PARIS -- Prince Edouard-Xavier de Lobkowicz, son of one of Europe's most celebrated aristocratic families, was shot with a hunting rifle and his body tossed into the Seine River weighed down with an iron bar, news reports said today.
De Lobkowicz's badly-decomposed body was found April 27 in the river southeast of Paris, with bullet wounds in the neck and shoulder blade, the reports said, quoting evidence cited by a coroner.
The body of the 23-year-old prince had been in the water for 'for some time,' a huge slab of metal attached to his waist.
The reports said the prince, the son of Princess Francoise de Bourbon-Parma and Edouard de Lobkowicz, an internationally known exchange dealer, left his posh Paris home the evening of April 2, saying he had an appointment.
His parents reported the prince's disappearance two days later, but it was not until the middle of the month that his car was found in the parking lot of a Paris railroad station with no further clues as to his whereabouts.
The body of the prince, who intended to pursue a career in finance, remained unidentified for over a week after its discovery, the reports said.
The reports said there was no apparent reason why the affable prince had been murdered. The mass circulation daily France Soir suggested, however, that he might have been abducted because of his family's connections with charitable organizations for Lebanese Christians.
The newspaper also said his family's association with the arms industry could also have prompted a kidnapping.
