A quarter of a century after the death of Diana of Wales, conspiracy theories continue to feed myths such as that the princess was murdered or that the British royal family was involved, despite the fact that official investigations maintain that she died in a car accident in Paris.
This was finally confirmed in 2008 by the British judicial investigation into the death of Lady Di, 36, and her boyfriend Dodi al Fayed, 42, concluding that the tragedy was due to reckless homicide.
The fault fell, according to the evidence collected by the police, on Henri Paul, the driver of the Mercedes that crashed on the Pont du Alma in Paris on the night of August 30, 1997, when the vehicle was being chased by a group of photographers. on the hunt for the valuable snapshot of the then most famous woman in the world.
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Only the couple’s bodyguard survived, Trevor Rees Jones, who, however, was never able to provide an enlightening testimony about this event because he suffered amnesia, a circumstance that has charged the conspiracy theorists with suspicion, who understand that he could have been silenced.
The jury of that investigation also found guilty of reckless homicide the “paparazzi” who followed the vehicle, the focus at first of the wave of indignation that was directed towards the sensationalist media.
“THE QUEEN DID IT”
The first members of the Paris Criminal Brigade who arrived at the scene of the accident worked on these same hypotheses, but in the following days all kinds of theories began to spread like wildfire, some driven by an internet that was still in its infancy and others defended by key characters.
Just 24 hours after the event, Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father and then owner of the Harrods department store, requested the opening of a judicial investigation for involuntary manslaughter, while the Parisian Prosecutor’s Office announced that Paul tripled the blood alcohol level allowed.
Several days later, the funeral in memory of Lady Di was held in Westminster Abbey (London), in which the princess’s brother, Charles, charged against the press. The princess’s private burial followed at the Spencer family home, Althorp House, in Northamptonshire, north-central England.
The foundations were being laid for the most unlikely suspicions to take root, as evidenced by some graffiti that appeared near the Alma bridge: “Murderer paparazzi” or “The Queen did it.”
There begins a journey to the rabbit hole of Alice in Wonderland, the place where conspiracy theorists recommend going in search of answers, whether to dismantle the pandemic, climate change or Diana’s death.
A hole that is difficult to get out of, because it is tempting to think that some photographer did not really work for the media, but for the secret services in charge of executing it, one of the theories that the British channel Channel 4 is now exploring in a four-part documentary: “Investigating Diana: Death in Paris” (Investigating Diana: Death in Paris).
The program, made in the purest style of the “true crime” genre, deals, for example, with the possibility that the attacks against the sensationalist press served to divert attention from the real authors, according to what the Al Fayed himself in recent statements.
The Egyptian tycoon thus repeats the thesis that he has maintained for the last 25 years, in which he assures that the death of his son and the princess was due to “a plot” because they both had wedding plans.
HITCHMEN TO ASSASSIN DIANA
The conclusions of two investigations, the police of 2006 and the judicial one of 2008, which assure that it was a “tragic accident” and a reckless homicide, respectively, remain unbelievable.
She continues to cling, for example, to a letter published by the British tabloid “Daily Mirror” in which Diana, ten months before her death, says that her husband, Charles of England, hatched a plan to kill her in a car accident, so he came to be questioned by the police.
For this reason, Al Fayed accused the royal family of conspiring for the secret services to assassinate Diana and Dodi because the princess was pregnant with their son, a Muslim.
His accusing finger pointed directly at Elizabeth II’s husband, the late Duke of Edinburgh.
In this context, the aforementioned documentary explores the existence of hired assassins, with testimonies from a witness who affirms that, just before the incident, he saw a beam of light, perhaps a flash from a camera, coming out of a motorcycle that overtook the Mercedes, leaving glimpse that the flash served to make Henri lose control.
Another witness says she saw a white Fiat Uno zigzag out of the tunnel moments after the accident, with a “dark-skinned” man behind the wheel and a large, muzzled dog in the back seat of the car, which had, she recalls, broken taillights. .
The then head of the Criminal Brigade, Martin Monteil, confirms that traces of white paint were found on the Mercedes and traces of light glass on the asphalt, although she confesses that none of these testimonies yielded conclusive evidence.
Be that as it may, the documentary about Diana has millions of Britons hooked these days, proving that the princess is as relevant now as it was 25 years ago, just as, unfortunately, as the conspiracy theories.
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