She was born on July 1st 1961, with the name Diana Frances Spencer.
When her father became an Earl she then became Lady Diana Spencer, and then later some people
called her The Princess of Hearts, The People’s Princess and for others she was England’s
Rose.
As those names suggest, Lady Di was quite the popular princess, and although from nobility,
she was liked for being a bit more down to Earth than some of those posh royals.
She had two kids, William and Harry, and she was unchangeable when it came to bringing
them up on her own terms.
The outspoken woman then got divorced, once saying on television about her hubby’s transgressions,
“There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
And then she died.
Some of you might be old enough to remember the tragic night Lady Di was taken from this
world, with a lot of Brits being able to answer the question: “Where were you when Princess
Diana died.”
It was some event, a global news story with a massive impact, and tears were shed from
Manchester to Mumbai to Manhattan.
As we said, Diana upset the apple cart a little during her marriage to Prince Charles and
after she divorced him.
She wasn’t willing to let herself or her kids be pushed around by the royals.
It’s said she fell out with Queen Elizabeth before she died and would have the occasional
argument with Prince Philip.
It was a right old Royal drama, as people might say in London.
She was a rebel in some respects, but a rebel with a cause.
One of the reasons for her popularity was that people believed that Diana wanted to
use her title, her star-presence, to do some good in the world.
She supported many charities and many causes, including helping raise awareness about HIV,
animal rights, homelessness, drug addiction, the use of landmines, certain diseases and
more.
She wasn’t hard on the eye, either, which helped somewhat in warming her to the public.
In TV appearances she spoke openly about her depression, her divorce, which was something
the royals just didn’t do.
Up until then, most of this family agreed that, “What happens in Buckingham Palace
stays in Buckingham Palace.”
She once said quite candidly on TV, “I didn’t like myself.
I was ashamed that I couldn’t cope with the pressures.”
Such honesty was unheard in the royal milieu, and for some this openness made her legendary.
At last, some reality in a royal household.
She told the press that some of the royals thought that she was “unstable”, admitting
that at times she didn’t exactly get along with her extended family.
Again, this kind of criticism was unheard of, but it was a breath of fresh air for some
Brits.
So, when she died somewhat mysteriously on the night of August 31, 1997, there was a
lot of talk about her being murdered.
Conspiracy theorists believed she had been shut up, for good.
But let’s start with the accepted story of how she died.
Her death was called by some “The News Story of the Century.”
If the Twin Towers going down was the news story of the following century, Diana’s
death rocked the world in equal measure.
There was no social media back then, so news didn’t travel so fast.
We didn’t see any last tweet from Diana, such as “Popped out for a while.
Paparazzi still being a pain.”
But many Brits will remember something that flashed up on their TVs around one in the
morning, and that was, “Paris Car Accident.
Princess Diana Seriously Hurt.”
But let’s reverse a little.
During the day before her death she had been with her lover, Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian
billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed.
Some reports tell us that he even planned to ask her hand in marriage that day, but
as they both gave up the ghost that night we will never know for sure.
Other reports say that it wasn’t the case.
We know that around 4.30 pm that day they both entered a hotel owned by Fayed’s dad,
the Ritz Paris.
A bit later Fayed bought a couple of expensive rings from a jewel store, and quite a lot
later at about 10 pm the two went to L'Espadon restaurant.
They had planned to dine somewhere else, but the paparazzi were swarming so they changed
their plans.
In the book, “The Day Diana Died” it is written that she ordered Dover sole, vegetable
tempura and a mushroom and asparagus omelet.
This was in fact her last meal.
It’s said Fayed started to get suspicious that some of the diners were photographers
pretending to be other diners, and so the two took the meal to their hotel room.
At half past midnight it’s said the two wanted to leave the hotel and go to Fayed’s
apartment, and so they got in a black Mercedes S280 with Ritz security worker Henri Paul
as driver.
Witnesses say that the driver had drunk a Scotch and one beer, but later blood tests
said he was three times over the legal limit.
He liked a drink, his friends later said, but didn’t have a problem.
He was also on Prozac, too.
Anyway, he died.
Was the crash his fault?
Well, that’s the billion dollar question.
Some investigators said it was his fault, one for being drunk, and two for driving recklessly.
Anyhow, Paul was driving the pair to Fayed’s place.
At 12.23 am he was driving at high speed because he was trying to lose photographers that were
following the car.
This didn’t end well, because Paul lost control of the car in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel
and hit a concrete pillar.
Paul and Fayed were said to have died on impact, while Diana received some treatment by someone
on the scene and she was later cut out of the wreckage of the car.
There was one survivor, however, and his name was Trevor Rees-Jones.
Some reports have said that the reason is that he was wearing a seatbelt, but other
reports have said that wasn’t the case.
He was lucky perhaps, but not so lucky as his face was completely shattered.
It took a long time and many operations to rebuild it.
Many years later he’d write a book, saying he did that because he was bothered about
all the conspiracy theories.
He once said, “I am not part of a conspiracy to suppress the truth at all.
All I have ever done is give the truth as I see it.”
Of the night he said he remembers very little, just that after the crash he heard Diana moaning
and call the name Dodi.
That’s not what Dodi’s dad thought, though.
He believed Rees-Jones was lying and was part of a cover-up.
The billionaire said it was murder, orchestrated by Prince Philip with spy agency MI6.
And this is when the story gets interesting.
But first let’s stick to the official tale.
At around 1.20 am as an ambulance is taking Diana to hospital she suffers cardiac arrest.
At 2.01 am she arrives at Pitié-Salpétrière Hospital and immediately undergoes surgery.
At 4 am on the dot she is pronounced dead, game over, the English Rose is no more.
This is what the doctor told the media, “Diana's body arrived in a condition of serious hemorrhage
and shock.
An urgent surgery showed a severe wound to the left pulmonary vein.
Despite the closure of this wound and the two-hour external and internal cardiac massage,
no official respiratory circulation could be established.”
The same day her body is flown to England.
Even if you weren’t a fan of the royals, most people hated the paparazzi.
To some extent those avid loons with cameras are still despised today because of that event.
Tears flowed under the grey clouds and drizzle of the UK, while the rest of the world mourned.
Well, some cried, but quite a lot of others were already busy constructing conspiracy
theories.
If you saw the wreckage you won’t have been surprised to hear that people died.
The car looked like it had gotten on the wrong side of King Kong.
But a strange thing is, some initial reports said Diana had just suffered, “a concussion,
a broken arm and cuts to one of her thighs.”
And this is what a Sky News anchor later said, “I got a call saying Dodi was dead, Diana
was fine, but they thought she’d probably broken her leg.”
Maybe this was just a mix-up, but it looks kinda suspicious.
Because of all the theories, the English police later started an investigation called Operation
Paget.
Millions of dollars later and they concluded that it was just an unfortunate accident.
Many people don’t believe this, and let’s not forget there are quite a lot of folks
in the world that believe the Queen is a lizard hiding in human skin.
Dodi’s dad doesn’t believe in lizard people, but he had a rational theory that they were
purposely killed because Diana was pregnant with Dodi’s child.
He said the royals “could not accept that an Egyptian Muslim could eventually be the
stepfather of the future King of England.”
Tests, though, showed no signs of pregnancy.
It just depends if you believe the testers.
Other reports say her condition after the crash would have made it impossible to test
her for latent pregnancy.
Diana herself thought someone was out to get her.
Her butler later told the press that she had written that someone “is planning 'an accident'
in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for
Charles to marry.”
This is true, and she had let it be known that she believed someone was doing things
to her cars.
One of her bodyguards even died in a bike crash and Diana said she thought he had been
“bumped off.”
This is not conspiracy, she actually said that.
It is very compelling but insubstantial evidence.
There are a series of tapes of Diana being very honest about her life.
In them she talked about this bodyguard, a man she said she had loved.
She also said this, “It was all found out and he was chucked out of royal protection.
Then he was killed.
I think he was bumped off.”
Yep, that’s a big deal.
There are also theories that the photographers were partly involved, that they actually caused
the crash and were working undercover with MI6 or the wicked royals.
Still, it doesn’t hold much water because those guys were all professionals and they
were doing what they always did.
Was the surviving bodyguard in on it, as Dodi’s father said?
Well, he was smashed to pieces, so if he was, he really took one for the team.
Then some other people, actual witnesses, said they saw bright flashes along the road.
Was someone trying to blind the driver as he raced along at high speed.
Was this all set up, from someone chasing the car to make it drive fast and then someone
else blinding the driver?
Police didn’t think that was the case.
Something else people say is that if Diana had been taken to a hospital sooner she may
well have survived.
The thing is, in France people are often treated on the scene, whereas in the UK or US there
is often a scoop and run policy.
The investigators also said that if it was true that medical staff didn’t treat her
well on purpose then that conspiracy would have had to involve numerous people, from
emergency crews to doctors to many other people.
Could that many people all be working for M16?
Doctors also later said that there was no way that anyone could have survived her injuries.
She was as good as dead when that car kissed the pillar.
Then others say Henri Paul, the driver, was secretly in the service of MI6.
An investigation did find that he had a lot of money, too much perhaps for a bodyguard.
But again, British police said they could find no evidence to support the theory that
Paul was working with the agency.
Maybe one of the best of the theories came from a man called Richard Tomlinson.
This former MI6 spy said he thought the agency was involved in her death.
He said her death was similar to the way MI6 had planned to knock off former President
of Serbia Slobodan Milošević.
That was to blind the driver using strobes.
The police investigated these claims, and while they found that MI6 and MI5 had planned
to take out a powerful man in Serbia, it wasn’t Milošević.
They also said they hadn’t planned to do it with strobe lights.
Tomlinson was later discredited and then arrested by French police and then treated pretty badly
by MI6.
That’s no surprise, because he told a lot of stories about the agency that didn’t
exactly make them look humane.
He’s never said he is absolutely sure they killed her, but did once say, “I would firstly
like to state that MI6 do have the capacity to stage accidents, whether by helicopter,
aeroplane or car, and also that the strobe light was shown to us by the SBS at Poole.”
There is also evidence of one SAS soldier admitting they had a part in the death.
It gets worse.
It is a fact that there were 14 CCTV cameras in that tunnel, yet none showed the actual
crash.
It turned out, in short, that none were facing in the right way and others were just not
working.
Hmm, that does sound a bit fishy.
There are also reports of a white Fiat Uno being involved in the crash, and some believe
it was being driven by someone working for MI6.
They say it hit Diana’s car and there has been a cover up.
Witnesses even said they saw such a car leaving the tunnel, but no one saw it in the tunnel.
This car was never found.
Fayed said that a man called Jean-Paul James Andanson owned the car, and he had been watching
Diana and Dodi.
That much seemed to be true, and indeed, he did own a white Fiat Uno.
Police said it wasn’t the one described, though.
Fayed said this man was an agent, and he was there that night.
We might never know the truth, because in 2000 Andanson apparently killed himself.
Police said it was definitely suicide.
They found him in his car, his head detached from his body.
Anything else?
Yep, lots.
She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt for some reason when her friends said that was very much out
of character.
Then there’s the fact she was quickly embalmed.
Fayed said this was because they tried to make further testing, especially for pregnancy,
impossible.
The medical staff said it was because her body was deteriorating in the heat and they
had to think quickly.
They had to have her looking presentable for the funeral.
Will we know more?
Well, Fayed tried to fund a movie called “Unlawful Killing” about that night, but due to possible
legal actions it has never seen the light of day.
We’d surely like to see it, but it seems it was just disappeared.
After hearing all this we want to hear one thing from you- What do you think happened?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show When Royal Inbreeding Went Horribly Wrong.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.