the Mafia's infiltration of the Bahamas government. His books on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie and the biography of controversial Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Sir James Anderton, coupled with the Northern Ireland terrorist issue, were highly acclaimed, staying for several weeks in the top ten non-fiction bestsellers' lists. His last staff newspaper appointment was as political editor in London with Northcliffe Newspapers.
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