20 years after the death of Princess Diana. The mystery of the death of Princess Diana: Unexpected details two decades later
Exactly 20 years ago, the world was shocked by the news of tragic death Princess Diana. During her lifetime she became national hero, turned the image of the British monarchy in the minds of people. Lady Dee charmed with her sincerity and warmth. Londoners carry her photographs and flowers to the gates of Kensington Palace, the memory of her mother in the White Garden the day before was honored by her sons, Princes William and Harry.
The old chronicle is like a feature film. Not a true story - a fairy tale: Nice dress, real prince, luxury carriage. And a modest girl who became a princess. Is it possible not to love this?
What a shock for everyone was her death. The eldest son, William, was then 15. “This either makes you stronger or kills you. I was on the verge. But I really wanted her to be proud of me. And therefore I survived,” he said.
All these 20 years, he basically did not visit Paris - the last city of Lady Dee. Decided this spring. With his wife Kate, they were here at the Alma Tunnel, the scene of a car accident. The gilded torch, erected before the tragedy as a symbol of French-American friendship, has long been a memorial to Diana.
The details of her last evening are known to everyone. Video from the security cameras of the Ritz Hotel shows Diana and her friend, the son of Egyptian magnate Dodi Al-Fayed, walking into the lobby of the hotel. In a moment they will get into the car. At breakneck speed, they will try to hide from the paparazzi. Crash into a concrete pier. He dies on the spot. She is later in the hospital. The jury will issue a verdict: guilty - the driver who got behind the wheel drunk; passengers who did not buckle up. Finally, the photographers who created the emergency.
There is another version: the cause of the accident was a car, which by that time was already allegedly in the tunnel. The police found fragments of the Fiat Uno. Eyewitnesses also saw a white car zigzag leaving the scene of an accident. Among them is the doctor Frederic Miley. He then gave the princess first aid. “You know, I don’t believe in fate, but it seems to me that it was no accident that I ended up there. I hope that the words that I whispered to the princess somehow eased her suffering,” Miley said.
Neither the white Fiat nor its driver will ever be found by the investigation. The British media will write that the fragments of the car were thrown by those who wanted to disguise the accident as a normal accident. Supposedly the British intelligence services acted on the order of the royal family. Newspapers will write: when the black Mercedes drove into the tunnel, a bright flash suddenly cut the twilight. Perhaps the latest laser weapons were used, Richard Tomplison, a British special agent, will say a little later. And many will believe him.
Diana really interfered. At first, she arranged scenes for her husband. Then she changed lovers like gloves. For Al-Fayed so generally going to marry. And even supposedly expecting a child from him. The half-brother of the heir to the throne, the Arab prince, Elizabeth II definitely could not be happy. The very fact of pregnancy is still being debated, but lawyer Virginie Bardet, who defended the photographers at that trial, has no doubts.
No one has proven the version of the involvement of the royal family. Many biographers of Lady Dee believe that the Queen would not have gone for this, the price is too high, if at least one piece of evidence of the crime appeared.
"Lady contradiction" - from the very beginning, she seemed to deliberately bring the tragic end closer. Didn't love, got married. She knew: the groom was courting her sister Sarah, sympathetic to her neighbor Camilla, and from Diana she wanted only an heir and a clean reputation. But she went for it. She was not afraid to shake hands with an AIDS patient and confess to adultery with a groom. Fought with anti-personnel mines and did not leave a penny to charitable foundations. She was desperately trying to be needed - looking for love. Found - the world, but did not become happy. She just really wanted at least one person in the world to love her not because she was a princess. After all, that's what happens in fairy tales.
Olga Oksenich, "TV Center".
Today marks twenty years since the death of Diana Frances Spencer, whom the whole world remembered as Princess Diana or simply "Lady Dee". On August 31, 1997, the car in which the princess was traveling with her lover Dodi al-Fayed had an accident in the Paris Tunnel. The only one who survived that tragedy - Diana's bodyguard Trevor Rhys Jones - does not remember what happened, as he received severe injuries that forever deprived him of his memory. A drunk driver, British intelligence agencies or just an accident - the exact causes of the accident are still not known. The editors of the site recalled five versions of a car accident that could have taken place.
Photo: John Stillwell/FA Bobo/PIXSELL/PA Images/TASS
Paparazzi
The first version of death is photojournalists on motorcycles. On that fateful day, Diana's black Mercedes was pursued by the paparazzi, and one of them may have interfered with the princess's car. The driver of the Mercedes, trying to avoid the collision, crashed into the concrete support of the bridge.
However, as it turned out later, the photographers entered the tunnel a few seconds after Diana's Mercedes, which means they could not provoke an accident. At the same time, the sons of the deceased princess most of all blame the death of reporters and photographers, who did not allow their mother to live in peace until the tragedy itself.
Mysterious Fiat
The second version is a car that could cut the princess's car in the tunnel itself. Allegedly, it was a white "Fiat Uno", which eyewitnesses saw leaving the tunnel after the tragedy. And next to the accident, they even found fragments of a white car. But, even having information about the car and a description of the appearance of the driver, it was not possible to find either the car or the driver.
There is a version that this car belonged to a certain French journalist James Andanson. Immediately after the disaster, the journalist disappeared, and was found only in 2000 in the French Pyrenees, dead in a burnt car. His death was regarded as a suicide, but when they found him, they found traces of shots ..
Drunk driver, exorbitant speed and seat belt
The Mercedes in which Diana and her companion were that night was replaced shortly before the trip. In this car, according to some reports, the seat belt in the back seat, where Diana was, was faulty, although the princess herself was always in awe of the issue of safety.
It was also later revealed that the car was in a terrible state and had been hastily repaired following an accident a few months earlier. In addition, after some time, the driver of the car, Henri Paul, was made the main culprit of the disaster. He was the security chief of the Ritz Hotel and also died in the crash. Investigators accused him of driving drunk and driving the car up to 200 kilometers per hour.
royal revenge
Photo: Chris Jackson/FA Bobo/PIXSELL/PA Images/TASS
There is a theory that the death of Princess Diana was planned by British agents and Queen Elizabeth II herself. For several years, Diana lived with the idea that Prince Charles and The Royal Family going to kill her.
Her guesses, were voiced in a letter to the butler, are not direct evidence, but still the very fact of such a letter is quite remarkable. The letter said that Prince Charles was planning an accident with Diana's car, brake failure and a serious head injury so that his path to a new marriage was free.
Egyptian enemies
There is a version that the target of the alleged killers was not the princess at all, but her Egyptian boyfriend - the son of billionaire Mohammed Al-Fayed - Dodi.
Dodi's father was the owner of the Ritz Hotel in Paris, as well as the London department store Harrod's and the Fullham football club. possible cause the accident could have been Al-Fayed's revenge, but Mohammed himself believed that his business competitors had nothing to do with it, but were involved in the tragedy British intelligence and the royal family.
Life after death
After the death of Diana, mourning was declared in England, a mound of flowers grew near the gates of Kensington Palace, which many thousands of people brought in memory of the princess. Diana was buried on September 6, 1997 at the Spencer family estate of Althorp in Northamptonshire, on a secluded island in the middle of a lake.
"Lady Di" did not cease to be popular even after her death - many famous musical performers wrote songs dedicated to the princess. Diana is dedicated to "No-one but you" by Queen, "Candle in The Wind" by Elton John and many other famous hits. By the tenth anniversary of the death of Diana, the film "Princess Diana. Last Day in Paris" was filmed. This year, 20 years after the tragedy, two documentaries were also released: "Diana is our mother" and "Diana. The story in her words."
TLC represents documentary"Princess Diana: tragedy or conspiracy" on the twentieth anniversary of the death of one of the most famous and popularly beloved women of the twentieth century
20 years ago, the life of one of the brightest women of the twentieth century, Princess Diana of Wales, was cut short, who died in a car accident on August 31, 1997. On the twentieth anniversary of this event, On August 31, 2017 at 10:00 pm, TLC will premiere the documentary Princess Diana: Tragedy or Conspiracy. It seemed that everyone loved Diana: she was called people's princess and the queen of hearts, the British were proud of her, and the rest of the world admired her. And yet, it has not yet been proven that the cause of her death was an accident: there are theories that claim that Lady Dee was the victim of a conspiracy. New project Featuring exclusive archival footage and never-before-seen interview segments, TLC will take the most plausible hypotheses out there and try to figure them out with viewers.
Currently, the generally accepted version is that the drunk driver was the culprit of the accident, but it appeared only 10 years after the disaster. The only participant in the events that survived that night was bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who received severe injuries, but he could not remember anything. Random eyewitnesses are confused in the testimony - some talk about a flash of light in the tunnel where the accident happened, others describe a mysterious white car, others say that the paparazzi chasing Diana's car on motorcycles are to blame. There are dozens of hypotheses that have not been confirmed or refuted, so the question is still open.
To solve the mystery of death, the TLC documentary program traces the entire life of the princess. The world knew her as a young and shy girl, who at the same time was strong, independent, following her own royal path. The project will tell about new facts in Diana's relationship with her husband Prince Charles, as well as her care and love for her sons. The project includes unique archival footage, exclusive fragments of an interview that Diana gave to her personal biographer, the famous British journalist Andrew Morton. The film will also feature reminiscences from close friends of the princess: Mary Robertson and James Colthrust, her bodyguard Ken Whorf, royal family biographer Ingrid Steward and royal historian Kate Williams. Journalists Tamron Hall and Deborah Norville will share the results of their investigations, while writer and actor Richard Belzer, a conspiracy theorist, will present the most daring and controversial opinions about the events of twenty years ago.
Watch the documentary "Princess Diana: Tragedy or Conspiracy" August 31 at 10 pm on TLC.
20 years ago, on the night of August 31, 1997, Princess Diana died in a car accident in the center of Paris.
She was so popular and loved by the people that she earned the nickname "Queen of Hearts",
and her tragic death haunts the British so far.
The circumstances of this car accident were so strange that they cast doubt on the official version of what happened.
On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, several scandalous investigations were made public, which made a lot of noise not only in the UK, but also abroad.
Princess Diana
The results of the official investigations carried out in France in the UK were identical: the accident occurred for several reasons. Princess Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed were chased by the paparazzi, which forced the driver of the car, Henri Paul, to speed. In addition, alcohol was found in his blood, and the seat belts were faulty. Later, this version was refuted: the driver was not drunk, and the results of the examination were deliberately or accidentally confused with others. It also looked strange that 3 years after the accident, the same paparazzi who was accused of pursuing Diana was found dead in a burned-out car.
*Queen of Hearts*
On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, on August 6, the film “Diana: the story in her words” was released in the UK, which caused loud scandal- it was immediately called an attempt to make "money on the blood." On video recordings made in 1992-1993. her lecturer in speech technique during classes, the Princess of Wales was extremely frank about what Buckingham Palace preferred to keep silent about. The films were kept by the teacher Peter Settelen, he promised not to publish them, but as a result, he sold them to television people. He filmed Diana on video, so that later he could make out the mistakes of her speech, and did not expect that the conversation would turn out to be so frank.
*Queen of Hearts*
Prince Charles and Princess Diana
In the film, Diana told that she was in love with Charles, and on the day of their engagement, when asked by a journalist about whether there were feelings between them, she answered without hesitation: “Yes.” And the prince said: "You can say that." It then offended her very much. And later she was convinced that her husband loved another woman all his life - Camilla Parker Bowles. Even the birth of sons did not save this marriage. When Diana turned to the queen for advice, she only said: “I don’t know what you should do. Charles is hopeless." Divorce was inevitable.
Princess Diana with sons William and Harry
She felt like an outcast in the royal court. “I was rejected, and therefore I considered myself unworthy of this family. I could start drinking, but it would be noticeable, anorexia would be even more noticed. I decided to choose something that would be less noticeable: to harm myself, not others, ”Diana admits. For a while she suffered from bulimia, and then she began to have novels. Diana told her teacher that the biggest shock in her life was the death of Barry Manaki, her bodyguard, who, in her opinion, was fired and killed after their affair became known.
Barry Manaki and Princess Diana
*Queen of Hearts*
Journalist Mikhail Ozerov, who spoke with Princess Diana 3 days before her death, claimed that she told him of her intention to go to Paris, despite the reaction of Buckingham Palace, about her desire to build life the way she wants, and added: attention to my explosion of emotions. Next time I'll be calmer. Or calm me down. We probably won't see each other again."
Princess Diana
*People's Princess*
Special services historian Gennady Sokolov conducted his own investigation and came to the conclusion that it was a staged accident, behind which the British special services stood. Witnesses claimed that on the night of the incident they saw a bright flash in the tunnel, which could blind the driver, after which he crashed into the concrete support of the bridge. If Diana had been fastened, she would have had a chance to survive, but the seat belts, according to Sokolov, were blocked. For some reason, the video cameras in this tunnel did not work that night. Immediately after her death, her body was embalmed - according to Sokolov, in order to hide Diana's pregnancy from the Muslim Dodi al-Fayed, whom she was supposedly going to marry. Therefore, the royal family had reason to want her dead.
*Queen of Hearts*
Princess Diana
Egyptian billionaire Mohammed al-Fayed also conducted his own investigation, during which it turned out that Princess Diana called this period of her life the most dangerous and was afraid that the royal family would want to get rid of her. Mohammed Al-Fayed is sure that the death of his son Dodi and Princess Diana is a planned murder.
*People's Princess*
Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed
No one has proven the version of involvement in the death of Diana of the royal family and the British special services. Over time in this mysterious history there are more and more questions, and still no one can say with certainty whether the death of Princess Diana was a tragic accident or the result of a planned crime.
Bridge over the tunnel where Princess Diana died
On the night of August 31, 1997, Diana, her lover Dodi Al-Fayed and their driver Henri Paul died in a car accident in a Mercedes Benz S280 in one of the Paris tunnels. According to the official version, the driver exceeded the speed limit in an attempt to escape from the persecutors. paparazzi car. Later there was information that he was drunk. However, there are many facts that are not well known to the general public, and these facts cast doubt on the official version of events.
Henri Paul
Henri Paul was the deputy head of security at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and it was he who was driving the Mercedes on the day of the accident. The official version that Henri Paul was in a state of alcohol intoxication, is not confirmed either by video recordings or by the testimony of eyewitnesses who observed him shortly before the incident. Paul was apparently under the influence of alcohol, but it is unlikely that this could cause him to lose control of the car. There are also theories according to which this man worked for some French and / or British state security service and tried to steal the car from his pursuers, who were not harmless journalists, but hired hitmen.
What happened to the crash survivor?
Many people forget that there were four people in the car, not three. The fourth was Al Fayed's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, the only one who survived as a result. He is an ex-military who worked for Al Fayed in the mid-90s. During the accident, Rees-Jones received a serious cranio-maxillofacial injury: doctors had to re-reconstruct his face. After the tragedy, Mohammed Al-Fayed, Dodi's father, blamed Rhys-Jones for failing to adequately protect Dodi and Diana that night. This accusation prompted Rhys-Jones to write a book outlining his version of events. However, in the official investigation, his memories were not taken into account, as they were considered unreliable due to the head injury he suffered.
Testimony of James Huth
James Huth was one of the first to appear at the scene of the accident. His apartment was nearby and, hearing a wild rattle and noise, he hurried to help: like a man with medical education, who took the Hippocratic oath, he could not do otherwise. Today, James Huth is no longer associated with medicine - he is a filmmaker. So, the first thing he saw at the scene of the accident was the driver - Henri Paul - by this moment already dead, with his head in the airbag. Then he saw one passenger and a bodyguard in a panicked "jaw hanging" state, according to Hut. At this point, two more people came up and tried to open the car doors, but Huth explained to them that it was better not to move the passengers themselves. Dodi Al-Fayed was thrown into the front of the cabin and at least one leg was broken. Diana was in the back of the cabin in the corner, and she was the last to be noticed. Gradually, a crowd surrounded the car, everyone began to take pictures, then the ambulance doctors arrived. According to James Huth, he also noticed a parked car in the tunnel behind him, but could not give an exact description of its model and color. Perhaps it was a white Fiat Uno, which will be discussed a little later.
She predicted a car accident
For several years, Diana lived with the idea that "Charles and the royal family were going to kill her." Although her guesses, voiced in a letter to the butler Paul Burrell shortly after her divorce from Charles, are not direct evidence of the involvement of the royal family in what happened, the very fact of such a letter is quite remarkable. The letter reads something like this: "My husband is planning an 'accident' with my car, brake failure, and a serious head injury to clear his path to marrying Tiggy." The authenticity of this letter has been questioned; Burrell was said to have forged it. Diana's acquaintances claimed that she never feared for her life. But still, if this letter was actually written by her, then it leads to very sad thoughts.
Another car? New route?
The Mercedes that Diana and Dodi were in that night was replaced shortly before the trip. For what reason is unknown. Prior to that, they traveled all day in another car. And in this, according to some suspicions, the seat belt in the back seat, where Diana was, was faulty. The bodyguard sitting in front was wearing a seatbelt, but Dodi and Diana were not. Her closest friends later said that this was very strange: Diana was sensitive to personal safety issues and always buckled up in the car. In addition, it was later revealed that the car was in a terrible state and had been hastily repaired after an accident several months earlier. The Ritz staff warned Henri Paul that this car could not travel faster than 60 km/h. Well, the most interesting thing: the driver changed the usual route, and for some reason, almost all surveillance cameras along this route later turned out to be broken.
Phone call
In addition to suspicions about ex-husband Diana had other reasons to fear for her life. When she was still a political figure, she always took a strong stance on the ban on the use of landmines, arguing that the military rarely demines territories after the end of conflicts, and then ordinary people and, worst of all, children can run into a mine, die or remain disabled. At that time, the UK wanted to achieve the removal of the ban on this type of weapon. In February 1997, Diana received a call from a high-ranking military officer who advised her "not to get involved in something she has no idea about, because, how shall I put it, accidents sometimes happen to people."
"Ambulance"
One would assume that when people of Diana's stature are involved in an accident, the doctors immediately fly to the rescue, and then in the blink of an eye take the person to the hospital in time to save him. But in this case, it didn't work out that way. The accident happened at night, around 12:26, the first call to the ambulance came within a minute. Four minutes later, the police and firefighters arrived at the scene, but Diana was not pulled out of the car until 1:00. Soon she had a heart attack and 20 minutes later, already in the ambulance, the doctors were able to get her heart to beat again. She was taken to the hospital only at 2:00, and it was no longer possible to save her.
Was she pregnant?
Mohammed Al-Fayed claimed that one of the reasons why the royal family desired Diana's death was her pregnancy. The father of the child was Dodi Al-Fayed, and Diana was still a public figure, closely associated with the royal family, and for them the scandal associated with the birth of her child from a Muslim was unacceptable. After Diana's death, the doctors stated that they did not find any signs of pregnancy, even on early stage. Mohammed Al-Fayed, however, insisted on his own, stating that such a quick embalming of Diana's body was carried out just so that the pregnancy test did not show anything. And it is for this reason that the embalming was carried out quickly and in violation of the usual procedure.
"Bright flash"
Ten years after the death of Diana, the main witness in this case, who was driving in the same tunnel in front of the ill-fated Mercedes, stated that he saw something unusual that night. Namely, a motorcycle caught up with the Mercedes, and immediately after that an extremely bright flash appeared - possibly intentional, in order to blind the driver. This information formed the basis of the conspiracy theory that the accident was set up by the British intelligence services. former officer British intelligence officer Richard Tomlinson told Mohammed Al-Fayed that in the same way (using blinding with a bright flash) they wanted to kill former president Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic. According to the official version, however, in the event of the accident that took Diana's life, there was no "bright flash" in the tunnel.
White "Fiat"
The examination of "Mercedes" showed that the car collided in the tunnel with a car of the Fiat Uno model of white color. This "Fiat" could not be found, although all forces were allegedly thrown into its search. Mohammed Al-Fayed insisted that it was the car of the intelligence agents who staged the accident. He also said that he was conducting his own investigation, and found the car: it belonged to a certain French journalist, James Andanson. But the official investigation stated that Andanson's car could not have been involved in that accident. The problem is that it is no longer possible to find out whether this is actually so: Andanson was found dead in 2000, and his death was regarded as a suicide. But when they found him, there were two bullet holes in his head. Was he the same paparazzi chasing Diana? What role did he play in the incident? Nobody knows for sure.
Reopening of the tunnel
We all imagine, as it usually happens. When a serious car accident occurs somewhere, especially with fatal, this place is fenced or partially blocked for some period - from several hours to several days. In the event of such a high-profile accident as this one, one could expect that the tunnel would be closed at least for a few days in order to properly investigate everything there and collect all possible evidence. But it didn't work out that way: the Mercedes was quickly towed away, the road was cleared of debris, and the tunnel was open to traffic before sunrise. It looks like a very quick "cleanup". Many forensic experts argued in this regard that for such short term it was simply impossible to collect the necessary evidence at the scene of the accident.
Rumors about SAS connection to this case
In 2013, while investigating a case involving Danny Nightingale, an SAS soldier ( elite unit air force Great Britain), an interesting letter was found. It said that Nightingale's former colleague, going by the name "Soldier N", bragged about his involvement in the murder of Princess Diana. More specifically, he told his parents and his wife that his chapter was behind the incident, with the approval of senior management. The police tried to investigate the case, but concluded that there was insufficient evidence and perjury. However, last year Soldier N's wife told the media that she had been offered money by the SAS to keep quiet about the death of Princess Diana and that her life had been threatened. After that, her trail disappeared - perhaps the woman is now on the run.
"Enemies" by Mohammed Al-Fayed
Mohammed Al-Fayed never suggested that Diana's death was the work of some of his enemies. No, he always said that his business competitors had nothing to do with it, but British intelligence and the royal family were involved. However, one cannot deny the fact that Dodi Al Fayed had interesting family... His father is a billionaire today, and in the 90s he was a very rich man. He was the owner of the Ritz hotel in Paris, as well as the London department store Harrod's and the Fullham football club, until 2013. There was a lot of talk that the revenge of Al-
Fayed, and the target was not Diana, but Dodi Al Fayed. But there is no evidence of this, of course. By the way, Dodi's maternal uncle, Adnan Khashoggi (died in early June 2017), was a well-known arms dealer and "worth" $4 billion. He must have had many enemies too.
Mohammed Al Fayed investigation and film
The romance between Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed began a few months before their tragic death. Dodi was the son of an Egyptian businessman, well educated, financially successful and experienced in the entertainment industry. Mohammed Al-Fayed conducted his own investigation and came to the conclusion that the drunk driver could not be the cause of his son's death, but other forces contributed to it. Mohammed Al-Fayed spent a lot of money on his independent investigation, but by 2008 he admitted that he still did not have accurate evidence and could not show anything to anyone. He also funded a documentary called Unlawful Killing in the late 2000s, but since no one Insurance Company failed to protect the filmmakers from libel suits, this picture was never officially released anywhere. Fortunately, this interesting, thoughtful, albeit incredibly biased film can be viewed on YouTube.
Some people think that Diana planned it all herself.
Finally - a strange theory, far-fetched, but you can’t throw words out of a song. According to this theory, Diana and Dodi decided to fake their deaths in order to start new life away from the all-seeing eye of the British crown and the ubiquitous media. And let it sound ridiculous, but people always put forward such theories in such cases: after all, it is much more pleasant to think that a beautiful young woman did not die, but lives happily somewhere surrounded by people who love her.
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