if you look at the wiki pedia link it suggests that he was not beheaded but was visited by a doctor of the time and may have been ill and passed away from attempts to cure him..
his hiding from public view After Richard III's accession, the princes were gradually seen less and less within the Tower, and by the end of the summer of 1483 they had disappeared from public view altogether.
Dominic Mancini recorded that after Richard III seized the throne, Edward and his younger brother Richard were taken into the "inner apartments of the Tower" and then were seen less and less until they disappeared altogether. During this period Mancini records Edward was regularly visited by a doctor, who reported that Edward, "like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him."[7] The Latin reference to "Argentinus medicus" had previously been translated to mean "a Strasbourg doctor"; however, D.E. Rhodes suggests it may actually refer to "Doctor Argentine", whom Rhodes identifies as John Argentine, an English physician who would later serve as provost of King's College, Cambridge, and as doctor to Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King Henry VII of England (Henry Tudor).[5]
Edward and his brother Richard's fate after their disappearance remains unknown, but many believe that they were murdered. The suspects include King Richard (the most widely accepted theory[8]); Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who was accused of the murder by a contemporary chronicler[dubious – discuss];[9] Richard's servant James Tyrrell, who in 1502 was alleged to have confessed to committing the murder on Richard's orders;[10] Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard at Bosworth Field and took the throne as Henry VII; and Margaret Beaufort, Henry's mother.[11] There is however "no proof that the Princes were killed by anyone".[11]
Thomas More wrote that the princes were smothered to death with their pillows, and his account forms the basis of William Shakespeare's play Richard III, in which Tyrrell murders the princes on Richard's orders. Subsequent re-evaluations of Richard III have questioned his guilt, beginning with William Cornwallis early in the 17th century.In the period before the boys' disappearance, Edward was regularly being visited by a doctor; historian David Baldwin extrapolates that contemporaries may have believed Edward had died either of an illness (or as the result of attempts to cure him).
Bones belonging to two children were discovered in 1674 by workmen rebuilding a stairway in the Tower. On the orders of King Charles II, these were subsequently placed in Westminster Abbey, in an urn bearing the names of Edward and Richard. The bones were reexamined in 1933 at which time it was discovered the skeletons were incomplete and had been interred with animal bones. It has never been proven that the bones belonged to the princes.
