The 10th Earl of Shaftesbury was a wealthy landowner of over 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) in East Dorset, and received honours and awards for his philanthropic and conservationist work, which included planting over a million trees in South West England.

The first ancestor to reside in Wimborne St Giles was Robert Ashley (born c. 1415), fifth great grandfather of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury.

[11][12] Built in 1651, the family seat of St Giles House was unoccupied for many years following the death of the 9th Earl of Shaftesbury, and fell into disrepair apart from one wing used as the estate office.

At Eton, he wrote an article for the college magazine in which he described English debutantes as "round-shouldered, unsophisticated garglers of pink champagne".

Shaftesbury and de Paolis were declared husband and wife at the Westminster Register Office in front of a few friends, with none of his family in attendance.

Christina, Countess of Shaftesbury, and their sons remained in residence in Wimborne St Giles, while the Earl relocated to France,[5] embarking on a string of short-lived and expensive love affairs with younger women distinguished by their exotic looks and equally colourful histories.

Shaftesbury had an apartment in Versailles, (furnished with £3m worth of antique art and furniture) but spent much of his time on the Cote d'Azur where he enjoyed a social life fuelled by drugs and alcohol.

A friend described him as becoming a "philanthropist who specialised in rescuing lap dancers" while his French lawyer, Thierry Bensaude, more diplomatically referred to him as "a philosophical adventurer in society".

[10] In early 2002, an article in the Daily Telegraph described the 63-year-old lord, "dressed in leather trousers and open-necked, pink silk shirts, with a gold chain draped around his neck".

[29] By April 2004, the couple were separated when Lord Shaftesbury started a new relationship with a young mother of two named Nadia Orche, who has been described as a "club hostess from Cannes" and a "Moroccan prostitute".

[33][35] After not hearing from Shaftesbury in a week, they remained concerned when he failed to return to his rented flat in Adelaide Crescent, Hove.

Anthony Nils, elder son of the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, was regularly in touch with the police following his father's disappearance and travelled to Nice to confer with French authorities there.

"[36] Family and concerned individuals initially feared that the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury had been kidnapped by Russian or North African gangsters who were plotting to steal his fortune.

The theory was that some of his more disreputable acquaintances had decided to kidnap the peer and were now engaged in some scheme to force him into signing away part of his inherited wealth.

"[34] Within a month of Shaftesbury's disappearance, Detective Chief Superintendent Graham Cox, head of Sussex Police CID, who had been contacted by Lady Frances Ashley-Cooper, said that they were treating the matter as a murder case.

[36][38] In February 2005, his wife Jamila M'Barek was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she had an emotional breakdown and began confessing to her involvement in her husband's death.

By that time, he had given her a windmill in the Gers region of southwestern France, the €700,000 duplex in a villa in Cannes, which included staff, a 4x4 car, and a monthly allowance, ranging between €7,500 and €10,000.

[5] On 7 April 2005, a body in an advanced state of decomposition was discovered by the French authorities in a valley at Théoule-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes on the outskirts of Cannes.

[41][44][45] A forensic examination of the skeletal remains revealed injuries including a broken ankle, and a double fracture to the larynx which indicated strangulation as the cause of death.

[46] Having struck gold when she married the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, she then faced "looming financial disaster" in the event of a divorce and set out "consciously and without constraint, to accomplish his assassination".

[46] Testimony was presented that in October 2002, Mme M'Barek had convinced the peer that she was pregnant with his child, and as a result, Shaftesbury married her on 5 November 2002.

When Shaftesbury initiated divorce proceedings, his wife feared losing her valuable inheritance and began to take steps to secure her financial future.

[5] —Lady Frances Ashley-Cooper Mme M'Barek discounted the investigative report and stated that her marriage to Shaftesbury "was a curse", describing her husband as "a loner" who "had no friends" which is why "he drank a lot".

On the third day of the trial, the courtroom descended into chaos as Monsieur M'Barek burst into tears and then jumped to his feet pointing at Shaftesbury's family.

[37][49][50] The French authorities suspected that there was a conspiracy to murder Shaftesbury, when they discovered that Mme M'Barek transferred €150,000 into her brother's bank account the week following her husband's disappearance.

The prosecution viewed this as payment for services rendered, although Mme M'Barek testified that she had given her brother the money in order for him to buy a house for their ailing mother.

[37][48] In her defence, Mme M'Barek denied any financial motive in wishing her husband dead and claimed that she had no need of his fortune, stating that she had "always been prosperous".

[28] All three individuals denied ever meeting Jamila M'Barek and declined to attend court to comment on her allegations or serve as character witnesses.

[51] Mme M'Barek further stated that the arguments she had with her husband had nothing to do with money, but rather arose as a result of Lord Shaftesbury's excessive sexual demands brought on by his seemingly endless injections of testosterone.

[37] The strongest piece of evidence presented by the prosecution were details revealed in a secretly recorded telephone conversation between Jamila M'Barek and her sister, Naima, in which the former discussed £100,000 (€150,000) blood money paid to her brother.