Welcome to this Evening's classic episode. Do you guys remember Princess Diana feels like a little softball?
But well, I mean I didn't know her personally, but she certainly loomed large in my childhood's on like the news, you know. And then of course her tragic demise was a massive media frenzy that you just could not be ignored.
Well, yeah, I recall a lot of positivity reported on her in her life, at least here in the US, but I know throughout the rest of the world and in a lot of places, even in Great Britain, there were other things swirling about her in the news and in the rumor mills, and her death caused such, you know, a shock to the system, I think globally. There were so many things written about it and you know, proposed about why her death occurred.
Yeah, it certainly reframed the way the world thought about Paparazzi.
Born on July one, nineteen sixty one, dead in a horrific car crash only age thirty six on August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven. People are still wondering, speculating about exactly what happened. And here in our classic episode from twenty nineteen. We dive all the way.
In from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control deck, and most importantly, you are you. You are here so cheer. You know that makes this stuff they don't want you to know a bit of a British episode for us today, we're going across the pond Pip as they called it in the Transatlantic Times. Not many people say over the pond these days.
Helly ho sure, Yeah, that's all I got. I love pit Pip. People need to bring that back.
I've I've been tremendously instrumental in bringing back tut tut, such that some of my friends banned me from it for a few months.
Yeah.
There are times when, in a serious, somber moment in someone's life, Matt, they don't need to hear the phrase tut tut. It's as unhelpful as saying I told you so, or that reminds me of a thing that happened to me, you know what I mean.
It's just a verbal stand in for a finger wag, isn't it.
It's a bit Yeah, I feel maybe a little aw shuxi too, you know, like if a kid is scared of a thunderstorm or something, it's like tut tied. I don't know.
I've definitely experienced a few. It's not erroneous tut tuts, but just tut tut that appear out of nowhere and when I'm not expecting them.
Oh, really, like in the wild, in the field, in.
The field, Wait, doesn't Pooh Bear say tut tut? It looks like rain Oh, I don't know it is? Yeah, thank he does.
Tut tut is a small admonishment or disappointment.
That's That's exactly where I've been hearing it. I've got a giant book of Winning the Pooh stuff and reading and my son and he totally says, tut tut.
Uh, dude, your kid's so cool.
You're so cool for bringing the Pooh man, bringing the.
Poop kind of bring the Pooh dude.
None of my heroes wear pants. It's true. Why are we talking about British nomenclature and terminology. It's a great question. We can answer it now. It's a little bit of a downer answer. It turns out that on August thirty first, nineteen ninety seven, Diana, known as the Princess of Wales, died in a Parisian hospital as the result of injuries from a car crash. This is something that our fellow listeners have been asking us about for I mean, since
we started this show. It's one of the first suggestions we got, and we just never did it because again we were originally video only.
Yes, and our video did cover some of the main things we will be discussing today, but we in this format get to dig deep.
Yeah, it's gonna get weird. Her driver was a guy named Henri Paul, her boyfriend was a guy named Dodi Fayed, and her boyfriend's security guard when Trevor Rees Jones were all in the car when the accident occurred, and we were not to date the three of us too hard, but we were all alive at this time. For those of us who were residents of this part of the world. That's right after the Olympics, like a year after the
nineteen ninety six Summer Olympics. And maybe we're too young to remember where we were when we heard about this, but a lot of people around the planet know exactly where they were when the news broke. Do you guys remember do you have any memories of this?
I was fourteen at my parents' house. I know that for sure. Oh, you're just doing the math I'm just doing the maths generally.
Yeah, we're roughly the same age, I believe, man, I guess so. I think so. We've never really compared, but it feels like we are.
So.
I was probably in the neighborhood of fourteen. I remember probably being at my neighbor's house. That's what I'm going to say. I was at my neighbor's house heard.
Yeah, it's strange. It's for a lot of people in the UK or in the Commonwealth, the impact of the tragedy was similar to that of nine to eleven or Pearl Harbor. They remember the exact moment that they heard this news. And it's strange because the two tragedies I just mentioned involved thousands of people, and this involves three deaths and really just one that the public appeared to care about.
But Diana was like a symbol, right, I mean, she was seen as this he was this beloved princess. She was seen as the epitome of goodness and lights, you know, in their country. And then the death in and of itself, of course was tragic, but it also uncovered a bit of scandal that maybe tempered some of those feelings of affection and admiration for this person.
And both of these instances have another thing in common, where there are a tremendous number of people who believe that there is something fishy about them, that perhaps there was some kind of inside job at play.
Absolutely good point, well said. So here are the facts. She's not born the Princess of Wales. Diana is born Diana Francis Spencer on July first, nineteen sixty one. She's already part of the long running one percent of the UK, the aristocracy, the people who own most of the land and have for hundreds and hundreds of years, which barely you're not supposed to talk about there, But that's the that's one of the huge problem of the country.
Everything's fine, keep gone yea yeah.
Right, right right, don't ask questions. So Diana was a child of Viscount and Viscountess Allthorpe. In February of nineteen eighty one, she becomes engaged to Prince Charles. He's the oldest son of the British Queen Elizabeth the Second, in a very hamilton esque move, Charles had previously been engaged to Diana's older sister, one Lady Sarah mccocodell, and Diana and Charles went on about twelve dates before they announced their engagement. So it's it's like Vegas style in terms
of the speed of their relationship. And they had met previously before, when she was sixteen and he was twenty nine. They were wed five months after announcing their engagement at Saint Paul's Cathedral on July twenty ninth, nineteen eighty one. People loved it. People all about the aristocrac and the entire you know, the theater of that system. Yes, and so.
Can't just say, at the risk of being agists that that age difference of twenty nine to sixteen is in my mind personally a little bothersome, but you know, who cares whatever.
Just for the record, anybody wants to know the code or the formula's half your age plus seven. Okay, that's the official okay to date.
I feel that people, and this is not a ding on you, man, but I feel I've heard that before, and often when i've heard it, recite it that way. It's it's from like we're friends, but it's from someone that I don't trust. Because my immediate question, especially I don't know them well, is how many times did you run this formula? How many are you one of those guys?
Well, then, first of all, I'm being tongue in cheek when I say that there's a magic formula that tells you who you are and are not allowed to date. But I agree with you, Ben. When someone really says that with a straight face, then.
Yeah, it's like when someone knows the intricacies of a weird series of laws, like they're like, look, you know, I mean quayludes and in for intent to distribute.
It's really a lot.
Of people think it's based just on the weight, but it's also based on how it's packaged. You're like, cool, man, I just wanted a sprite.
You didn't want any quayludes in your sprite?
No, No, shout out to Church's chicken and shout out to something else is completely irrelevant and we're gonna get back on the topic soon.
But did you know that seven up used to have lithium in it? And yes, up, it was like represented like an up in your mood.
I did not know that.
I knew about cocaine and coca cola, but I did not know about lithium and seven up.
Opium as well, was quite common in a lot of those curative drinks. We could go ahead, and that's a good episode of Saber. Doesn't beat us to it.
Let's just switch gears, guys, let's talk about just jogg. We'll just go for the rest of the episode and pretend that it was about that.
But not sprite. It was seven up. So so speaking of fantastic segues. Uh, the Diana and Charles marriage produces two sons, or they call them having issue. When you're when you're when you're, you know, you win the genetic lottery and your nobility and uh. These would go on to be the tremendously popular princes William and Harry. The marriage was the subject of tons of rumor, mungering and
muck raking, and the local tabloids, which makes sense. What was it was in the old eleanor Roosevelt quote that said, small minds talk about people, middling minds talk about events, and great minds talk about ideas. There's always going to be money in celebrity reporting. It's the banana stand of journalism.
You know, there's money in it.
There's money in it always. So despite the fact that this marriage was seen as this continual source of like Kardashian level reaction, TV showed vicarious train wreck scandals, Diana herself was just as you said, Noel seen as a symbol, a cultural icon, despite the reality of who she was
in society and where she came from. She was respected for her charity work, which was serious, including using the access to tremendous wealth and influence she had to support hospitals, to advocate for the eradication of land mines and to raise awareness of HIV AIDS, mental illness, and cancer. So people people felt, you know, that they identified with her mission.
You know, more than a few folks would hear about this work and say, that's what I would do, you know what I mean, Like, if I had that power, that's what I would do. And then add the human element of being stuck in a bad relationship, and how could you not care about this stranger a little bit?
Oh absolutely, I mean to have royalty care at all. You know within the ivory towers of Royalty, that that people are suffering from something, whether it is from from cancer or family members and friends being under threat of land minds everywhere. That's one of those those subjects that doesn't, at least nowadays, get much attention at all. But that's still a thing across the world, the danger of landmines. And this was literally the princess who gave a crap.
Right right, and so people in general felt a little convicted. People were very You hear this a lot in fiction nowadays, when we're living through the stories of people on screen or on a page. You hear someone say, I'm team whatever, I'm team blah blah blah. There were people who were team the establishment, you know, Buckingham, Team Buckingham, let's call it that, and then team di Diana. But everybody pretty much knew all was not well over in Chuck and
Diana's crib. The media was able to confirm extramarital affairs on both sides of the bed, and eventually even Charles's parents got involved. Let's try to talk these kids off a ledge.
So Charles's parents, Queen Elizabeth the second you know, Queen Elizabeth is still kicking around, and Prince Philip met with the couple.
For kind of like an impromptu marriage counseling session and intervention of sorts. Philip and Diana exchanged letters, very personal letters that summer, and in which she expressed her disappointment at both her and Charles's extra marital affairs and asked her to see both of their slip ups from the other person's point of view. Interesting and very seemingly progressive for what you would think would be a very rigid, high society kind of.
Situation, especially since Prince Philip is on record calling people things like spear chuckers.
Yes, oh that's right, Philip.
Isn't he the one who has a cargo cult?
Yeah?
But like I think they recently took away his license to drive, Yes, because he was crashing into stuff, because he's like one hundred or something.
Now, Yeah, he's quite, he's quite elderly. He is not he is not a perfect.
Person, yeah, exactly. At one point, Philip seemed completely just overwhelmed, ready to give up, and he wrote, quote, I will always do my upmost to help you and Charles to the best of my ability, but I am quite ready to concede that I have no talent as a marriage counselor.
I can I can only imagine, Yeah, someone who has lived the life of Prince Philip, like trying to get into those the deep interpersonal relationships in that way when you're when the life that you live is so guarded from other people just by its nature.
That's very empathetic of you, you know what I mean. I think that's really I think it's really generous of you.
Okay, No, it's true, Nat, because it is hard to even understand how someone with this much privilege, raised this much privilege, could even wrap their heads around or even attempt to exercise this kind of understanding, you know what I mean.
Yeah, well that's without me knowing it what it really is. But that's my understanding of just the schedule that you must keep, the the rigorous relationships of convenience, and just all the things you have to do to uphold your image, right, you know what I mean. Like, it's doesn't lead to a lot of heartfelt talks. In my opinion, he.
Does sound like a like a genuinely concerned kind of parent, you know what I mean. Like if you've ever been on the ounce with a significant other. I'm sure many of us listening have been in that situation where you're like, well, it's not working out with the person i'm dating, but her or his parents are amazing, you know what I mean. And then they like give you advice. Yeah, you know, it's my kid. Why can I say? They're kind of like that sometimes. But you'll work it out, you'll work it out.
You're yeah.
But in this case, they didn't work it out.
No, they did not. Their attempts at reconciliation on all sides were unsuccessful. In December, things start to hit the fan. Prime Minister John Major publicly announces the pair's amicable separation, reading a statement from the royal family. December twentieth, Buckingham Palace announces that the Queen has written separate The British Queen Elizabeth has written separate letters to the couple ordering them to file for divorce as soon as possible. This
was a huge scandal. At the time. People were getting their popcorn in bulk After considering the present situation, the Queen wrote to both the Prince and the Princess earlier this week and gave them her view, supported by the Duke of Edinburgh. That's Philip, that an early divorce is desirable, and boom boom, boom, snapcrackle pop. By August twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six, the divorce was official.
Isn't that interesting? The divorce is desirable. Y'all are making us look bad.
They called it an early divorce. I don't don't drag this.
Out, just just get it over with. Let's move on.
Just your your relationship is old, yeller. Where at the end of the story, just take it out back.
Well, you have to imagine too that I believe it was Charles that first was discovered to have been cheating on Diana's correct with Camilla Parker Bowles, who he is now married to, which maybe led Diana to seek her own extra marital affair, and then maybe at that point it kind of becoming under became an understanding between the two because they were certainly was They were not in
it to win it. They were going to maybe keep it up for the for the public image of it all, but even that I think became untenable because you see pictures of them during these periods and they're sitting at different tables with their backs to each other. It's a very cold war, unfriendly kind of situation. Not any fun to be in and try to keep up appearances, I'm sure.
No.
There's a sad moment in an interview where they're talking about their engagement early on, and some reporter, I don't know if they were in the Inner Circle, but some reporters says, you know, oh, so you're in love blah blah blah, And then the Diana character says, oh, yes, we're in love, and then the Chuck says whatever that means, ech dies or something like that, and it's just it's not a good look. It's a cringe. But yeah, yeah, you're right there. It's a political alliance as much as
a relationship. The idea of the idea of marrying and being in a relationship at all for the purposes of romance is relatively recent in our history, or it's rather it's relatively recent for it to be a commonplace thing, and so the old laws or the old mores probably still hold in a lot of royal families, you know,
and it gets nasty. The public is loving this. Princess Diana has a tell all interview with a BBC, which is very rare for the royal family and all because, as you said, Matt, they function under many constrictions or I don't know, traditions about how they're supposed to be regarded or speak to anyone who was again outside of their inner circle.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And that interview was with Martin Basheer, and that's a very memorable interview if you were alive then because in it she talks about all kinds of details. She again she talks about how she was unfaithful, she talks about Charles's affair, and she has a very famous quote that she gave while in that interview and she said, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. And to that end she's talking about Camilla Parker Bowles. It's pretty tough. Yeah.
And again to Ben's point about how marriage for love wasn't the thing, I mean, these two were completely paired up for political reasons between these families, and Charles and Kamla Parker Bowles had dated like in the seventies, like they already had a relationship, and then when he got paired off with Diana, she ended up marrying her, you know, a former boyfriend of hers, and then they kind of reconnected. So it's sort of like it was set up to fail.
Yeah, but Chuck did choose Diana over her sister, right, I mean, that's one of the first things we set up. Now, I guess I'm just saying.
I'm just saying the whole system of arranged marriages is a little bit yeah kinky.
There are people would argue that the whole system of marriage in general is has problems here here yeah, hey, I said there were people who would Okay, it's very respectful and diplomatic, but yeah, you're there. These are great points. Still, despite whatever weird traditions or cultural brainwashing may be in place in these sorts of systems, you can't change the
fact that people are people, and these people are parents. Right, so they have they have their divorce, but that doesn't mean that just because they're not spouses doesn't mean they can't be good parents. So after the divorce, despite all the you know, bad blood, it's water under the bridge. Charles and Diana worked together to be decent parents to their kids after the divorce, and continue to do so up until Diana's death in August nineteen ninety seven. I
didn't know how old she was at the time. She was thirty six. Yeah, I just I guess I thought she was older, because you know, she was she had done so much with her life, because you know, she didn't have to have a job or a mortgage or student loans, do loans, or pay for insurance, or didn't have to do anything.
No, not really, it's so funny to me too. I think to your point as well, Ben, that she's lifted up as being this model person. But you have to keep in mind that she was a model aristocrat who had unlimited resources. So all it took was a little bit of a streak of kindness that any people in her position could have done. But the fact is most
of them just don't. So she was kind of like the exception to the rule because she was an incredibly wealthy person who very openly was kind to poor people as opposed to it not seeming like just like a tax write off. She was very much in the field and visiting hospitals and all of this stuff. So I'm just saying I'm not diminishing. I don't think you are either been at all any of the good works that
she did. But it certainly easier to hold her up as a shining example of someone of that station, because a lot of them are, you know, pretty self serving and awful.
No matter what she existed in that framework, she did good.
And she was Oh and some of the most influential work she did was making the royal family look good for the people who support their existence.
There you go.
So it was. It was as in the people of the United Kingdom, right, yes, right, right, right.
Right, well yeah, and all of the other territories who also must at least tip their hat.
To Can you imagine growing up in a council estate and walking by Buckingham Palace. It takes some real, some real well thought out rhetoric to make that feel like a good idea, right for society. But that's you know what, that's my opinion. I don't mean to dump on people's choice of tradition. We will return after the break because we have gotten to the pivotal night, the last night that Diana, Princess of Wales spent on Earth. Travel back
with us folks It's August of nineteen ninety seven. Diana's thirty six. She's dating a forty one year old man named Dodi Fayid. He is the son of a man named Mohammed al Fayed, a billionaire, the former owner of Herod's department store. As a matter of fact, he owns a lot of stuff. He owns a yacht that Dodi and Diana are hanging out on and they leave the yacht kind of a vacation excursion thing, and they arrive in Paris.
And they're hanging out in Sardinia and they decide to take off. So Diana leaves in a private jet earlier on that same day, and she arrives in Paris with Dody and they're just planning to stop over briefly on their way to London. In Paris, and you know, they spent nine days together on that yacht and they were hanging out in the French and Italian riviera, just having
a really good time together, spending some time. And you can see lots of photos surrounding this time of them from paparazzi and the like, because you know, whenever, even though she was outside of the of royalty, she was still one of the most photographed humans on the planet. Now, their plan was to stay at the Ritz Paris. This is another property like all the Herods that Dodie's father owned, and they dined at a place called Ritz El Espardon. I don't know how to say that correcton and Diana.
We know this unfortunately because of autopsy and because of you know, just records. But Diana had dover soul vegetable tempora and an asparagus omelet, and that ladies and gentlemen would prove to be her final meal.
They were continually hunted by the press. If you've ever read Watershipped Down, there's a fantastic mythology that the rabbits and that story have about being the prince with a thousand dedamies, you know, And they were in a kind of watership down situation. They were always being pursued by serious journalists, by tabloid journalists, by freelance photographers and so on.
It was terrifying. That's a terrifying thing. Yeah, I mean, I can't say that I know what that's like, but I can imagine because you're using the word hunted. Yeah, and I would agree that that's exactly what it is.
Sometimes they'll say hounded, but it's a synonym at that point, right. So now we return to a man named Henri Paul, an employee of Al Fayed's Paris Ritz. He is the deputy head of security at the hotel, and he has been entrusted with the task of driving a rented black nineteen ninety four Mercedes Bins S two eighty to elude
the press. The idea is this, that they're going to send a decoy car out first, and that the photographers and the press gang will follow that car, and then the chauffeur, Paul, will take Dodi and Diana to an apartment owned by Dowdy's father nearby, and they will spend the night in that apartment, not in the Ritz, before they continue to London. So this car, the car they're actually in, has four passengers, the driver, Dody and Diana in the back, and the guy Trevor Rhys Jones, a
member of the Fayed family security team, riding shotgun. It's late, it's around twelve, it's after twelve twelve, twenty twelve, twenty three or so. They're they're driving, and it turns out the decoy did not work as well as they want.
The press is onto them. Picture people in motorcycles like hauling their keysters off and swerve in Tokyo drift style, while there's another person on the back of the motorcycle leaning out at weird right angles to try to catch the Mercedes in action, hoping against hope that one of
the tented windows is for some reason rolled down. Because if you can get these people's faces in a photograph, you have you know, you have paid your rent for a month or so, you know what I mean, Because unlike the people in the Mercedes, they had jobs and mortgages stuff like that.
Do you guys remember the Paparazzi mission and that Grand Theft auto game. I think it was the one in Los Santos, the most recent one. Yeah, you had to ride, you had to do some very similar stuff. It was like all about you know, literally stalking people on you know, tailing them in cars, riding alongside with motorcycles that you do in a game like that. But yeah, I mean it's really really nasty stuff, right, Yeah, like more than just invasion of privacy, literally putting people at risk.
Absolutely, which comes into play later because the driver loses control on Repaul loses control of the Mercedes at the entrance to the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. The car strikes the right hand wall of the tunnel. It swerves to the left of the two lane road before it collides head on with one of the pillars, I think the thirteenth pillars supporting the roof of the tunnel. At this time, it's traveling about one hundred and five kilometers per hour
sixty five miles an hour. The reports will say between sixty and seventy. The initial reports said one hundred and five miles per hour, but surprise, surprise, somebody was lying to sell more papers in.
An enclosed space. No less, that kind of speed as bad news.
You can see photographs of the Mercedes and it looks ugly. You would think that everyone in there died instantly, especially people in the front. Witnesses reported seeing smoke, and there were a ton of witnesses. They also reported that the area was swarming with photographers and they were all over the car in motorcycles and other automobiles. Before the Mercedes enters the tunnel. This meant that as the victims lay in the vehicle, the press actually arrives before any emergency survey.
And this is where, this is where we can look at the media in an antagonistic way, because a lot of these folks, a lot of these photographers panicked. They ran to the crash, you know, drop their motorcycles, run out of their cars, and they start tugging on the doors, trying to save the lives of these again, human people who have just been in a terrible car accident. Within other photographers stand back, waiting, hoping against hope that someone
pulls open that door of that Mercedes. Because sure, you can pay rent for a month or two if you get if you get someone's face in a photo, but if you get the face of a dying princess, you might be set. I mean, that might be a book deal for you.
Yeah, which is horrific.
Yeah, that's grim all around, because there's gonna be hope, you hope that there's a certain amount of guilt on it, anyone who was pursuing that vehicle once once it crashes, and the feeling of oh no, I need to help,
what have I done? Kind of thing. But you're right, the self preservation in this self, the desire to, like you said, pay a mortgage, something we hit on early on in this it's such a strong desire, strong need to you know, pay for rent, pay for whatever, to survive, that it overtakes and that's what happens.
Or maybe they were just they were just competitive, you know, it was a cutthroat industry. They didn't want other people to get the shot.
Could be that too, either way.
Police later go on to seize film from seven different photographers on this scene. Six of them are French, one of them's from Macedonia. The cops ultimately take twenty rolls of film, which have not been seen as morbid.
As it may sound, kind of a good thing to have so many photographs snapped of a scene as it happened, as it took place in terms of solving the coman out that it was any mystery as to what happened, but right in terms of like evidence that could be entered into the you.
Know, that's a good that's a very good point. You know, we don't know how much of it was kept from the public. We just have in this case of the confiscated stills. We just have the statements of the people who said their stuff was stolen.
But there are a few images that you can find.
Yes, there are there are you can see the car when it's on the back of a tow truck.
Yeah, well, and there are a couple shots. This is the one I'm just gonna shoot. Oh, there's there are a couple of shots in particular that look to be from the a car that is in front of their vehicle that's shooting in and you can see the driver and Trevor Reese Jones. Yeah, and you can kind of see Princess Diana's the back of her head, but you can see just from there that there's flash photography happening in the vehicle in front of them.
Yeah.
Yeah, flash photography. That's gonna be that's gonna be a huge part too, because we have to remember this took place in the late nineties.
So what happens.
We've got the scene of this car accident swarming with photographers, some helping, some not, and where are the police?
So it takes the police ten minutes to arrive, and then the ambulance five minutes after that, So fifteen minutes and Henry Paul and Dodi Fayed were both dead or dying. They died at the scene. Princess Diana was conscious and she was in shock. She was removed from the car at one am, and when she was moved, she went into cardiac arrest, but was successfully resuscitated there on the scene.
She was in the ambulance by one eighteen and left the scene around one forty one, and then finally she made it to the hospital at around two six am.
Fayed and Paul were both declared dead at the scene of the accident. Their bodies were not taken to a hospital. They were taken to a mortuary in Paris, the Institute Medico Legal Diana's internal injuries. Although she looked relatively okay on the exterior, her internal injuries were extensive. Her heart had been physically displaced to the right side of the chest from impact, and this tore the pulmonary vein and
the pericardium. This means that despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including internal cardiac massage and emergency room work, the Princess of Wales passed away at four a m on August thirty first. An anaesthesiologist named Bruno Rio announced her death at six am at a news conference held at the hospital, and thus it came to pass that by dawn, bodyguard Trevor Rhys Jones was the only survivor of the accident, and.
As you can imagine, an investigation ensued, a large investigation, and one person who will become one of the primary I guess sources of information and speculation after this is Mohammed al Fayed, Dody's father. He came forth, He came out publicly and stated that his son, Dodi and Diana were both murdered by the British royal family, and he started using all of his influence to try and find whatever evidence he could find that this was the case.
A billionaire is now facing the royal family, which is.
Honestly going to be one of the few forces that would be effective in presenting a counter argument. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Absolutely, And eventually al fay d totals up around one hundred and seventy five very specific claims that support his belief that it was indeed an inside job by the royal family.
The French government follows up on each of Fayed's claims al Fayed's claims to the best of their ability. This quickly becomes the most expensive road accident investigation in all of French history, counting the time before the invention of the automobile. Autopsy reports from the mortuary mentioned earlier found that the driver on Repall had been impaired while operating the vehicle. At point one seven to five grams of alcohol per milliliter of blood. He was around three point
five times over the legal limit for driving in France. Additionally, there were antidepressants in his system if you believe that autopsy. There was also paint on the car which showed that the Mercedes had made grazing impact with a white vehicle later identified partially due to the chemical composition of the paint as a Fiat Una. This French judicial investigation last eighteen months. It concludes in nineteen ninety nine, and it says,
here's what happened. We looked over what you're claiming, mister al fa Ed. The crash was caused by the chauffeur Henrepall. He lost control of the vehicle at high speed because he was intoxicated. We have made a six thousand page report on this and someone's like, oh, cool, publish it and they're like none, Yeah, they never did. But British
law has to be involved too. This is a former member of the government, really, so The way British law works is it requires an inquest to be held whenever there's a sudden or unexplained death, and this leads us to something called Operation Paget or Operation Paget, depending on how you want to go with it. The Metropolitan Police prepare a report eight hundred and thirty two pages long. This one is published, it's made available to the public.
You can read it now. It has sixteen chapters. It goes into what they see as the sixteen broad categories that al Fayed is raising when he says there's something wrong. They were essentially looking at the stuff that al Fay had said would be inconsistent with an accident, a pure chaotic interaction of chance and tragedy, or consistent with MI
six having ordered the assassination. And after this operation concluded, they handed it over to a British inquest and six years after demise, Michael Burgess, who was then the coroner for the Queen's Household. The British Queen's Household held the
inquest two thousand and eight. Inquest wraps up a United Kingdom jury with eleven members, finds that Henri Paul, the driver of the Mercedes at the time of the crash was culpable due to his gross negligence and that yes, his blood alcohol level was cartoonishly high, three times higher
than a reasonable driver should have. Yeah, and they also found that paparazzi, specifically photographers, were partially responsible for the fatal car accident by driving dangerously, driving recklessly, by possibly distracting an already inebriated driver with flash photography, which goes on to be incredibly important. The coroner for this was a guy named Lord Justice Scott Baker, and he described these verdicts as the equivalent of manslaughter in a criminal court,
which is important. That means someone dies due to maybe negligence, maybe you don't have the best intentions for them, but you're not trying to kill them.
At least, yes, And in this case is the driver who wasn't trying to kill them as well as the paparazzi. So no one was like fully attempting to murder anyone, right, that's what he's saying.
Yeah, the French police cleared photographers are being directly linked to it. But again, the Royal Court of Justice in London heard multiple eyewitnesses talk about blocking cars that were allegedly being used to try to slow down the Mercedes or funnel it, you know, the way like you funnel cattle to a slaughterhouse, into certain roots that they can predict. They found the same thing. As far as the death of dol de Fayed. They said, you know, it's drunk driver.
It's a drunk driver. It's a tragedy. The paparazzi is unethical, but this is not murder. However, it should be no surprise that some people still believe there's more to the story. Quite a few people in Britain, here, in the US, Canada, and around the world are convinced that the official explanation is either somehow inaccurate or purposely a cover up. More than twenty years after the fact, this conspiracy seems to
continue growing. It raises some fascinating points. We'll get to them after a word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy.
What if Diana's car accident wasn't an accident at all?
Yeah, for people who believe that Princess Diana's death was the result of a homicide or a conspiracy rather than an accident, it goes all the way to Buckingham Palace to Royalty, and you know, you wonder well, why in the world would somebody want to take you know, the former Princess Diana out. She's no longer in your hair, she's no longer doing anything, she's not representing you anymore. Why would you want to take her out?
Oh, this is so Game of thrones. There's the idea that Diana was secretly pregnant with do de Fayette's kid, as well as engaged to him, and that the British Queen was, wait for it, royally poded by the idea of a Muslim child being associated.
With the family as a racist angleton somehow, yeah, right, right.
Somehow they were. They were like, look, it's all well and good, we live in an integrated society, but no Muslims in the inner circle. There's not a lot of evidence to support that. It's more like an attitude people assume the royal family would have.
Interesting.
Then there's the one that Charles needed his ex wife dead to somehow clear the way for this new marriage.
And many of these claims would have faded off of the mainstream radar probably were it not for Dodie's father, Muhammad al Fayed. He remains convinced to this day in twenty nineteen that the British Royal family or the forces under their command murdered his son. There's something interesting here, because you know, we have to be very human again and remember that no parents should ever have to bury their child. So of course you want to find for
such a horrific catastrophe to occur. So you'll hear people say, sometimes diplomatically, sometimes in a somewhat callous manner, that this man is just grasping its straws because he can't believe that something as simple and chaotic as an accident could
have taken his child's life. But then we see these strange breadcrumbs people have put together, and we're going to give you a couple of those to hear and to hear what you think, and we'd love to hear from you afterwards as well, to let us and your fellow listeners know where you find yourself in this story. Diana, Princes of Wales, may have predicted her own death, at
least that's what her former butler Paul Burrell believes. When he came forward in two thousand and three, he claimed that the princess had given him a note a dated signed note ten months before death as an insurance policy, was written two months after her nineteen ninety six divorce from Chuck. Diana claimed in the note she believed there was a plan for an accident in my car, brake failure and serious head injury to clear the wave for her ex husband to marry their son's nanny, Tiggy leg Bork.
This letter is not universally accepted. It's got a lot of press. Came forward in a book that the butler wrote, But there are people who will claim that Burrell, as her longtime butler, knew her handwriting well and was capable of forging it.
Yeah, and at that point, it's who do you believe? That's really what it comes down to you.
I wanted to ask, you know, what would a DNA test be worthwhile on that thing, because I would assume it doesn't necessarily prove anything since they were probably in close contact.
That's interesting in whoever has handled it since then, who knows how it was kept? But also, you know handwriting analysis. I haven't actually seen a full investigation into it.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. There are other there are other big claims too.
Well, yeah, well, just the last thing with that is that just because she was she had some fears about her ex husband with this other person, does not mean that he killed her for this reason. And I don't. It's one of those tough it's a tough thing.
Just because her personal belief was there, even if it was her sincere personal belief, it doesn't mean that that's what happened.
Yeah, exactly.
That's a fantastic point. I think that's something that many of us accidentally clays over. But if we're thinking critically, then we have to we have to acknowledge that. We also have to acknowledge a lot of the I would say the bulk of the conspiratorial claims on all fa Ed's part concern secret connections to m I six the Intelligent Services is are is essentially that the royal family wanted his, his son, and and Princess Diana dead, but that you know, the Queen's not going to be out
there with a sniper rifle. You know, Prince Charles isn't gonna show up in like a weird mech or something or pop tires. So they say am I six did their dirty work.
Well, yes, and it let's just let's game here, really, fast. If you are going to murder a former princess and her lover, you cannot make it not look like an accident because it will be such a high profile case immediately no matter how the death occurs. If if you were going to take out a princess or royalty, you would have to make it look like an accident.
Right.
So that's that's one of the other big things that comes into play here because you got people talking about I mean spy literally like the British people paying basically with their taxes to have the princess murder.
But are there any theories surrounding like it with the paparazzis or plants and they were trying to distract the driver and trying to force them off the road, Like do we have any concrete was there, you know, supposedly any manipulation done with the car, any like tampering with I mean, I've never really seen anything like any of those claims.
Well, well, the claim is you don't have to tamper with the car if you've got the driver on your payroll, right. That's that's when he goes back to Henri Paul and you know, did he or did he not have any kind of contacts with the world of intelligence or with you know, people who conduct espionage.
Yeah.
Theorists as well as his friends and people who personally knew him, will claim that he had extensive contacts in the world of intelligence and spycraft. And they'll claim this because of the nature of his employment at the RITZ. The Ritz is a place where important people hang out. It's good to have access there behind the curtain. Was
he in the pay of an intelligence agency? The evidence to support this theory, or that purports to support this theory, comes mainly from an unusual amount of money that was found in his possession at the time of his death, as well as his personal wealth, which doesn't People will argue he makes more money than his position would imply, and then the argument follows he was essentially framed for this, or possibly drugged or had the results of his autopsy doctored.
I'm sorry, I couldn't help it to.
The idea that he was not drunk of his own volition. But he was not drunk of his own free will, right right?
So another and his friends and family said he liked a beer, but he you know, he would love to have a night on town with the boys, but he wasn't like a problematic drinker. Another allegation concerns the reliability of the blood tests that were carried out. The French investigator's conclusion that he was drunk was made on an analysis of blood samples, and this was according to a
September nineteen ninety seven report. A British pathologist hired by al Fayed challenged these results and the French authorities carried out more tests, but every time they said, we see that he is at approximately three three and a half times over the limit and taking antidepressants. That's the thing. This is a point counterpoint opinion war between al Fayed and the French government, or as he would say, the royal family. There's another there's a more interesting angle though
than Henri Paul. We're not going to get the answers for that, but maybe we can find out more from Richard Tomlinson. Very interesting character. Reminds me of some of the kind of wild West oss dudes we talked about with the US and Intelligence services. Tomlinson worked for six he was a He's someone who gave testimony to the French inquiry in May of nineteen ninety nine. He said under oath. Mind you six was involved in the crash. The Security Service has documentation which will help you figure
out what's going on. You have to ask them. Furthermore. I believe that Henri Paul was working for Security Services maybe six, I don't know. They were working for someone one of the spook squads, and that this Trevor Rees Jones guy was a contact for British intelligence. He goes on to say I six was monitoring Diana before her death. He told Mohammad al Fayed himself that Henri Paul was an I six agent, and he said to the guy, he said, Al Fay ed the death of Princess Diana
and your son mirror's plans. I saw a few years ago, back in nineteen ninety two for the assassination of then President of Serbia, Slobodon Mololsovich. They used the strobe light to blind his chauffeur. That was their plan.
Wow, and it's crazy too. You're talking about the strobe light idea. That image you were talking about earlier in the show, that is presumably one of these paparazzi images that was taken through the front windshield of the car incredibly close. It does look like you can see the flashbulb in the driver's eyes, but he also has a very odd look on his face, like a little doped up looking.
Yeah, I would concur with your assessment there, and it does definitely feel strange. You got to remember that the lens could be you know, pretty telephotos, so they could Maybe the vehicle isn't as close as it appears. But that flash, and that's the big thing here. The flash is troublesome no matter how far away they are, if it's coming directly in front of them.
And if you're a photographer, if you know anything about photography, you probably wouldn't use a flash in that situation, would you. What do you think from that far away? Like, why would you use a flash in a tunnel? Like I mean, I guess you would. If you're moving really fast, you might need to use a flash to get to capture
an image and not be blurry. Yeah, still seems odd to use it from so far away on glass, because if you're shooting through you know a window flash is gonna reflect and mess up your shot, right.
But ultimately your goal is to illuminate the interior of the vehicle, right.
So initially m I six doesn't deign this worthy of response, but a source in I six later confirms that there were. In fact, this is interesting. Here's their problem with with the guy's testimony. They say, no, of course, we had no plans for that. Our own government cleared us after their investigation. And this guy is lying about this crazy Kokammi plant caused car accidents through strobe light weaponization, and they're like, oh, you never did that, and they're like, well, yeah,
we did, but it wasn't with Slovodam Melosevich. So clearly you can't believe this guy at all. That was a different, sketchy European dude that we were trying to kill. Anyway, this interview was over, so Tomlinson's claims were never officially corroborated. It's just off the record six and alleged I six members backing him up. However, he was imprisoned in nineteen ninety seven for breaking the Official Secrets Act. He sent a snopsis of a book that he wanted to write
about his career with Six to an Australian publisher. He served six months of a one year sentence, got paroled, and then immediately skipped the country. The inquiry concluded by dismissing his claims. They said it was an embellishment. It's not a lie, but an embellishment, and he said, you know, they said furthermore, his embellishment is dangerous because it's one of the primary reasons people have these theories still that
the British elite murdered one of their own. Tomlinson was also arrested by French authorities in two thousand and six when they were doing their inquiry into the death. French police at the time seized computer files and personal papers from his home in can and then eventually kind of got away. They said he wasn't worth prosecuting. In two thousand and seven, he went ahead and published the book The Big Breach. People describe him as kind of an arrogant James Bond esque character.
Yeah, I'd say that seems about Ryan basing everything we know.
So he was allowed to return to Britain in two thousand and nine get royalties from his book. They dropped the threat of charges against him as long as he had sort of a gentleman's agreement to stop exposing the skeletons in the six Closet. They were like, stop talking to the press, stop talking about your old job, which you know naturally leads us to conclude that he probably had something on him. You know what I mean. They didn't know what else you might.
Have, absolutely, because they basically just said, just leave it alone. We'll leave you alone.
Let's just stop. That's crazy.
Let's do Let's do one Let's do one more thing.
Okay, you say one more thing.
Let's talk about that Fiat you mentioned.
Heck, yeah, Fiat, that white, that white paint, real smoke, show those things.
When I see white Fiat in print, I can't help but think of the Starbucks beverage, the flat white, because Fiat looks like flat on paper.
That's a I didn't know that was a of a flat white.
No, Is it just milk? No, It's like an espresso with milk on top of those like a little dot of milk kind of So what about that white Fiat.
Well, there were witnesses who were there, obviously, there are a lot of people who were in that tunnel at the time, and seven of them said they saw a white Fiat Uno, the one we mentioned earlier that may or may not have made contact with a vehicle and a motorcycle speeding out of the tunnel just seconds after the crash, And there was a lot of testing afterwards.
The forensics basically confirmed that a white Fiat Uno collided with the Mercedes carrying Diana Undti and everyone else, and this collision was definitely a significant factor in the crash. Now that's big, Yeah, that's really big. And then there are other eyewitnesses who told the police that they saw a powerful flash of light just seconds before the crash, before the not they crash itself, like the impact flash
impact flash. Think about it this way, flash swerve impact, right, which is you know that blinding that we were talking about, which it most certainly would in a darkened tunnel like that, if you had essentially headlights coming right at you all of a sudden, there would be a blinding effect.
Here's the thing. The police say they have been unable to locate either the vehicles, either the Fiat or the motorcycle, or identify the driver or the passengers. However, there's a guy Jean Paul James Andenson who is closely associated with this white Fiat Oh and we should we should point out they might sound strange. They were able to find a specific make, model, of car based just on a pigment.
They were able to find that because it was a factory pigment from Fiat, so they were able to match samples.
Yeah. Together.
There are things like that that are occurring all over manufacturing these days, where you could easily identify a certain vehicle, a certain table even, or a pencil or any of that.
Still, don't print out ransom notes on your printer.
And he's supposed to use this magazine cutouts. That's what you're supposed to do.
Any printer that, any printer that you can commercially buy, is going to have identifying pixels that are there for a reason. The world's probably a slightly better place that they're there. I'm not totally against it, to be honest, only slightly, slightly slightly. But so back to this guy, James Anderson, Jean Paul James Anderson, Uh, he is linked with this. He is linked with this White Fiat. People who believe there was a conspiracy, no homicide, are convinced
that he was intimately involved with this. He had been threatening to write an expose a and explosive book. He had links with the Secret Service. Apparently he met with an author named Frederic Dard to discuss this book he said, would blow the lid off a conspiracy. And then he was found in a torched car, allegedly with two bullet wounds in his head. Wow, and the authorities ruled that it was suicide.
Okay.
Dard also died.
How do you torch your own car?
You mean the junction man?
Yeah?
So the so he and the author both died.
Yes, yep. And Mohammed al Fayed urged police to reopen the investigation into Anderson's death. But at this point it didn't happen. And you know this, this story goes on and on and on. Like the the British public. If you were listening to this in the United Kingdom, you are a member of the most one of the most heavily surveiled populations on the planet. There are more closed circuit television cameras or CCTV camps in the UK per person than there are anywhere else on the planet. So
why didn't these catch more of the accident? That's one al fay Add's questions. It's a fair question. The problem is that's that number we just gave you about, you know, being the most highly observed or surveilled. It's it's tricky. It's number of cameras per person, but most of those are private, so they're not looking out on the street. They're looking out at the door of the business. The off license are whatever, which is their name for liquor stores that I that you know, so that they can
identify a burglar. They're not there to monitor traffic.
Yeah, the traffic monitors come much later. And we're still talking nineteen ninety seven, so you're absolutely right.
So without without going into the entire we would have to do a mini series on all the screwy things about this tragedy. Without going into it entirely, I have to say, still, there's one big problem with this, which is that there are other more certain ways to kill anyone.
Yeah, that wouldn't be plastered all over the news and have a gazillion photographs of it.
What do you mean, what an airplane crash?
But okay, yeah, there would still be photos everywhere, but you wouldn't be able to prove it would be it would be easier to just say, oh, it's an accident, I guess maybe, or I.
Mean, you know the classic tales all this time movie devices, fake somebody's suicide. There was strife in this relationship. They could have written off a princess die suicide.
Yeah, say, I don't know, execute someone with bullets in a car and then burn that vehicle.
Also true, and still not as weird as the guy who uh got who got as fixated locked up in a duffel bag.
Yeah.
Suicide, Yeah, suicide is a huge cause of death for intelligence service operatives, it appears. But but yeah, I wonder about that too. It seems a little bit not not to be automatically dismissive. It seems first blush, kind of Rube Goldberg esque, you know, unnecessarily complicated. It's why play mouse trap? Why introduce all these other variables? There are
other people on the street, it's a public street. Why flash strobe lights or other devices at people just in the hopes that there's a chance that it causes an accident, and then, furthermore, hope that there's a chance that of the four people in the car, one of the ones who dies will be the person you are quote unquote trying to get like, I can see the sides of this, I can see how the details are screwy, But what do you guys think.
Yeah, I'm definitely with you. Oukham's razor is pretty darn strong with this. Just the pressure that the proparazzi was putting on the driver who was intoxicated or at least his blood, especially when they tested his eye fluid, because originally they were testing just you know, blood, they took blood signals, they test that for blood alcohol. But then
they were using the I forget what they call. It's not ocular fluid, but it's your eyes, and that gave an even truer or in even harder to fake or introduce, like falsely alcohol right because of the way it travels through the capillaries and everything to get to your eye. Anyway, once once that occurred, you can all in my mind
he was definitely drunk. The driver on re and the paparazzi were definitely taking flash photographs, and they were definitely speeding, and you put all that together, in my mind, you get accident and and that to me is really all you need. However, it's not that I'm not intrigued by some of the some of the claims that Muhammad alf I had had. They all though seem to be coming or stemming from that Tomlinson character has he still has the ghost apologies. Correct.
It's like you said, Ben, I mean, it's grief manifests itself in all kinds of ways, and like you said, Matt, one of them can be I need someone to blame for this, and you can. It can become an obsession. Sometimes there's something at the other end of that obsession. Sometimes it's just an obsession, and it's like you're chasing ghosts, you know, you're punching it shadows it.
Also, regardless of what we think about this personally, it also absolutely does not help that for all all virtual, practical, forget it all literal purposes, the royal family is above the law, you know what I mean. Yeah, there are no consequences and the you know, if if the pr turns bad for them, they can just have like a Megan Markle take over the celebrity news for a while and then some of the underlings and m I six will you know, will take the fall for it. Yeah,
this is life without consequences. That's so it's it's pretty It absolutely doesn't mean that they were like, hey, why let's fake a suicide and then it doesn't mean it's one turned around is like, no, let's be weird with it. It just means that. It just means that, unlike the vast majority of people on this planet, they would not go to jail for a murder. They just wouldn't.
Yeah, they would have plausible deniability no matter what.
Am I five and m I six do have licenses to kill. Remember we did an episode on that that was really depressing.
Not just a clever catchphrase. Yeah, it turns out.
And we're no different. But thank you for checking out our show today. Folks, let us know where were you when you heard about the death of do de fay Ed, Henri, Paul and Diana and Princess of Wells. Do you think it's an accident? Do you think there's more to the story. If so, what and why? And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy to find online.
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