Paula Yates post-mortem 'inconclusive'

LONDON, England (CNN) - A post-mortem on the British TV personality Paula Yates has failed to reveal how she died.

A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard police said an examination carried out on Monday was inconclusive. "We await the result of further tests," she said.

Yates was found dead at her west London home over the weekend. An inquest will open at Westminster coroner's court on Wednesday.

The untimely death dominated British newspapers on Monday. It was reported that an empty vodka bottle and a partly-empty bottle of painkillers lay by her naked body and traces of heroin were found on a bedside table.

Many papers said Yates's body was discovered by Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, her four-year-old daughter by the rock star Michael Hutchence.

Tiger, as she is popularly known, is reported to have answered the phone to a family friend and said she could not wake her mother up.

Yates's former husband, Bob Geldof, father of three of her four children, said in a statement: "We are all so sad. The loss for all the children is unsupportable."

Yates, 41, was best known for her work on ground-breaking youth television shows The Big Breakfast and The Tube and for her relationships with rock stars Geldof and the late INXS lead singer Hutchence.

But there were reports of increasingly erratic behaviour, and even a suicide attempt, following the discovery of Hutchence's body in an Australian hotel room in November 1997.

Her former lawyer, Mark Stephens, said Yates "lived life with a ferocious energy."

"Paula was a woman led by strong emotions and passions which led to great highs and lows."

He said he believed that "she was now with the man who she loved."

The coroner returned a verdict of suicide on Hutchence's death which Yates always rejected, saying that his hanging was an accident and that he would not had left her and Tiger.

She recently discovered that television presenter Hughie Green was her father, not Jess Yates who had brought her up, and has been involved in legal battles with Hutchence's family over his estate.

It is reported that Geldof, the man behind Live Aid, is currently looking after Tiger, along with the three children he and Yates had together, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie.

Yates left Geldof for Hutchence in 1995 having met when she interviewed him, in bed, for The Big Breakfast.

Reuters contributed to this report.

INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence found dead in hotel room
November 22, 1997
Paula Yates: Celebrity beset by tragedy

The Michael Hutchence Memorial Website
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