'Rausing lay dead for three weeks': report

Police suspect that Eva Rausing, wife of Tetra Pak heir Hans Kristian Rausing, lay dead in her London flat for three weeks before her body was found, according to recent media reports.

• Tetra Pak heir suspected of murdering wife (13 Jul 12)
• Death of Tetra Pak heir's wife a 'mystery': police (11 Jul 12)
• Tetra Pak heir held after wife found dead (11 Jul 12)

British newspaper The Sunday Times has spoken with Eva Rausing's younger sister Be, who began to panic when she hadn't heard from her sister in some time, and travelled to London in an attempt to contact her.

"I banged on her bedroom door for a week. Now I think she was lying in there. Dead."

The last contact Eva Rausing had with her family was reportedly a text message send on 3 May. When the family was unable to reach her, her sister decided to fly to London in early June.

"The housekeeper let me in and I went upstairs to her bedroom and I was knocking on the door and texting her and calling out to her and there was no reply," Be said to the British paper Mail on Sunday.

After a week of fruitless attempts at contact, Be finally flew back to America.

"My father wrote to Hans saying Eva was missing and that she had said if that ever happened, he must contact the police."

Hans Kristian Rausing, Eva Rausing's husband and heir to the Tetra Pak fortune, has been arrested on suspicion of her murder, but according to reports in the Aftonbladet daily newspaper is still hospitalized, and police have so far been unable to interrogate him.

The Sunday Times reported that Hans Kristian is being treated with methadone, a synthetic drug used to treat heroin addicts.

Friends and family of the couple, who met in an addiction clinic, have been trying to get them off drugs for years, but to no avail.

"Eva’s parents tried, the Rausings tried, friends tried. It seemed like anyone who ever knew them staged some sort of intervention but nothing helped. The reality is they were both very, very serious addicts and addiction is a progressive disease," said a family friend to the Mail on Sunday.