POLICE investigating the murder of Edouard Stern, 50, a multi-millionaire French banker found shot dead at his home in a latex rubber suit, are studying starkly conflicting views of his character as they comb his private and professional lives for clues to his killing.

The details of Stern’s unusual attire, which were leaked to the Swiss press, have heightened speculation about what one associate called a “fervent” private life, supposedly embracing sado-masochistic acts in Geneva’s red light district.

Because detectives found no sign of a break-in at his luxurious fifth-floor flat, there is suspicion that Stern, a separated father of three children, may have known his killer.

Yesterday, however, a close friend stepped forward to present a very different picture of the banker.

“Edouard never went out, didn’t drink or smoke,” the friend said. “He had a very simple life, went to bed at 11pm and was quite happy to dine on an apple and a yoghurt.”

This contrasting profile was welcomed by champions of the alternative theory that the shooting may been related to business and the latex “catsuit” was nothing more than an attempt to throw police off the scent.

Some associates of the banker, who was shot twice in the head and once in the body, are convinced that he was the victim not of a perverse crime of passion, but of a contract killing linked to a series of eastern European property deals in which he was involved.

They reacted with scepticism to suggestions that he had a predilection for exotic sexual adventure. Delta, the British engineering company of which Stern was chairman, issued a statement to calm shareholders, emphasising that it had yet to verify these “distressing reports”.

Neighbours at 17 rue Adrien-Lachenal, where Stern lived in Geneva’s chic Eaux-Vives district, were unable to shed any light on his private life.

“I saw him occasionally in the lift but that was it,” said a British man. “He kept himself to himself.”

Nobody in the building, which is protected by security cameras and has a police station on the ground floor, heard anything, suggesting that the killer may have used a silencer.

As they awaited the results of a post-mortem examination, police were trying to establish this weekend whether Stern, who collected antique weapons, had been killed with one of his own guns.

His widow, Beatrice David-Weill, an art historian who lives in New York with their children, was believed to have flown to Geneva in her family’s private jet to identify his remains.

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