“As soon as the world heard the news
of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a crash in Paris on 31 August 1997,
many questions began to be asked by people who believed it was a conspiracy and
not an accident: was she engaged to Dodi Fayed? was she pregnant with Dodi's
child? why did the ambulance take so long to get to the hospital? what were the
roles of the 'blinding white flash' and the Fiat Uno? were the blood samples
taken from the driver switched before testing? Martyn Gregory has interviewed
close friends of Diana, the bodyguards who were with her and now for this
revised and updated edition the head of the French investigation to delve into
the real truth behind the crash. He answers all of these questions and more in
an authoritative, exhaustively researched and utterly compelling book that
reveals what really happened in Diana's last hours.”
Diana: The Last Days Hardcover –
September, 2004
by Martyn Gregory
Beach BBQs with Dodi, rows with
bodyguards and that 'engagement ring'... The truth about the last week of
Princess Diana's life
Martyn Gregory
24 AUGUST 2017 • 12:20PM
It turned out to be a terrible decision, but Diana, Princess of Wales, chose to spend her final
summer in the company of the Fayedeen – billionaire businessman Mohamed Fayed’s
retinue of family, staff, PR and security – in Fayed boats, apartments and hotels.
Having been invited on holiday with the Harrods boss, Diana started her
relationship with his son, Dodi, in July 1997.
Unbeknown to her, Dodi was at the time holidaying with his
American fiancée, Kelly Fisher – a Calvin Klein model. Dodi was sleeping with
Kelly on one of the Fayed boats, while courting Diana on another – the Jonikal,
a 150ft luxury yacht Mohamed had bought specifically to entertain the Princess.
It was only six weeks after they met that Diana and Dodi were killed in a fatal
Paris car crash.
Mohamed Fayed has since spent tens of millions of pounds
attempting to expunge the Fayed name from the following sequence of events.
When she died, Diana was travelling from a Fayed hotel to a
Fayed apartment. She was in a Fayed car, sitting next to Fayed’s son and heir,
Dodi. The driver, Henri Paul, was not a chauffeur.
He was the acting head of the Hôtel Ritz Paris security who
had been recalled from an evening off by the Fayeds – father and son – to
return Diana and Dodi to the Arsène Houssaye apartment – their luxury
accommodation just off the Champs-Élysées.
In over a decade of Ritz service, Paul had never driven any
member of the Fayed family anywhere, ever. Neither Fayed had any reason to
believe that Paul had been drinking. Nor did the two Fayed bodyguards, who were
responsible for the couple’s safety.
A sad irony of Diana’s last journey was that chauffeurs
Philippe Dourneau and Jean-François Musa, who had driven the couple to the Ritz
for their last meal, had been waiting for them at the front of the hotel.
No qualified French chauffeur has ever been involved in a
fatal accident. Dourneau and Musa later made their way to the Alma-tunnel crash
site, and were devastated to discover that Paul had been at the wheel.
28/29 August 1997
This day was a most significant one for Diana – exactly one
year earlier she had been divorced from the Prince of Wales. She toasted the
moment in champagne with Dodi on the Jonikal.
The following evening, the couple celebrated with a barbecue
on a small beach in Sardinia. According to their butler, Rene Delorme, this was
one of the most romantic nights of their summer together. Dressed in an evening
suit and bow tie, he served them with caviar.
The Jonikal’s chef prepared barbecued chicken burgers, pork
and smoked sausages. The next day, they flew from Olbia in Sardinia to Paris.
The couple – and their Fayed bodyguards, Kes Wingfield and Trevor Rees-Jones –
touched down at Le Bourget airport at lunchtime.
Close friends say that Diana had been reluctant to go to
Paris, and wanted to go straight home to see her sons. Her summer with Dodi was
at an end, but he had insisted on a final flourish in Paris, where some of his
family’s proudest possessions are to be
found.
Unsurprisingly, their flight was met by the paparazzi, and
the final pursuit of Diana then began. The Fayed PR team had made the most of
the Diana factor since ‘The Kiss’ picture in
the Sunday Mirror in August had alerted the world to the romance. PR
supremo Max Clifford told me that even he had
been made aware of Dodi’s intention to visit Paris before returning to
the UK.
As soon as they got into their limousine at the airport,
driven by Dodi’s personal chauffeur, Dourneau, they were chased by paparazzi on
motorbikes. Dodi was upset by this and instructed Dourneau to drive fast to try
to lose them.
Princess Diana was also upset. Dourneau recalls her
screaming at him to ‘slow down’ so he would not hit a photographer as they
hurtled around the périphérique. The seasoned chauffeur managed to lose the
paparazzi altogether with a deft manouevre to exit the Paris ring road.
His task was made easier as no one had any idea where Dodi
was taking the Princess. According to Dourneau, Diana was trying to soothe his
boss during their journey. ‘Don’t worry Dodi,’ he recalls her saying, as she
placed a hand on his knee.
30 August 1997 - 15:45
Their first destination was the Villa Windsor, which Mohamed
Fayed has rented from the Paris authorities for decades. (It is thought
unlikely that Dodi told Diana that the previous month he had given his then
fiancée, Kelly Fisher, an identical tour.)
The villa is the former home of the exiled King Edward VIII
and his American wife, Wallis Simpson – the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It
lies in the Bois de Boulogne on the edge of Paris. Although Diana told friends
that she was ‘blissfully happy’, while she was in Paris she did not enjoy the
Villa Windsor visit.
Later that afternoon, she confided in one journalist that ‘it has a history and ghosts
of its own and I have no wish to follow that’.
They then went to the Ritz. Diana would have been familiar
with the hotel as the couple had visited it secretly for a brief stay in July.
Claude Roulet, assistant to the president of the Ritz, welcomed them. He was
also a historian who was writing a book about the hotel. He remembers asking
Diana if he should address her as ‘Lady Dee’ – as most French people called
her. Placing her hand on his arm, she told him, ‘Just call me Di.’
While Diana had her hair done by a Ritz stylist, Dodi
visited the jeweller Repossi in the Place Vendôme. Although only 80 metres from
the Ritz, Dodi instructed Dourneau to drive him there.
He emerged with only a brochure, but he had arranged
purchase of what was to become a controversial gold and diamond ring. After the
couple died, Mohamed Fayed claimed that it was an engagement ring, as did
Alberto Repossi himself.
Roulet accompanied Dodi to the jewellers. He does not recall
either man mentioning ‘engagement’ as the ring
was selected. Roulet later collected it. When he gave it to Dodi, he
asked if he intended to give the ring to Diana that night. Dodi said he did not
know. There is no evidence that Diana ever saw the ring. It was later recovered
from the Fayed apartment on rue Arsène Houssaye.
Mohamed Fayed paid for the ring after the couple died. It was later put on display in Harrods.
Despite the fact that there was no
evidence to support the claim, it was described as the couple’s ‘engagement
ring’.
30 August 1997 - 21:45
After leaving the Ritz, the couple spent a couple of hours in the Arsène Houssaye apartment until two Fayed vehicles
arrived to collect them and take them to the trendy Chez Benoit restaurant,
where Claude Roulet had booked a table for them (in his own name) and was
awaiting their arrival.
However, dozens of paparazzi had gathered outside the
apartment; an agency had already put their pictures (from their arrival at Le
Bourget) on the wires and word was out. The presence of the same two cars
outside – one driven by Dourneau, which would take the couple, and the
other by Jean-Francois Musa for the
bodyguards – indicated that departure was imminent.
As soon as their car moved off, the paps behaved like real
devils
Bodyguard Kes Wingfield remembers the chaotic scenes outside
the Arsène Houssaye apartment. ‘As soon as their car moved off, the paps
behaved like real devils. They called for their bikes and sped off like fools,
trying to stick to the car. They could have knocked over pedestrians. People
flattened themselves against walls as their bikes mounted the pavements and sped past.’
‘They were all around us,’ recalls Dourneau. ‘At the sides,
in front, behind. Some acted as scouts, riding ahead of us to find out where we
were going.’
Unfamiliar with being pursued like this, a furious Dodi
ditched his Chez Benoit idea en route. He told Dourneau to head for the
protection of the Ritz. The photographers would not be able to get in and the
couple could regain some privacy after the shambles of their apartment exit.
Dodi chose to blame the bodyguards for what he described as
the ‘f— up’ of their final journey. The bodyguards countered by telling Dodi
that it had been impossible for them to prepare for it, as they had no idea
that the hotel would be their destination.
They had thought they were going to Chez Benoit. The couple
were last seen on the hotel’s CCTV. Despite the photographers’ best efforts,
they failed to get a single picture of the Diana and Dodi out together in
Paris.
Diana looked disconsolate as she entered the Ritz for the
last time. The couple went straight to the L’Espadon restaurant. They ordered
food but Diana was clearly upset. Fellow diners reported that they saw her
crying as she ordered before they decamped to the Imperial Suite for their
final meal to be served.
CCTV later captured Dodi emerging from the suite and talking
to the bodyguards around midnight. He told them that he had devised a plan to
evade the paparazzi when they left the hotel. It was in this conversation that
his and Diana’s fates were sealed.
Dodi’s ‘plan’ was to leave the Ritz with Diana by the rear
entrance. He had asked staff to whistle up another Mercedes which, he told the
bodyguards, would be driven by Henri Paul. Wingfield and Rees-Jones, said Dodi,
were not to accompany them.
Their role would be to ‘create a diversion’ by taking the
two limousines from the front of the hotel. Both bodyguards strongly objected
to the idea of Diana being allowed to leave the hotel without security. And
neither man believed they would be best deployed as decoys.
Dodi countered by saying that his plan had been ‘OK’d with
MF’ – which meant ‘my father’, Mohamed Fayed. All now knew the argument was
over. MF called the shots in the Ritz, as he had throughout the couple’s French
holiday.
It was the best “plan” Dodi had ever come up with. And it
were crap
Wingfield, a plain-speaking Yorkshireman, later told me, ‘It
was the best “plan” Dodi had ever come up with. And it were crap.’
Fayed himself has given several different versions of this
final conversation with Dodi. Characteristically all his versions omit mention
of Henri Paul, or his own responsibility for standing down Dourneau and Musa,
the regular Fayed chauffeurs, who were awaiting the couple at the front of the
Ritz.
31 August 1997 - 00:18
Whatever the content of the final Fayed family conversation,
another Mercedes appeared at the back of
the Ritz. Diana, Dodi and Henri Paul are captured on CCTV waiting, and then
leaving at 12.18am. Because of the bodyguards’ objections, Dodi had agreed to
take one of them: Trevor Rees-Jones.
Five minutes later, Henri Paul drove the Mercedes into
pillar 13 of the Place l’Alma underpass and died instantly, as did Dodi Fayed.
Trevor Rees-Jones was to be the only survivor despite savage injuries. None of
them had been wearing seatbelts.
Princess Diana was cut out of the car by the French emergency
service SAMU. She had been critically injured and she had a heart attack at this time. Because her
blood pressure was dangerously low she
was driven extremely slowly to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. However, despite
the best efforts of top emergency surgeons, Diana was declared dead at 4am.
In the French Investigation, Judge Hervé Stéphan concluded in his report that Henri
Paul hit the pillar without touching the
Mercedes’ brakes, driving at between 61 and 63mph. (The speed limit is 30mph.)
Paul was also drunk.
The French legal driving limit is 0.50 grams of alcohol per
litre. Paul’s blood samples showed he had a level of 1.74g/litre. Ritz bills
indicated that he had drunk two pastis there, and it is thought that he must
have been drinking prior to his return to the hotel.
At Paul’s parents’ request, a second set of tests were
performed which were videotaped. The results were identical. The judge decided
that none of the chasing photographers or paparazzi should be prosecuted.
Expert forensic analysis of white paint scrapes on the
crashed Mercedes by technicians at the Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la
Gendarmerie Nationale established that the Mercedes had brushed a white Fiat
Uno immediately before the crash.
No one claimed to have seen the Fiat in the Alma tunnel at
the time of the crash. However, witnesses later confirmed that they had seen an
Uno exiting the tunnel. Despite a nationwide search, the Fiat was never found.
Before Diana’s corpse had reached the Hammersmith and Fulham
mortuary in London for its autopsy on 31 August 1997, Fayed had dispatched Ritz
officials to French police to inform them that, as Dodi’s father, he suspected
‘a conspiracy to murder’ the couple.
The Ritz hotel president, Frank Klein, and his assistant,
Claude Roulet, were tasked with transmitting this initial piece of fake news.
Before the 2007 UK inquests, Fayed spent tens of millions of pounds in an
apparent attempt to distance his family from any responsibility for Diana’s
death.
The final journey:
Trevor Rees-Jones (left), and Henri Paul leaving the Ritz with Diana and Dodi
Trevor Rees-Jones (left), and Henri Paul leaving the Ritz
with Diana and Dodi CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
Headed by former Metropolitan police chief Sir John Stevens
in 2006, Operation Paget was to investigate all of Fayed’s 175 ‘conspiracy to
murder’ theories in the build-up to the inquest. Not one shred of credible
evidence to support any of these charges was found.
The massive 832-page report, which appeared to redefine the
meaning of the word ‘comprehensive’, was
definitive. At 500,000 words long, the report concluded that, ‘There was no
conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. This was a tragic
accident.’
Well-informed legal sources estimate that Fayed spent at
least £50 million on the 2007/2008 London inquests into Diana and Dodi’s
deaths. He hired three of the UK’s leading QCs, plus appropriate legal support
to represent himself, his hotel and Henri Paul’s parents.
However, Fayed himself was humiliated and ridiculed in the witness
box. He scattered accusations of a vast plot to kill the couple encompassing
British and French security, police, medical and judicial services as well as
the Duke of Edinburgh, Tony Blair, his own bodyguards, even Henri Paul, without
being able to produce evidence for any of them.
No one who was not an employee, in his pay or a client, gave
support to his claims. Fayed told the inquest that he would accept the jury’s
finding. However, he then spent more millions producing a film, Unlawful
Killing, about the deaths. (The film was never seen in the UK as Fayed’s own
lawyers reportedly advised 87 cuts would
have to be made.)
A telling moment occurred mid-inquest when the coroner, Lord
Justice Scott Baker, interrupted Fayed’s QC, Michael Mansfield, and told him to
‘tether his allegations to evidence’. He was concerned that the inquests, which
eventually ran for six months, might
never end.
Unable to achieve this, as there was no evidence to support
his case, Mansfield told the court that the couple had been murdered in a
criminal conspiracy by the British Establishment, allegedly led by the Duke of
Edinburgh.
Eventually the QC and his client had to accept the
jury’s verdict. Princess Diana and Dodi
Fayed had been ‘unlawfully killed’ by ‘grossly negligent driving’.
Neither bodyguard on duty that night in Paris had approved
the security arrangements that were to kill the woman who became known, on the
day she died, as the ‘People’s Princess’.
Diana, The Last Days, by Martyn Gregory, is
published by Virgin B
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