Man in Peaches drug claim was expelled from university 'for threat to kill girl'

The man who posted pictures of Peaches Geldof online after they had a lurid one-night stand has previously been accused of threatening to slit the throat of another 21-year-old girl.

In 2007 Ben Mills was accused of holding a female student at his New Jersey university at knifepoint and saying he would kill her.

Police sources said he was charged with aggravated assault, criminal restraint, possession of a weapon and the US offence of making ‘terroristic threats’.

They said he was subsequently expelled, although the charges were thought to have been dropped.

Glazed: Peaches with Ben Mills in one of the photos he has posted online

The troubling development will cause more anguish to Peaches’ father, Live Aid founder Bob Geldof.

Twenty-three-year-old Mills, who friends say is now a struggling New York artist, has posted nude photos on the online site Reddit.com of him with Peaches, 21.

He claims the pictures were taken during a heroin-fuelled one-night stand in Los Angeles last November after which they allegedly underwent a detoxification ritual at a Scientology centre.

Lawyers for Peaches contend the photos were taken when the pair were drunk, rather than doing drugs.

Controversial: Peaches Geldof in one of the shots published in the U.S; we have cropped it for decency

New York writer Sara Drew Grant, who was invited on several dates by Mills this year, said he has a reputation as an exhibitionist.



But she said she was shocked by his decision to publicly humiliate Peaches, adding: ‘He didn’t seem like the type to post the pics to the internet.’

According to public records, however, Mills has a controversial past.

He grew up in a wealthy area of California’s Silicon Valley and was a brilliant student, who read politics at Drew University in New Jersey.

But on March 3, 2007, police investigated a report from an undergraduate who claimed he had locked her inside her college residence, held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her.

Peaches was instantly recognisable in the pictures which were originally posted on website Reddit because of the distinctive tattoos all over her body

She escaped after a brief struggle and Mills was charged and held in a jail.

Last night a police source said: ‘I cannot reveal the outcome of the case except to tell you that Mr Mills was expelled from the university.’

The artist claims he met Peaches when they were staying with a mutual friend while she attempted to record a debut album.

They allegedly drove around Los Angeles looking for syringes and cotton wool. They also bought lemons to dissolve heroin that he claimed Peaches said she had brought from England.

Shrugging off the scandal: Peaches was spotted getting a Starbucks in Los Angeles on Saturday



By 5am, Mills claimed: ‘I was high as a kite and we start to watch a movie. Things get hot and heavy and before I know it we’re naked.’

Peaches has long been linked to drugs. In May 2008 she was questioned but not charged after being seen offering a drug pusher up to £190, and two months later she was treated by emergency paramedics after an overdose and was believed to have stopped breathing for several minutes until she was revived.

In August 2008, she admitted she took drugs but insisted: ‘It’s something people go through in their lives, especially growing up in London.’

Her lawyers have denied Mills’s claims. They said: ‘The allegations that our client was carrying and injecting heroin are denied, our client having consumed alcohol with the other individual leading to the “highs” described and portrayed in the photographs.’



They said the alleged visit to a Scientology centre was ‘fictitious’. Mills could not immediately be located for comment.