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Princess Diana's Death:
Introduction & Overview
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Princess Diana — first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, and the mother of Prince William and Prince Harry. Her personal magnetism and glamour made her an international icon and earned her lasting popularity — but also unrelenting public scrutiny.

The Death Driver's Last Night * Conspiracy Theories
The French Connection * Photos
That Night — After the Crash * Conclusion * Still in the News

Ever since Princess Diana's tragic death on August 31, 1997, millions of words have been written and spoken about what really happened the night she died, and why.

Perhaps, not unlike the murder of JFK, we will never really know the whys and wherefores of that night. But to put things into perspective, let's take a look at it all the same.

WHAT HAPPENED THAT
NIGHT: THE ACCIDENT

At precisely 12:15 A.M. on Sunday, August 31, 1997, the security staff of the Ritz Hotel were alerted that their royal guests would be leaving.

Dodi and Diana were ready to depart through the rear entrance of the hotel. The green Range Rover and the decoy black Mercedes (the latter driven by the hotel's senior limousine driver) pulled out into the Place Vendome, circled the square, and returned to their parking spots. Photographers there were neutralized.

Simultaneously, the second black 1994 Mercedes S-280, with Henri Paul at the wheel and Trevor Rees-Jones in the passenger seat, sped away from the back of The Ritz; Dodi sat behind Paul and Diana was on Dodi's right, behind Rees-Jones. No-one wore seatbelts.

It was 12:20 when the car sped south on Rue Cambon, then sped along Rue de Rivoli, past the illuminated fountain and Egyptian obelisk of the Place de la Concorde.

By the time the Mercedes was hugging the Seine and approaching the underpass, the few pursuing paparazzi on their motorbikes had dropped well behind. Photographs of speeding cars (and their occupants) are notoriously difficult to take at night; besides, the windows of the Mercedes were heavily tinted. Nor did any of these men, as motivated as they were, wish to risk their lives by edging their bikes too close to a big heavy speeding vehicle.

Hence, the "Paparazzi killed Diana" theory is rubbish.

By the time Henri Paul and his passengers entered the Alma tunnel, the photographers were almost a quarter mile behind, their famous quarry still in sight but effectively out of camera range. The paparazzi also knew that at Dodi's apartment, other paparazzi, who'd already been alerted, would be ready and waiting for the royals.

Now another limousine driver entered the tunnel not far behind Paul, and this driver made a sworn statement about the fatal events that were about to explosively unfold. These events changed the course of countless lives and, it may be said without hyperbole, altered late-twentieth-century history. The driver's account was supported by police and later forensic investigations.

Paul entered the two-lane tunnel on the left, speeding at sixty to eighty miles an hour, which is not unusual in European cities. Then he found himself behind a slower vehicle. As careful as Paul might otherwise have been, it's easy to imagine Dodi urging him on: "Faster! Lose them! Go on!" — as friends and colleagues recalled he usually did. Life was a chase Dodi wanted to win, a game in which he wanted both to be in the limelight and in full possession of his privacy. Henri Paul, in other circumstances, might have been more cautious, but as Claude Luc would later say, Fayed employees always did what they were told — period.

Paul veered the Mercedes to the right to pass the car ahead of him in the left lane. But then he lost control, and the right rear of the Mercedes swerved into the right wall of the tunnel with a loud crash. Attempting a high-speed correction, Paul turned sharply left — and the Mercedes veered into one of the concrete pillars separating the lanes from oncoming traffic. The impact was deafening and catastrophic.

The car ricocheted, hurtling across the drive and spinning around before coming to a full stop, reduced to a mass of crushed steel. The front end telescoped into the engine, which in turn plowed through the driver's seat. Inside, Henri Paul and Dodi al-Fayed were killed instantly, their bodies hideously mangled. Trevor Rees-Jones was seriously injured. And Diana, Princess of Wales, was suddenly on the edge of death. It was 12:24 AM.

MORE DIANA PAGES...

PHOTOGRAPHS

Hover your mouse over the pictures below for captions.

No-one could know it at the time, but minutes after this picture was taken, three of the people in it would be dead.

A view of the crash from just outside the Pont de l'Alma tunnel.

The Mercedes S-280 that Diana, Dodi, Rees-Jones and Paul rode in was a death trap that had been written off but was later rebuilt and put back on the road, according to one report.

Xavier Gourmelon was one of the first responders to arrive on the scene after the crash. Both Fayed and Paul were pronounced dead at the scene, but Diana and Rees were still alive. Gourmelon admitted that at the time he didn’t know the woman he and his colleagues were trying to save was Princess Diana.

Word of Princess Diana's death struck the world like a thunderbolt.

The princes William and Harry with (L to R) their grandfather, Prince Philip, their uncle, Earl Spencer, and their father, Prince Charles, in the funeral cortege.

Crowds of people lined the two-mile long route Diana's funeral procession took through central London. After passing down the Mall, the procession travelled through Horse Guards Arch, along Whitehall, and finally to historic Westminster Abbey for the funeral service.

Sir Elton John performed "Candle in the Wind" during the service. John and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin rewrote the lyrics of the song, originally about Marilyn Monroe, to pay tribute to Diana.

Diana's Westminster Abbey funeral was packed with imminent figures, from politicians to celebrities to extended members of the royal family. The ceremony at the historic church was witnessed live by 2,000 guests and millions more watching on television around the world.

Driver Henri Paul did not have a chauffeur's license but had been trained to drive heavily armored cars like the Mercedes in anti-terrorist maneuvers. Prosecutors said blood tests showed he had the equivalent of 10 glasses of wine or nine hefty shots of whiskey in his system — equivalent to three times the French blood-alcohol limit and more than double the New York limit.

The 41-year-old Paul had a reputation as a 'macho action man' who also loved being around celebrities and meeting high-profile people in his work. An inquest into Diana's death heard he had been privately treated for alcoholism, but his family denied he had a drinking problem.

Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell disputed claims that Henri Paul was drunk. “Why would Trevor let a drunk man drive him? Let alone Diana and Dodi? That's rubbish. I think there was a mixing up of toxicology results.”

According to some reports, Diana’s driver Colin Tebbutt spoke of a stream of morbid strangers who snuck into the hospital to stare and bow at her corpse.

“The place appeared to be in turmoil," he said. "My first job was to stop people coming in and bowing.

“People, government mi­nisters, you name it. I didn’t know who they were. Anybody that was calling in at the hospital. They didn’t say anything — they were just bowing and walking out.

“It was wrong. I knew why they were there, but it had to stop.”

In August of 2013, the Court Martial of SAS (Special Armed Service — a special forces unit of the British army) sniper Danny Nightingale brought to light a letter written by a witness, Soldier N, which was sent to Nightingale's in-laws. Soldier N, Nightingale's former roommate, was in prison for illegally hiding firearms and ammunition. He had allegedly boasted that the SAS were behind the death of Princess Diana. In December of 2013 Sky News reported that there was "no credible evidence" that the SAS was involved in the death of the Princess and the others, and thus there was no reason to re-open the investigation.

Francois Levistre, a 63 year-old driver who claimed to be in the tunnel at the time of the fatal crash, told an inquest into Diana's death that a blinding "white flash" was directed at the princess's Mercedes from the men's motorbike in the tunnel just before the Merc ploughed into a pillar.

Francois Levistre claimed to see the pillion passenger of a motorbike get off the machine, stroll over to the car, peer at the bodies of Diana, Dodi, and driver Henri Paul, and signal to his colleague on the bike that they were dead. The bikers then quickly sped off.

This sensational story in the Globe claimed that Prince Charles had confessed to the murder of his ex-wife. The two-page article inside carried no official comment and quoted only an unnamed “palace insider.”

The story asserts that Diana survived the crash but that a new autopsy revealed that she was murdered after being given a lethal injection in the ambulance taking her to hospital. It was administered by ”a British agent posing as a paramedic.”

This thought-provoking television documentary features interviews of a former MI6 agent, as well as the Fayed family, who tell why they believe Diana's death was actually murder.

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