Billionaire playboy Guenter Sachs, the German-born previous husband of Brigitte Bardot, shot himself to death at his home in the Swiss resort of Gstaad at the age of 78, German TV network ARD supposed Sunday.
In a suicide note from Sachs spread to Swiss and German media outlets by his relatives, Sachs said he had been pain from a "hopeless illness" and that he felt he was losing his memory, capacity to think and converse obviously.
"That danger was for me always the single criteria for putting an end to my life," Sachs said in the note. His relatives said it had been Sachs' "speak wish" to have the note available after his death.
The family did not supply details on his death. But German media quoted Swiss police say he shot himself to death on Saturday at his chalet in Switzerland. Sachs became a Swiss citizen in 1976.
Sachs was the great-grandson of Adam Opel, the founder of the Opel car company. Thanks to his great wealth, Sachs was a prestigious member of the "jet set" in the 1960s and 1970s.
Sachs was lovingly linked in the early 1960s with Iranian queen Soraya Esfandiary. He wedded Bardot in 1966, just weeks after they met. After their divorce three years afterward, Sachs wedded a previous Swedish model, Mirja Larsson, in 1969.
Sachs, who was born in the southern German town of Schweinfurt in 1932, was also known around the earth as a photoGrapher, art collector and maker of documentary movies.
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