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British royalty. Born Diana Spencer on July 1st, 1961, near Sandringham, England. Diana, Princess of Wales, was one of the most adored members of the British royal family. She was the daughter of Edward John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, and Frances Ruth Burke Roche, Viscountess Althorp (later known as the Honorable Frances Shand Kydd). Her parents divorced when Diana was young, and her father won custody of her and her siblings. She was educated first at Riddlesworth Hall and then went to boarding school at West Heath School.
Unfortunately, the fairy tale wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles did not lead to a happily-ever-after marriage. The two became estranged over the years, and there were reports of infidelities from both parties. During their union, Diana struggled with depression and bulimia. The couple's separation was announced in December 1992 by British Prime Minister John Major, who read a statement from the royal family to the House of Commons. The divorce was finalized in 1996.
Even after the divorce, Diana maintained a high level of popularity. She devoted herself to her sons and to such charitable efforts as the battle against the use of land mines. Diana used her international celebrity to help raise awareness about this issue. She also continued to experience the negative aspects of fame her 1997 romance with Egyptian film producer and playboy Dodi Al-Fayed caused quite a stir and created a media frenzy. While visiting Paris, the couple was involved in a car crash after trying to escape from the paparazzi on the night of August 30, 1997.
Timeline/The Scene of the Crime
Eyewitness Francois Levistre tells The Times that he saw a "flash of light" just before the Mercedes crashed. His testimony will ignite conspiracies that Princess Diana was killed.
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Two witnesses, Georges and Sabine D, tell French police that they saw a suspicious car coming out of the Alma tunnel on the night of the accident. "A white Fiat zigzagged as it came out of the tunnel, so much so that it almost hit us," says Georges. "The driver seemed to be perturbed by something in his rear-view mirror. He was transfixed by whatever he was looking at." The car had a big dog in the back, they claim. Based on their recollection of the number plate, they thought the Fiat was most likely from one of two suburbs west of Paris.
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French police interview Le Van Thanh, a Vietnamese security guard with a Fiat Uno and three dogs. Although forensic tests confirm that the paint and rubber on his car match the traces found on the Mercedes, the French police rule him out. An official report says his car shows no signs of having been damaged in an accident.
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Private detectives working for Mr Al Fayed claim to have found the "mystery" Fiat Uno. It belongs to paparazzi photographer James Andanson.
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Mr Al Fayed pushes for a second blood test after alleging that the first was possibly contaminated. Judge Stéphan is present and the procedure is photographed. This blood test reveals not only a similar level of alcohol in his blood, it also reveals traces of prescribed drugs: Prozac, to treat depression, and Tiapridal, which counters alcohol dependency.
Blood tests taken from the groin show a lower level of carbon monoxide at 12.8%. But these figures are not released to the public until early 1998, when they spark fresh controversy.
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Sole survivor of the crash, bodyguard Mr Rees-Jones, says he is suffering from amnesia and cannot remember details of the accident.
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Francois Levistre, who claimed to have seen a motorcycle cut up the Mercedes before it crashed, changes his story. Ignoring his past claims that a "massive" flash that could have blinded Mr Paul, he tells Sunday People that he might have caused the crash that killed the princess by swerving in front of her car.
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Mr Tomlinson tells the British tabloid The People of an alleged MI6 plot to kill Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that included a bright flash and a tunnel. He said that Princess Diana's accident mirrored this plot, suggesting that Mr Paul might have been a secret service agent.
Mr Al Fayed claims that Prince Philip "masterminded" the car crash that killed Princess Diana and his son Dodi Al Fayed. High Court in London rejects Mohamed Al Fayed's legal bid to hold joint inquests into the deaths of the princess and his son. Mohamed Al Fayed tells US programme "Primetime" that Princess Diana phoned him on the night she died to tell him she was pregnant with Dodi's baby.
Princess Diana's Past/Motive by the Royal Family
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In less than a year the couple produced their first child, William, on 21 June 1982.
A second son, Prince Harry, was born on 15 September 1984.
By that time Prince Charles' long-running relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles was putting strain on his marriage.
Princess Diana's relationship with the rest of the Royal Family deteriorated and she developed bulimia.
The couple separated in 1993.
Diana spoke publicly about her problems and her own and her husband's infidelities in a Panorama documentary in November 1995.
The marriage formally ended with a decree absolute in August 1996.
Diana was killed in a car crash in 1997.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles married on 9 April 2005.
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She was still so young, so full of vitality and a lust for life. Certainly the princess worked hard, but she was also a woman with erotic needs, with an inclination for love and passion. Diana longed for a male shoulder to lean on. At 36 life was not yet over, completely the opposite is true - the divorced princess had the feeling that hers would now properly begin. For Diana getting acquainted with men was always a great problem, and acquiring trust was an ever greater one. Yet in the summer of 1997 the princess tossed her cares aside and once again fell head over heels in love. She gave herself over completely to this wonderful feeling of being in love. This time Diana hoped that he would be the right one. Her choice was called Dodi Al-Fayed.
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One time the princess even approached the photographers and said to them: "I have a huge surprise for you! You just have to wait a little..." Even though the curiosity of the photographers had been greatly awoken, she didn't betray any more information
At the same time England wondered why Diana had a round belly in the photos when wearing her swimming costume. She couldn't be expecting a baby? Was that perhaps the great surprise that she soon wanted to announce? The speculations came thick and fast.
“She was convinced she was going to be killed,” says Diana’s old friend, Argentinean businessman Roberto Deverik, who recalls Diana often speaking of murderous plots against her.
“She said, ‘When it's not convenient anymore, I will-- they will blow me in a car or in a helicopter.’"
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This past January, The London Mirror reported that just months before her death, she had written a note saying, “My husband is planning an accident in my car – brake failure and serious injury.”
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Diana's divorce lawyer, Lord Mishcon, wrote a note in October 1995 outlining her fears that there was a plot to kill her in a car crash. Lord Mishcon passed this to police after the crash
But it was only after the princess's ex-butler, Paul Burrell, produced a note from the princess making similar allegations in the Daily Mirror in October 2003 that the Metropolitan Police agreed to hand over the note to the inquest
Paul, the driver who was also chief of security for Mohamed Al Fayed’s Ritz Hotel. We found documents that reveal a number of significant bank deposits in French francs made by Paul, beginning nine months before the crash.
French investigators were unable to pinpoint the exact source of the mysterious money, but the dossier reveals that they searched Paul’s home and office, interviewed his friends and associates, and analyzed his phone records. They found no evidence of a conspiracy – even though there was a theory that Paul was a security services informant.
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LONDON - The car in the crash that killed Princess Diana in Paris was a last- minute replacement either meant as a media diversion or because the vehicle she was supposed to take failed to start, according to British government documents released Tuesday.
The papers, released by the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act, detailed correspondence between the government and British officials in France in the days after the Aug. 31, 1997, high-speed crash that killed Diana, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and the driver Henri Paul.
A memo sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair on the day of Diana's death claimed the couple was "immediately subject to media attention" as they arrived at the Ritz Hotel on the evening of Aug. 30 and were surrounded by journalists as they left early the next morning.
"They tried to leave quickly but the first car failed to start," states the document, whose author is not revealed.
A second document sent to then-Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and signed Jay — believed to be Michael Jay, Britain's ambassador to France at the time — made the same allegation. "Because apparently their getaway car failed to start they got into another nearby car driven by a Ritz driver," it said.
The Princess Diana inquest jury was ordered yesterday to consider whether French scientists faked controversial test results showing driver Henri Paul was drunk.
Lord Justice Scott Baker, the coroner, pointed to doubts over the reliability of the results used to blame Mr Paul for the crash that killed Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed.
And he warned: "Did the wrong samples just happen to get into the bottles for which alcohol was tested or was there some other mix-up, accidental or deliberate? That is something you will have to decide."
The coroner had to halt his summing up yesterday after the French sent him an email about blood samples from the body of Mr Paul, acting security manager at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. ... A French investigation into the couple's deaths blamed Mr Paul, arguing that he was driving too fast while high on a cocktail of drink and prescription drugs when he crashed their Mercedes in the Alma underpass in Paris on August 31 1997.
The authorities reached their conclusion after tests on blood and other samples from his body appeared to show that he was three times over the French drink-drive limit.
But Dodi's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has always believed that the samples were faked or switched, pointing to question marks over the labelling of vials of blood, missing samples and doubts over DNA tests.
The coroner ... pointed to evidence that Mr Paul had definitely drunk two 5cl shots of Ricard "the equivalent of four single whiskies" in the Ritz Hotel in the two hours before he left on the fateful journey that also killed him..
But that would have still left him under the limit. It was possible, he said, Mr Paul had drunk more in the three hours he was off duty earlier in the evening.
The test results suggested he must have drunk the equivalent of up to six more Ricards. But the coroner said CCTV footage and most witnesses had suggested he showed no sign of being worse for wear.
It was regrettable, he said, that the French scientists, Prof Dominique Lecomte and Dr Gilbert Pepin, who tested the samples, had refused to testify to the inquest and answer severe criticism of the shoddy way they labelled and recorded their results.
He highlighted the inexplicably high levels of carbon monoxide in Mr Paul's blood. "If the carbon monoxide readings must be wrong, what about the alcohol readings?" he asked. ... The jury ... were also told other questions remained a mystery.
They include: How Henri Paul came to have such a large amount of money in his bank account, where he was in the three hours off duty, and who drove the white Fiat Uno that tests showed caught the Mercedes a glancing blow before it crashed into a concrete pillar.
— Are Diana Driver's Blood Samples Fake, Coroner Asks Jury, Daily Mail, 2008-04-02
The court heard how the ambulance had to come to a complete stop a short distance from the hospital when Diana's blood pressure dropped, prompting fears her heart would stop.
Massebeuf said: "In front of the Jardin des Plantes, the doctor asked me to stop. We stopped for about five minutes in order for him to be able to provide treatment that required a complete absence of movement. We continued our journey without having to stop again."
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- Henri Paul, driver of the Limo. The mis-information surrounding this key figure is enormous. First he was said to be driving at up to 120 mph, recent reports by professional crash investigators suggest 60 mph, even less on impact.
Was he really drunk? It is accepted that he had two Ricard drinks at the Ritz, but no other evidence has emerged to support this claim, beyond questionable results from a blood test from his corpse. Why questionable? Because it is common for the alcohol level to rise in bodies after death regardless of consumption. The test also showed a very high level of carbon monoxide (20 per cent) in his blood. Experts say this would have incapacitated him before he set off on his fatal journey, and yet the hotel's video evidence shows him walking around and talking normally. An alcoholic? Well , as a pilot, he passed a rigorous health check two days before the accident. His liver showed no signs of abuse on post-mortem.
Then there is the question of the multiple bank accounts Paul held, with balances showing income far in excess of his 20 000 UKP salary as acting head of security at the Ritz. Some friends have suggested he was a long term "sleeper" agent for a secret service agency, almost certainly French intelligence.
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- The rapid disposal of the bodies of Diana and Dodi. Diana had no post mortem prior to burial in Althorp. Victims of sudden death require a post mortem by law in the UK.
- The missing white Fiat Uno: With such a large-scale investigation by French authorities could only secret agents have evaded the police's net around Paris? We know the car hit the Mercedes used by Di and Dodi, thanks to traceable paint marks on the Benz. Witnesses refer to the car lurching around the road at varying speeds as both it and the Merc entered the tunnel of death.
My Theory and Closing Statements
I also thought Mr. Al-Fayed arranged for Paul to drive, being the one he trusted most? Is that not right? That he and Dodi are the ones who hatched the idea of leaving from the back in a different car, with Paul driving?