7 – Did Diana, Princess of Wales, Predict Her Death in a Car Accident?
Even UK residents who didn’t care a great deal about the Royal Family were shocked by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on August 31, 1997. She was in a car that crashed along Paris’ Pont de l’Alma road tunnel and died from her injuries. Her lover, Dodi Al-Fayed, and the driver, Henri Paul, were also slain while Trevor Rees-Jones, Diana’s bodyguard, was the only survivor. At the time, the British media blamed the paparazzi who pestered Diana but later, it was revealed that Henri Paul was under the effects of prescription drugs and lost control of the car.
An estimated 2.5 billion people around the world watched her funeral and predictably, conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork claiming that it was a ‘hit’ on the unfortunate princess. One of the most intriguing pieces of ‘evidence’ is a letter that Diana supposedly wrote to Paul Burrell, her butler. She allegedly wrote it several months before the crash and told Burrell: “This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury to make the path clear for him to marry Camilla.”
Prince Charles had been having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles for years and, Diana had an affair of her own, with Dodi Al-Fayed, the son of the Harrods owner Mohammad Al-Fayed. Diana had divorced Charles the year before the crash and while the scandal rocked the Royal Family, it was hardly a reason for her murder. Nonetheless, Mohammed believes the British military was responsible for the death of Diana and his son because they wanted to make sure the couple never got married. Al-Fayed even claimed that Prince Philip ordered MI6 to carry out the assassination.
Burrell kept the note secret until 2003 until he published it in his book, A Royal Duty. According to Burrell, Diana wrote it as an insurance policy ‘just in case’ and it was written just two months after her divorce from Charles was finalized. However, Burrell also said that it was “impossible” for Charles to have killed the mother of his children. Speaking at an inquest in 2007, Burrell said that he didn’t believe it was murder. On April 7, 2008, the jury concluded that the princess and Al-Fayed were unlawfully killed by the gross negligence of the driver.