Ep. 88 | The MYSTERIOUS Death Of Princess Diana

August 31, 1997, at 12.23 a.m., a black Mercedes races through a Paris tunnel, with paparazzi in pursuit, with a driver who had way too much to drink, and with a woman in the back seat who just wanted to be left alone, and ten seconds later, there was silence. And within hours, the news would reach every corner of the planet. Her name was Diana. But this isn't just a story about how she passed away, it's about how she lived, and why, almost 30 years later, the world still can't let her go. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded, pfft. Today, we're talking about someone who is near and dear to billions of people's hearts, and that is Princess Diana, and specifically about the conspiracies around her death and the life that she lived before. Diana Frances Spencer came into the world on July 1, 1961. We share the same birthday! And she was born not into a hospital, but in a house on royal land, and that is Parkhouse Sandringham, least from the Queen herself. And the Spencer's had been intertwined with the crown for generations, five centuries of aristocracy, and descended from King Charles II, her father served as equity to two monarchs. And young Diana would call Queen Elizabeth "ant little bit," and she was born into privilege, but she was not born into happiness, necessarily, because her parents had desperately wanted a boy. And a year earlier, they'd actually lost a son named John, who was just 10 hours old. So when Diana arrived, they were not as happy, they really wanted a boy, and they would wait an entire week to even name her, which is just so sad. And that rejection was only the beginning, and when Diana was 6 years old, her mother would fall in love with another man, and leave. And what followed was a custody battle so vicious that Diana's own grandmother testified against her daughter in court, and the children stayed with their father. So her mother, kind of a piece of shit. And Diana would later tell her nanny that she used to wait on the doorstep for her mother, but she never came home. Just heart-breaking. And that abandonment carved something deep into her. And at just 9 years old, she made a vow, saying quote, "I will never marry unless I'm really in love, because if you're not in love, you're going to get divorced, and I never intend to be divorced. You and me both, Diana." It's probably around that time, when my dad was on a second marriage, and I was like, "This? I don't think you're doing this right." And then he got divorced later on, shout out, "Dad, two divorces in. Maybe three come. We'll see. I don't know. I'm just getting dead. Anyway, but she would carry that wound everywhere, through boarding school where she failed her exams twice, but won an award for helping others, and through a miserable stint at finishing school in Switzerland. And through her short-lived dream of becoming a ballerina because she grew to tall. But eventually she would move to London, and at 18 Diana moved into a flat, her mother bought her in Earl's Court, valued at around 50,000 pounds. Okay, Mommy came back. Mommy bought a really expensive flat for her, but that doesn't, that doesn't. Bye-back love, okay? And regardless from coming from a very wealthy family, she would work three days a week as a kindergarten assistant. And the other days, she was a nanny for an American family, who only discovered she was an aristocrat. When they found a bank slip from Coots, the Royal Family's Bank, marked Lady Diana Spencer. Yeah, it just goes to show, she was very humble from the very beginning, and she just genuinely loved helping people. And she was shy, and she was kind, and she was ordinary in all the ways that mattered. And she would later call these years the happiest of her life, but she had no idea what was coming. So the first time Diana Spencer met Prince Charles, she was 16 years old, and he was 29 and dating her older sister, actually, at the time. So it was November 1997, at a shooting party at all four of the Spencer family estate, and Charles was there for Sarah. And Diana was just the kid's sister, home from boarding school, lingering in the plowed fields in her wellies. But Charles would notice her, and he would later describe her as a very jolly and amusing and attractive 16-year-old. Kind of gross knowing that he's 29 years old, but we're just gonna skip past that, I guess. Diana would notice him too, and she already had photos of the Prince by her bedside. Him just being a schoolgirl crush, she'd never expected to amount to anything. But her private first impression was telling, with quote, "God, what a sad man," she would say about the first encounter later on in life with him. So three years would go by, and the relationship with Sarah, Diana's older sister, would fizzle. And Charles drifted through a string of eligible women while the palace grew impatient, and at this point he was 31, and the heir to the throne, and also unmarried, which ate good in the royal family. And then came the summer of 1980, and Charles was reeling from the assassination of Lord Mount Baton, his great uncle, and his mentor. The man he called his honorary grandfather, and he was killed by an IRA bomb the year before, and at a barbecue that July, Diana found him sitting alone, and she went to him, saying, quote, "You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at the funeral," she said. Quote, "You need someone beside you," unquote. And according to Diana, that's when everything changed. Quote, "Whereupon he leapt upon me and started kissing me," unquote. And what followed was one of the shortest courtships in royal history, and Diana would later reveal the truth to biographer Andrew Morton, saying, quote, "We met thirteen times, and we got married," unquote. "Thirteen times," which I know there's other marriages that happen around the world like a range marriages they never meet at all, but for the specifically for the royal family that sits kind of crazy, but she was a beautiful young woman plucked from obscurity to marry the most eligible bachelor in the world. But behind closed doors, there were warning signs from the very beginning, and the engagement was announced on February 24, 1981, and Diana was 19, and the press gathered for the obligatory interview, the smiling couple, sparkling rings, softball questions, and then a reporter asked, and Diana answered immediately, saying, and Charles, oh, Charles paused. This is where all the red flags start sticking up in the air, lit on fire, and he says, Oh my god, and Diana's face would flicker, and she would later describe that moment as traumatic, saying, quote, "I thought what a strange answer," unquote. Diana's ring was a twelve-karat salon sapphire surrounded by fourteen diamonds, and Diana had chosen it herself from a garard catalog, and it wasn't custom made or one of a kind, it means, but it was beautiful, but some in the palace considered it unsuitably common. Oh, I dare think it's unsuitably common diamond, whatever, whatever, anytime Diana could have got dunked on by the family, she got dunked on, okay. But that same ring now sits on the finger of Catherine, Princess of Wales, so. But even before the wedding, Diana discovered she wasn't the only woman in Charles' life, and about two weeks before the ceremony, she found a bracelet, gold engraved with two letters, G and F, and she knew what that meant, Gladys and Fred, the pet names Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles had given each other, borrowed from a radio comedy called The Goon Show, and Diana, like any of us hearing this story, was absolutely devastated, and she confronted Charles, and she would overhear a phone call where he told Camilla, quote-unquote, "Whatever happens, I will always love you," and she wanted to call off the wedding, but her sister's response was, quote, "Bad luck, duck, your face is on the tea towels now, you're too late to check it out," unquote. Some fucking sisters do, it's all about imagery, it's all about image, and to rub dirt in the wound with the night before the wedding, Charles reportedly cried, "Oh, come on, you piece of s**t." So on July 29, 1981, nearly 750 million people tuned in to watch Diana Spencer walk down the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral. Allegedly, it was almost a billion people, which is one, at that point, one-seventh of the planet, which is bonkers to even fathom, but it just goes to show how many people were so excited and so loved Diana specifically. And 600,000 spectators lined the streets of London, and 74 countries broadcast the ceremony live. And it was the most watched event in television history at that point, which is a record that would hold for years. And the dress was a David and Elizabeth Emanuel creation with Ivory Silk Taffer, a hand embroidered with 10,000 pearls and sequins, 153 yards of tool and a train that stretched 25 feet behind her, the longest in royal wedding, history. And that dress takes the cake, best dress in history, in my opinion. But it was so voluminous that Diana could barely fit into the carriage. And she was very nervous, obviously. And she accidentally transposed Charles' name in her vows, calling him "Philip Charles Arthur George" instead of Charles' "Philip". And the congregation chuckled warmly, but Diana did something else that day, something deliberate. And she became the first royal bride in history to omit the word "obey" from her vows. We love Diana for this. We absolutely love Diana for this. She's a queen. She's a princess, but she's a queen. And on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, they kissed, and the crowd roared. A new tradition was born, and then they left for their honeymoon. So the cracks appeared almost immediately, I mean, even before when he was crying to come along the phone, the cracks were there before the wedding even happened, but especially on the honeymoon. Because aboard the royal yacht, Britannia, cruising the Mediterranean, Diana expected intimacy. Connection. So, as you do on your honeymoon, a chance to finally begin their life together. But instead, she found distance. And a few days into the voyage, photographs of Camilla fell from Charles' diary, and he was wearing gold cufflinks engraved with intertwined seas, a gift from Camilla. And he wanted to paint watercolors and read philosophy, and Diana wanted to talk. But they had nothing to say to each other. And Diana reportedly destroyed one of his paintings during a blazing argument, and she, at this time, was 19 years old, alone on a boat with a man she barely knew, surrounded by staff, but also surrounded by silence. So the fairy tale was basically immediately over. Didn't even start really, and she just didn't know yet how bad it was going to get. But at some point, they were naturally intimate, and less than a year after the wedding, Diana was pregnant. And on June 21, 1982, she gave birth to Prince William Arthur Philip, Louis at St Mary's Hospital in London. So it was a break from centuries of tradition, in the first direct heir to the throne ever born in a hospital rather than a palace, and it would not be her last break from tradition. Which is why we love her. And when William was just nine months old, Diana insisted on bringing him along on the Royal Tour of Australia and New Zealand. No Royal Baby had ever accompanied their parents on an overseas visit. So naturally the palace resisted, but Diana refused to budge, and she won. And something remarkable happened on that trip, because the crowds didn't want Charles, they wanted her. They wanted Diana, and thousands of people lying in the streets, craning for a glimpse of the young princess with a shy smile in the downcast eyes. And when Charles worked one side of the street in Diana, the other, the side that got Charles audibly grown with disappointment, which is awesome. But quote unquote, Diana Mania had begun, and she was 21 years old at this time, and she was already the most famous woman in the world. So two years later, on September 15th, 1984, Prince Harry was born, and Diana had hoped a second child might bring her closer to Charles, but instead it drove them further apart. And Charles had wanted a girl, so when Harry arrived, red haired and spencer through and through, his reported reaction cut Diana deeply, saying quote unquote, "Oh God, it's a boy," and he's even got red hair. Shit, the fuck up, he piece of shit. And Diana would later say that moment was, quote, "the beginning of the end," unquote, of their marriage. But if her marriage was failing, her motherhood was absolutely not, because Diana didn't raise her children the way royals were supposed to. She refused to wear hats to public events. "You can't cuddle a child in a hat," she explained, and she took William and Harry to McDonald's, to Disney World, to homeless shelters and AIDS clinics, and she let them wear jeans and baseball caps, and she raced them to the car on the school run, and she sent William to a normal school the first heir to the throne in history not educated privately at home. And when the palace suggested the boys be named Albert and Arthur, Diana overruled them, saying, "Too old," she said. Just literally a queen, she's the queen of standing on business. You do not fuck with mommy Diana, okay? Because she wanted her sons to understand the world beyond palace walls, and she wanted them to know that not everyone lived the way they did. Quote, "I want them to have an understanding of people's emotions, people's insecurities, people's distress, and people's hopes and dreams," unquote. She was preparing them for something, and perhaps she didn't yet know what. So while Diana was redefining royal motherhood, her public image was reaching extraordinary heights, and that shy die of early engagements had evolved into something else entirely. A global fashion icon, a magazine cover fixture, and the most photographed person on the planet. And she collaborated with designers like Catherine Walker and Versace, and every outfit made headlines, and every hairstyle was copied. But the fascination went beyond fashion. There was something about Diana, just a warmth of vulnerability and openness that felt different from every royal who had come before, because she made eye contact, and she touched people, and she listened, and the public just adored her for that. And while the palace didn't know what to do with her, and Charles, Charles just grew to resent her even more, and by 1986 the marriage had collapsed, and Charles would later admit it had irretrievably broken down by that year, and the cause wasn't mysterious. It had a name, and that name was Camilla Parker Bowles, because Charles had never stopped loving her, even having two beautiful children with Diana, and just going through the motions, she never truly loved Diana, he was always in love with Camilla, even during their honeymoon, and now with Diana consumed by motherhood and public duties, he returned to Camilla, fully. And Diana knew, of course she knew, and in 1989 at a party she confronted Camilla directly, and the details of that conversation have never been fully disclosed, but Diana would later summarize the state of her marriage with devastating clarity, saying quote, "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." [Sighs] God, that interview was so iconic, and I'm so proud of her for that. But what the public didn't see, and what almost no one saw, was what was happening behind closed doors, because Diana's bulimia began the week after she got engaged, because Charles, again, stupidly, made a comment about her waste being a bit chubby, and it triggered something. In between her engagement and her wedding, Diana's waste shrank from 29 inches to 23 and a half inches. So she was disappearing, and no one in the palace seemed to notice, or I think just cared. And she would say, quote, "I was crying out for help, but giving the wrong signals. But she binged, and she purged, and she hurt herself, and she cut her wrists and her chest. And she would even throw herself down a staircase while four months pregnant with William, saying, quote, "I just needed time to adjust to my new position," unquote. But time wasn't something anyone gave her, and the institution was supposed to support her and had no idea how to handle a young woman in a crisis, so they just ignored it, or they blamed her, and the whispers inside the palace painted her as unstable and difficult and hysterical. So Diana was just drowning, and she was completely alone. So by the early 1990s, the war between Charles and Diana had spilled into public view, and both camps fed stories to sympathetic journalists, and both sides fought for control of the narrative. And the tabloids gorged on every leak in every rumor and every sideways glance, and then the tapes came. In August of 1992, the sun published transcripts of an intimate phone conversation between Diana and a man named James Gilby, and he called her "squidgey" 53 times. So the press dubbed it "squidgey gate." And Diana naturally was humiliated, but she didn't have to wait long for Charles' turn. And shortly after, transcripts emerged of a phone call between Charles and Camilla, which was explicit, and graphic, and mortifying, and Charles mused about being reincarnated as a tampon. So Camilla gate made "squidgey gate" look extremely tame. So I'm not saying, you know, Diana's innocent and all this necessarily, there was claims of that too, but I mean, from the get-go this guy, and the whole family was just treating her like a piece of shit, so she just needed someone to talk to, so I am taking sides. But this time, the monarchy was eating itself alive, and then came the book. And in June of 1992, Andrew Morton published Diana, her true story. And it was a bombshell, detailing her bulimia. her isolation, her husband's affair, her, you know what attempts, and the palace was blindsided and the public was stunned. And what no one knew at the time was that Diana herself was the source, because she had secretly recorded hours of tapes and passed them to Morton through an intermediary. And the book was her testimony delivered while she was still trapped inside the institution. And it was, in many ways, the first shot in her war for independence, and there was one more secret Diana revealed, though this one would come later in her own voice. And his name was James Hewitt, a cavalry officer. Handsome, attentive, everything Charles was not, basically. And their affair lasted five years from 1986 to 1991, and Diana would eventually admit to it publicly, in her 1995 panorama interview saying yes, I adored him. Yes, I was in love with him, but I was very let down. And Hewitt sold his story for 300,000 pounds, and Diana learned once again that trust was a luxury she could not afford. And by the end of 1992, the marriage was over in all but name. And on December 9th, Prime Minister John Majors stood in the house of commons and rudest statement from Buckingham Palace, saying quote, "With regret, the prince and princess of whales have decided to separate." So the fairy tale was officially dead, although I think it was dead before it even started. But Diana's story was far from over. In fact, the most important chapter was just beginning. So while her marriage was crumbling, Diana found something that gave her life meaning, because she had always been expected to do charity work, and it came with the title, "Shake hands, cut ribbons, smile for the cameras and move on." But Diana didn't do charity the way royals were supposed to, because she refused to work gloves. And it sounds like a small thing, but it wasn't, because for generations, members of the royal family had kept a barrier between themselves and the public, which was literal and symbolic, specifically white gloves with formal distance and a nod instead of a touch. But Diana stripped all that away, because she wanted to feel the hands she held, and she wanted people to feel hers. Saying quote, "I led from the heart, not the head, and I'll be it that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that." And it would get her into more than trouble, it would change the world. Because on April 9, 1987, London Middlesex Hospital, Britain's first and dedicated AIDS unit was opening, and Princess Diana was there to cut the ribbon. And at the time, the disease was barely understood and widely feared, and probably around half of the British public believed that AIDS patients should be quarantined. Because people thought you could catch it from a handshake, from a toilet seat, from just breathing the same air, so the stigma was suffocating, and patients were dying alone and untouched and abandoned by their own families. But Diana walked into that ward and did something no one expected. She shook a patient's hand, no gloves, no hesitation, and she didn't let go. And it was six weeks before Ronald Reagan would even say the word "AIDS" in public. So it was one photograph and one gesture, and suddenly, the most famous woman in the world was telling everyone watching, "These people are not dangerous, they are not untouchable, they are human beings." And Diana would return to AIDS' words again and again over the following decade, and she held patients, and she hugged them, and she sat on their beds and listened to their stories. "HIV does not make people dangerous to know," she declared at a 1991 conference. "You can shake their hand and give them a hug, have a nose they need it." One patient recalled the impact of her visit saying, "The princess shook my hand without wearing a glove, and that meant more to me than anything," unquote. And Andrew Morton would later write that Diana had "done more than anyone alive to remove the stigma surrounding the deadly AIDS virus," unquote, and she didn't do it with policy, she didn't do it with speeches, she did it with her hands. But Diana wasn't content to challenge stigma from the safety of hospital awards, and in January of 1997 she traveled to Angola, a country ravaged by decades of civil war and littered with landmines, millions of them. Buried in fields and roads and schoolyards, and every month hundreds of civilians were killed or maimed, and many of them children. And the images from that trip became iconic, because Diana, dressed in body armor and a protective visor, walking slowly through an active minefield in Huombo, and one wrong step could have killed her, but she didn't flinch. And at one point, she detonated a practice mine, and the explosion echoed across the field, and Diana reportedly turned to her companions and said, "One down 17 million to go." I can't, she's just literally, I can't, I don't know how many times I can say she's a queen, but what the hell? She's a saint, I mean nobody's perfect, obviously she's not perfect, nobody's perfect, but my goodness, she's a good person, we can all say that. But the British government, at this point, was furious, and a junior minister called her a loose cannon, and politicians accused her of meddling in foreign policy of being naive, of not understanding the complexities of international arms agreements. But Diana didn't give a shit, and she said, "Because I'm not a political figure, I am a humanitarian figure, and always have been, and always will be." And she returned to the cause again and again, and in August of 1997, just 23 days before her death, she visited Bosnia, walking through the ruins of a war-torn Sarajevo, meeting survivors and holding their hands. And at a speech in June of that year, she called landmines "the plague on earth." And three months after she died, 122 countries signed the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines forever, so Diana didn't live to see it, but she did make it happen. But what made Diana different wasn't just what she did, it was how she did it. She didn't visit hospitals for photo opportunities, she visited hospitals because she wanted to be there, and she would stay much longer than scheduled, and she came back when the cameras weren't watching, and she wrote letters, and she made phone calls, and she remembered names, and she would sit with the dying, and she held babies with HIV, and she embraced lepers and Indonesia when others refused to go near them, and she visited homeless shelters, not as a princess, but as a person who genuinely wanted to understand. Saying, "Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in society. It is a goal, and an essential part of my life, a kind of destiny." And then she added something that revealed everything about who she was, saying, "Whoever is in distress can call on me. I will come running wherever they are." And she meant it, and that was the thing about Diana. The compassion wasn't performed, it was real, and people could feel it, and the sick, and the suffering, and the forgotten. They looked into her eyes and saw someone who actually cared. And Stephen Lee, director of the UK Institute of Charity Fundraising, "managers" said it plainly, saying, "Her overall effect on charity is probably more significant than any other person in the 20th century." Because she wasn't trained for this, she had no background in public health or international relations, she had failed her O-levels twice, in fact, but she had something else, and that is something no amount of education can provide. "I'd like to be a queen in people's hearts, but I don't see myself being queen of this country," unquote, and she was right on both accounts. So on December 9, 1992, when Prime Minister John Major rose in the House of Commons to deliver the statement to the Buckingham Palace, that the prints and princesses of Wales decided to separate, as you said before, or the fairy tale was over. And it had been, by any measure, the worst year in modern royal history, and the queen herself called it an "anus-horribilis." An Andrew Morton's book had exposed the rot at the heart of the marriage, and Squigate and Camiligate had humiliated both parties, and a disastrous joint tour to South Korea where Charles and Diana could barely look at each other had earned them the nickname "The Glooms." And the separation was inevitable, but it wasn't a divorce, not yet. Diana remained Princess of Wales, and she kept her apartments at Kensington Palace, and she was still technically part of the family, but she was no longer silent. So on November 20, 1995, 23 million people in Britain tuned into BBC's Panorama, and another 200 million watched around the world. And Diana sat across from journalist Martin Bashir in Kensington Palace, and she was calm, and she was composed, and utterly devastating. And for nearly an hour, she laid bare the truth of her marriage, and the affairs, and the isolation, and the eating disorder, and the palace that had failed her. And she would speak of Charles' relationship with Camila without bitterness, but without mercy, either. And she admitted to her own affair with James Hewitt, like we spoke about before, and she described her bulimia and herself harm, and her desperate cries for help that weren't answered. But this whole interview was a declaration of independence, and it was a direct challenge to the monarchy itself, and she went further. And when asked whether Charles Charles was fit to be King, she hesitated just long enough. And she said, quote, "There was always conflict on that subject with him, because of the position I was seen to be in." And the message was unmistakable, and Diana was no longer playing by palace rules, and the royal family was furious, and the Queen, after consulting with the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Cattenbury, took an unprecedented step, and she wrote to both Charles and Diana insisting that they divorce, because Diana had forced their hand, and she had done it on her own terms. But in 2020, a BBC graphic designer named Matt Weisler came forward with a stunning revelation, as he had been asked to forge bank statements, fake documents suggesting that Diana staff were being paid by the security services to spy on her. And Martin Bashir had used those forgeries to win Diana's trust, and he had fed her paranoia, and manipulated her fears, and convinced her brother, Earl Spencer, to make the introduction. So the entire interview, the one that changed everything, had been obtained through deception, and an independent investigation led by Lord Dyson confirmed it all. And Bashir was, quote, "unreliable, devious, and dishonest," unquote, and the BBC had covered it up for years. And Prince William's response was, devastating, saying, quote, "It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC's failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia, and isolation that I remember from those final years, with her," unquote. Because the interview, like I said before, had been Diana's declaration of independence, but it also had been a trap, one that deepened her mistrust of everyone around her and accelerated her spiral into isolation, and she would never know that truth. So the divorce was finalized on August 28, 1996, and Diana received 17 million pounds and 400,000 annually for her private office, and like I said before, she kept her apartments at Kensington Palace, and she retained access to the royal jets, and she would remain princess of Wales. But she would lose something as well, because at Charles' insistence, she was stripped of the title, Her Royal Highness. Basically, it was just petty cruelty on his part, just a final twist of the knife, and Diana would now have to curtsy to her own children, and when Prince William learned of it, he tried to confront her, saying, quote, "I don't care what you're called, you're still mummy," unquote. And then, he made her a promise, saying, quote, "When I'm king, I'll give it back to you," unquote, which makes me want to cry. But after the divorce, Diana stepped back from public life, at least partially, and she resigned from over 100 charities choosing to focus her energy on just six causes close to her heart. The center point, the English National Ballet, Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Leprosy Mission, and The National AIDS Trust, and The Royal Marston Hospital. So she was no longer trying to be everything to everyone, she was trying to figure out who she was, outside of the palace, and outside of the title, and outside of the spotlight. And for a while, there was a man, Dr. Haznett Khan, a Pakistani heart surgeon, and they met at The Royal Brompton Hospital in 1995. And by all accounts, Diana was deeply in love with him, and she called him Mr. Wonderful, and she visited his family in Pakistan, and she dreamed of a life away from it all, with a quiet existence, far from cameras and tabloids. But Khan couldn't handle the pressure, and the scrutiny, and the impossibility of a private life with the most famous woman in the world, and by the summer of 1997, it was over, and Diana was alone again. So by the summer of 1997, Diana was 36 years old, and she was free, and she was searching, and she was about to meet a man named Doddy Fayed, and his father, Mohamed Al Fayed, was an Egyptian billionaire, owner of Herod's department store, and the Ritz Paris, and he had cultivated a relationship with Diana for years, inviting her and the boys to his estate in Surrey, offering his yacht for holidays. And in July of 1997, Diana accepted an invitation to join the Al Fayed family in St. Tropez, and she brought William and Harry, and they crews the Mediterranean on the John of Call, a 200-foot super yacht, and for a few days they were just a mother and her sons, swimming and laughing under the summer sun, and Harry would later call it heaven. And then Doddy arrived. He was 42 and a film producer, and he was also handsome and attentive, and charming in the way that men with unlimited resources can be charming, and he showered Diana with gifts, with the tension with the one thing she had always craved, just the whole sense that someone was actually choosing her, and by August 10th the photographers have captured them kissing on the yacht, and the photo went around the world, and the tabloids erupted, because there was a new romance. A new scandal, so the questions came fast, was it serious, would she marry him, what would it mean for the boys, and Diana for once didn't seem to care what anyone thought, because she was happy, or something close to it at least, that she had no way of knowing that she had less than three weeks to live. So the last ten days of Diana's life were mostly spent on the water, and she and Doddy crews the Mediterranean aboard the John of Call, drifting between Sardinia and the French coast, and the crew described her as relaxed, lighter than they'd ever seen her, and she listened to George Michael's older album on repeat, and she laughed easily, and she slapped late, and for the first time in years she seemed at peace, and on or around August 26th they made a stop into Monaco, and Doddy took her to Rapposi, an exclusive jeweler, near the harbor, and they looked at rings, and one collection in particular, and it was called, "This while we tell me yes", and the ring Diana chose was worth approximately $200,000, it's a nice ring, and whether it was an engagement ring, a promise, or simply a gift, no one knows for certain, because Diana never got the chance to tell anyone. So Saturday, August 30th, 1997, in the late morning, Diana and Doddy left Sardinia aboard the Alphiad family's private jet, a Herod's Gulf Stream 1V, and their destination was Paris, and it was to be a brief stopover before returning back to London, and they landed at the Laboget Airport at 320 in the afternoon, and the paparazzi were already waiting, of course, 'cause they're assholes, and four motorcycles idled in the parking lot, cameras ready, engines running, and the hunt had begun before Diana even stepped off the plane. And from the airport, a chauffeur Mercedes took them into the city, and the first stop was the Villa Windsor, the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the king who abdicated for the woman he loved, and Muhammad Alphiad had recently leased it and was renovating it as a potential residence for Doddy and Diana. But they wouldn't stay for long, and Diana reportedly found it gloomy and oppressive. So by late afternoon, they arrived at the Ritz Paris, another Alphiad property, and they entered through the rear, avoiding the growing crowds of photographers at the front. And once inside, Diana made a phone call, and she rang Belmoral to speak with William and Harry, but this would be the last time she would ever hear their voices. And that evening began to unravel almost immediately. As Doddy had planned a romantic dinner at Chez Bonoit, a quiet bistro in the first arondissement. But when they arrived, a mob of paparazzi were already there, cameras pressed against the windows, flash bulbs popping, and voices shouting. So they turned around without getting out of the car, so another attempt at privacy, but this time at the hotel's two Michelin star restaurant, Les Padons, sorry for saying these wrong, by the way. But word would spread, and within minutes other diners were staring, and phones were ringing, and the sanctuary had been breached. So Diana and Doddy abandoned their meal and retreated upstairs to the imperial suite. And CCTV footage from that evening shows Diana walking through the lobby with her eyes downcast and her expression "tired and distress," and she just looks like a woman who just wanted to disappear. Meanwhile, a man named Henry Paul was making his way back to the hotel, and Paul was the 41-year-old deputy head of security at the Ritz, and he hadn't been scheduled to work that night, and the shift had ended hours earlier, but he was called back when it became clear that Diana and Doddy wouldn't eat an escort. So he arrived at 10.08 pm, and colleagues who saw him later said he seemed fine and sober and professional, but something had happened during the three hours he'd been off duty, and where Henry Paul went between 7-10 pm that night has never been fully explained, and investigators would later find evidence that he'd consumed at least two records, a strong, a niece-flavored aperitif at the hotel bar, but even that didn't account for what they would find in his blood later on. And he was also allegedly taking a dangerous cocktail of medications at the time, a pro-zac for depression, and tie a pride a drug used to treat alcoholism, and a sleeping pill called Noctamid, and all three carried warnings against driving, and all three had their effects magnified by alcohol. So Henry Paul should not have been behind the wheel of a car that night, but no one knew, or if they did, no one stopped him. So just after midnight, a plan was hatched, Dottie was fed up, and the paparazzi had made the evening completely impossible. and he wanted to get Diana back to his apartment near the arc de Triomphe without being followed. So, they devised a decoy, and Dottie's regular Mercedes and his usual driver would pull up to the front entrance of the Ritz, creating a diversion. The photographers would follow, meanwhile, a second car, a rented black Mercedes S280 would slip out the back with Diana and Dottie inside, and Henry Paul would drive. And Trevor Reese Jones, Dottie's bodyguard, would ride in the front passenger seat, and no backup vehicle, no police escort, no other security, just the four of them. So, at 12.20am, they made their move, and Henry Paul led them through the rear exit onto Rookham Bone. And as they climbed into the Mercedes, he reportedly turned to the photographers gathered nearby and called out, "Don't try to follow, you'll never catch us." Then he floored it, which is extremely odd, given they had already created this diversion, why would he draw attention? It doesn't make sense. And the route, Henry Paul chose, was unconventional, because instead of taking the well lit, Chomp LAC's direct path to Dottie's apartment, he veered toward the sea and embankment. A faster route, yes, but also darker and more isolated, and of required passing through a tunnel, the Ponte-Lel Mall Underpass, which was 660 feet long, two lanes, and had a gentle curve, and a row of unforgiving concrete pillars down the center. And behind them, at least six paparazzi vehicles gave chase, motorcycles, and cars weaving through traffic, desperate to get the shot, and at the place de la Concorde, the Mercedes ran a red light, and witnesses described the car as already unstable, fish tailing, accelerating wildly, and the driver seemingly not in control at all. And the speed limit in the tunnel was 30 miles per hour, and Henry Paul was doing at least 65, and some estimates put it even higher, and the clock red 1223 am at this point. And apparently, no one inside the car was wearing a seat belt. So the Mercedes entered the Ponte-Lel Mall tunnel at twice the legal speed, and inside, or people, and none of them buckled in, and Henry Paul gripped the wheel, weaving through the dim orange light, and Trevor Reese Jones sat rigid in the passenger seat, and in the back, Diana and Dottie finally alone, finally escaping. And behind them, the paparazzi were falling back, so the decoy seemingly had worked, and the Ritz was receding in the rear-view mirror. And for a moment, it must have felt like freedom. And then, Henry Paul saw the car, a white fiat Uno, puttering along in the right lane at maybe 30 miles an hour, and a dog in the back seat, and a driver who had no idea what was barreling toward him. And then Paul swerved to avoid it, and the Mercedes clipped the fiat's rear bumper, a glancing blow just enough to destabilize the car, and paint scraped against paint, and the fiat wobbled and kept going, but the Mercedes did not. And Paul overcorrected, and the car lurched left, and the rear tires lost grip. And allegedly, 62 feet of rubber scorched into the concrete as the Mercedes began to slide, and he tried to correct again, but it was too late, and they were going way too fast. In a second skid mark, allegedly around 105 feet, carved a diagonal line across the tunnel floor, straight toward the 13th pillar, and the impact was catastrophic. And the Mercedes struck the pillar head on at somewhere between 60 and 70 miles per hour, and the front of the car crumpled instantly, folding inward like aluminum foil, and the force was so violent that it left a perfect imprint, a cookie cutter outline of the vehicle stamped into the concrete, and the car didn t stop. And it would spin counterclockwise, a half rotation, then slammed backward into the tunnel wall with a second sickening crash. And when it finally came to rest, the Mercedes was facing the wrong direction, east instead of west, and smoke rose from the wreckage, and glass glittered across the roadway, and then there were silence. And Henry Paul died on impact, and allegedly his spinal column snapped in his aorta ruptured, and he was gone before he could register what had happened. And the steering wheel had crushed his chest, and at the time he was 41 years old. And Dottie Feijed also died on impact, because the force of the collision threw him forward into the back of the front seats, and he would abstain massive internal injuries. And he would be 42 years old at the time of his death. But Trevor Race Jones somehow survived, because the airbags saved him just barely, but essentially every bone in his face was shattered, and his jaw was dislocated, and his tongue had been forced back into his throat, and he would require 10 hours of reconstructive surgery, and over 150 pieces of titanium to rebuild his skull. And he has no memory at all of the crash, apparently, and he was told he never would. And then there is Diana. She had been sitting behind Henry Paul, and when the car struck the pillar, she was thrown forward, hard. And her chest slammed into the back of the front seat, and she slid down onto the floor of the Mercedes, wedged between the seats, with her legs crumpled beneath her. And when first responders got there, she was still alive. But inside her chest, something had torn, and the impact had done catastrophic damage. And her heart had been displaced, knocked to the right side of her chest, and her left pulmonary vein, the vessel that carries blood from the lungs to her heart, had been ripped at the point where it connected to the atrium. So she was bleeding internally, and massively, so with every beat of her heart, blood would pour into her chest cavity instead of circulating through her body, and it would be a very rare injury, but almost always fatal, but not immediately. So Diana was barely but still conscious, slumped on the floor of the ruined Mercedes, just gasping for air. So Dr. Frederick Maliaz was driving home from a party, and he was an off-duty emergency physician just passing through the tunnel on the way back to his apartment, and he saw the wreck and pulled over and ran toward the smoking car. And he had no idea who was inside, but what he found was absolute carnage. It was four people, two of them, clearly dead, and a man in the front seat with catastrophic facial injuries, somehow still breathing, and in the back, a woman, and she was on her knees on the floor of the car, barely conscious, but still breathing. And Maliaz reached in trying to stabilize her airway, and he spoke to her softly trying to keep her calm. And her murmured words, the last coherent words anyone would ever hear her say, was "oh my god, my god what's happened." And Maliaz didn't recognize her, because her face was obscured by hair and blood, and he thought she was perhaps a model, because she was so tall and so striking even in this state. And it wasn't until the ambulance arrived that someone told him, that's Princess Diana. So the emergency call came at 12.26am in three minutes after the impact, and police would arrive at 12.30am. And the first ambulance, a S-A-M-U unit, Francis Mobile Emergency Service, reached the scene at 12.40, and unlike American or British paramedics, French emergency teams include a physician, their protocol is different, it's to stabilize on the scene before transport. Treat first, move second, and it would take an hour before Diana left the tunnel, so at approximately 1am, emergency workers finally extracted her from the wreckage, and as they lifted her onto a stretcher, her heart stopped, and she would go into cardiac arrest, and the medical team shocked her, and performed CPR, and pumped her chest in the back of an ambulance parked in the middle of the Paris tunnel, and her heart would start again. And at 1.18am, she was loaded into the ambulance, and at 1.41am, more than an hour after the crash, the ambulance finally began moving toward Patee's cell pet's rear hospital. And it was only four miles away, but the journey took 25 minutes. And that was because they had to stop to treat Diana. The ambulance moved slowly, and sometimes stopping entirely, so the doctor, inside, could continue working, and the thinking was that a patient in Diana's condition couldn't survive a high-speed transport, and it was better to stabilize and better to keep the heart beating, so whether a faster transport could have saved her remains one of the most debated questions of the entire tragedy. And some doctors believe she might have survived if she'd reached the operating table sooner, the so-called golden hour of trauma care. But others say the injury was simply too severe, that a torn pulmonary vein, combined with a displaced heart, was unsurvivable no matter what, but we will never know for certain. So the ambulance would arrive at the hospital at 2.06am, 1 hour and 43 minutes after the crash, and Diana was rushed into surgery, and Dr. Alan Pavee, one of France's foremost cardiac surgeons, led the team, and they opened her chest, and they found the tear in the pulmonary vein, and they sutured it. But the damage was too great, and she had lost too much blood, and her heart had been struggling for too long. And the team would try everything, external cardiac massage, internal cardiac massage, hands physically squeezing her heart, electric shocks, adrenaline, directed directly into the cardiac muscle, and for two hours they fought to bring her back. But at 4am, they stopped, and Diana, Princess of Wales, was pronounced dead, and she was 36 years old. So back at Balmoral Castle, the phone rang in the darkness, and Prince Charles was woken by the Queen's deputy private secretary, and he was told the news, and he sat in silence for a long moment. Then he walked on the hall to wake his sons, and William was 15, and Harry was 12. And Harry would later write about the moment in his memoir, how he lay in bed, waiting, and how his father sat on the edge of the mattress, and how he expected, or needed, to hear that mummy was hurt, but she was going to be okay. Saying, quote, "I remember waiting patiently for pot to confirm that indeed, mummy was all right, and I remember him not doing that," unquote. And Charles told them their mother was dead, and he didn't hug them, he didn't know how, then he left the room. And Harry didn't cry, not at that moment, and he wouldn't cry for years, allegedly, because he was only 12 years old, and realized the impact of the entire situation, how would any 12-year-old? But soon he would find that nothing would ever be the same. But before Diana even had her funeral, the questions began, and those were, how did this happen, and who was responsible, and the question that would hunt the next decade was, was this really an accident? And three separate investigations would attempt to answer those questions. French, British, and official, each one more exhaustive than the last, and together they would interview over a thousand witnesses, examine tens of thousands of documents, and spend tens of millions of dollars, and still, for some, the answers would never be enough. So the crash itself, as we know, happened on French soil, with French jurisdiction and French investigation, and judge, Hervee Staphon, was assigned to lead the inquiry, and it would consume nearly two years of his life. An 18 months of forensic analysis, witness interviews, and painstaking reconstruction of the final minutes of Diana's life. And his team interviewed over 1,000 witnesses, and they examined the wreckage of the Mercedes down to the molecular level. And they analyzed every frame of CCTV footage from the Ritz, and they traced Henry Paul's movements, his finances, his medical history, and what they found with damning. Because the toxicology report was unambiguous, and Henry Paul's blood alcohol level at the time of the crash was between 175 and 187 milligrams per 100 millimeters of blood. And the legal limit in France was 50. So he was nearly four times over the limit, the equivalent of roughly 10 drinks, but it wasn't just alcohol. His blood also contained traces of flexatine, the act of ingredient in prozac, and tyropride, a drug prescribed specifically to treat chronic alcoholism, the drugs that we talked about before that he was taking. And trace amounts of sleeping medication, and all three drugs carried explicit warnings against operating vehicles, and all three had their effects dramatically amplified by alcohol. So Henry Paul wasn't just drunk, he was impaired on multiple levels, and with his reflexes dulled, and his judgment compromised his ability to control a vehicle at high speed, fundamentally degraded. So the question that haunted investigators was, how did no one notice? And colleagues at the Ritz who saw him that night insisted he seemed fine, and sober and professional. And the CCTV footage showed him tying his shoelaces and chatting with staff, walking steadily, not stumbling and not slurring, but the blood doesn't lie. Either Henry Paul had developed such a tolerance to alcohol that he could mask severe intoxication, a hallmark of chronic alcoholism, or something else was going on. And his family would later challenge the results, and they demanded independent testing, and it suggested the blood samples had been contaminated or switched, and DNA analysis eventually confirmed the samples were, in fact, authentic, and the blood belonged to Henry Paul. So French investigators also examined the role of the paparazzi, because at least seven vehicles had pursued the Mercedes through the streets of Paris that night. They were photographers on motorcycles and cars just desperate for the photograph that would make their careers. And some had followed at dangerously close range, and others had used blocking techniques, pulling alongside or in front of the Mercedes to slow it down for better shots. And nine photographers were initially charged with manslaughter and failure to render assistance. But as the investigation progressed, prosecutors grew less certain. An analysis of the crash site showed that by the time the Mercedes entered the Pont de Lleau Mall tunnel, the pursuing vehicles were some distance behind. So they hadn't caused the crash directly, and Henry Paul's speed and intoxication had done that. The paparazzi were part of the story, though, because they had contributed to the atmosphere of pursuit and the desperation to escape. But they hadn't physically forced the Mercedes into the pillar, necessarily. But they also didn't help at all when they did crash, because they did catch up, and there was no assistance. In fact, a lot of them just took photos, while there were people dying in the car. Just absolute scum of the earth. So in September of 1999, all manslaughter charges were dropped, unfortunately. But three photographers were later convicted of lesser charges, which was invasion of privacy for photographing the dying victims at the crash scene, and their punishment was a fine of one symbolic euro each. I have no words for that. That makes me furious. So Judge Stefan's final report ran hundreds of pages, and his conclusion was unambiguous. The crash was an accident, caused by a driver who was intoxicated, over-medicated, and traveling at a reckless speed on a difficult stretch of road while attempting to evade a slower vehicle. And Henry Paul was solely responsible. Case closed. But for many, the case was just beginning. So for seven years after Diana's death, conspiracy theories festered, and the loudest voice belonged to Muhammad al-Fayed. Because the Herod's owner had lost his eldest son in the tunnel, and his grief was bottomless, and his rage was incandescent. And he refused to accept that Doddy's death in Diana's was simply a tragic accident, and he believed they had been murdered. An al-Fayed's theory was elaborate, inflammatory, and consistent, and British intelligence services acting on orders from highest levels of the establishment, specifically Prince Philip had assassinated Diana and Doddy to prevent their relationship from progressing. This is the theory, by the way, I'm not saying I'm not stating this. This is his theory. But why would Prince Philip do this? Because, this is Muhammad saying this, Diana was pregnant with Doddy's child. Again, this is Muhammad's theory. And because they were planning to announce their engagement, and because the British establishment could not tolerate the idea that the mother of the future king might marry a Muslim, might have a half-Muslim sibling for William and Harry, and might spend her life with an Egyptian family that the royals considered beneath them. And al-Fayed did not whisper these accusations. He shouted them, to the press, to Parliament, to anyone who would listen, and he spent millions funding private investigations, and he commissioned documentaries, and he hired lawyers across multiple continents, and eventually, the pressure became impossible to ignore. So, in January of 2004, Sir John Stevens Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Britain's most senior law enforcement officer was asked to investigate, and the inquiry was codenamed Operation Paget, and its scope was unprecedented. And Stevens assembled a team of 14 officers, and over nearly three years, they investigated 175 separate conspiracy claims, and they interviewed over 300 witnesses, including remarkably Prince Charles and Prince William, and they abstained what Stevens described as unprecedented access to the files of MI5 and MI6, which is Britain's domestic and foreign intelligence services. So they dug deep! And they examined Diana's medical records, and her financial records, and her phone records. And they analyzed Henry Paul's bank accounts, his contacts, and his possible intelligence connections, and they reviewed every frame of CCTV footage, every autopsy photograph, and every fragment of forensic evidence. And the investigation cost 8 million pounds, and the final report ran 832 pages, supported by over 11,000 pages of additional documentation. So, Operation Paget systematically demolished the conspiracy theories, and on MI6 involvement, investigators obtained complete access to intelligence service files, and they found no evidence of any operation targeting Diana, Dottie, or Henry Paul. And there was no surveillance and no assassination planning, nothing. An anonymous senior MI6 officers testified under oath that the agency had maintained no file on Diana or Dottie, and they had no operational interest in the couple either. And the suggestion that they would murder a member of the royal family, even an ex-member was, in their words, inconceivable. And on Prince Philip's alleged involvement, Alphayed had accused Prince Philip personally of ordering the assassination, which is a pretty big accusation. And Stevens found not one shred of evidence to support this claim, and Diana's release. relationship with the royal family was complicated, yes, but she remained the mother of the future king and murdering her would have been catastrophically counterproductive, destroying the monarchy rather than protecting it. And on Henry Paul as an intelligence agent, this theory had some traction because of the unexplained money, because Henry Paul's bank accounts contained approximately 1.2 million francs, roughly $200,000, despite a salary of only about $35,000 per year? What the fuck? So where had that all come from? Well, investigators trace the deposits meticulously, and they found that Paul had received payments from various sources over the years, including possibly modest sums for providing information to French intelligence services. But there was no evidence he worked for MI6, and no evidence he was a double agent, and no evidence of any connection to British intelligence whatsoever. So Stephens concluded that Paul was likely a low-level informant for French security services, someone who might tip them off about VIP movements at the ritz. And I mean, we can note back to him yelling out of the car that you can't catch us and stuff, so it seems like he was just like a piece of shit, basically. And crucially, Henry Paul wasn't even supposed to work that night, and he had gone off duty hours earlier, and was called back unexpectedly. So if this was an assassination, the assassins had somehow known to involve a man who wasn't scheduled to be there. And on the pregnancy claim, this was central to Alphayette's theory that Diana was carrying Doddy's child, and that this pregnancy was the motive for murder, but the forensic evidence was definitive, and that was that Diana was not pregnant. And Dr. Robert Chapman, who conducted the post-mortem examination, found no sign of pregnancy in her womb or ovaries. And forensic scientist Angela Gallup tested blood samples from the crash scene and found no trace of HCG hormone that indicates pregnancy. And Diana's close friends confirmed it, and Rosa Monkton, who had vacationed with Diana just days before her death, stated Diana had her period during their trip together. And Lady Annabelle Goldsmith, who spoke with Diana two days before the crash, quoted her saying, "I need marriage like a rash on my face." So Diana was not pregnant, and Diana was also not engaged. So the foundation of Alphayette's conspiracy theory was actually false. And I can safely assume it was just driven by pure grief and rage. So we'll move on to the bright flash theory. And some witnesses claim to have seen a blinding white flash inside the tunnel just before the crash, supposedly a strobe device used by intelligence operatives to disorient Henry Paul. And Richard Tomlinson, a former MI6 officer, had initially suggested this was a technique used by intelligence services. But at the 2008 inquest, he backtracked dramatically, admitting he "could not remember specifically any details about strobe lights." And more importantly, the primary witness who reported the flash, Francois Lavistre, was contradicted by his own wife, who was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. And four other witnesses near the tunnel entrance reported seeing no flash either. And the forensic reconstruction showed that the sequence of events leading to the crash, Henry Paul clipping the fiat, losing control, and getting into the pillar, began well before the location where any flash was supposedly even seen. So the physics just didn't work, and the flash theory was impossible. And that brings us to the fiat Uno. So this remained the one genuine mystery, because the paint transfer evidence proved the Mercedes had made contact with a white fiat Uno. And witnesses described seeing such a vehicle exit the tunnel, erratically, with a shattered tail light. But despite examining over 40,000 white fiat Uno's registered in the Paris area, investigators never definitively identified the car, or its driver. Which is crazy. I mean, I guess these people couldn't have been leaving the country, I guess, but I don't know, that is very odd to me. But one suspect out of all of this emerged, and that was James Anderson, a French paparazo who owned a white fiat Uno, and had allegedly boasted of intelligence connections. But Addinson provided documentary evidence proving he was at his home, which was 177 miles from Paris, on the night of the crash, and his wife confirmed he was in bed with her. And in May of 2000, Andinson was found dead in a burnt out BMW, ruled a, you know, did it himself. And conspiracy theorists seized on this as evidence of silencing. Which yet, seems like, when people, you know, to eat themselves, and they're involved in government things, it's a little suspicious, but investigators would find no connection to the crash. And the fiat Uno driver was never found, but Stevens concluded this person was not the cause of the crash, merely an unlucky motorist who happened to be in the wrong place, and was clipped by his speeding Mercedes and fled the scene out of fear. Which seems to be the most probable theory. So on December 14th, 2006, Sir John Stevens held a press conference, and his words were unequivocal, saying quote, "There was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. This was a tragic accident. Our conclusion is that on the evidence available now, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. Henry Paul, the driver of the Mercedes, was the cause of the crash." And he addressed Alphayed directly, saying, "I know that Mr. Alphayed has very strongly held personal opinions on this matter, I can only present the facts, the evidence, and my conclusions," unquote. An Operation Paget was the most comprehensive investigation into a single traffic accident in British history, and it changed nothing for Muhammad Alphayed, though. And he denounced the report completely, and he called it "whitewash," and he demanded a public inquest with a jury in ordinary citizens who could hear the evidence and render their own verdict. And he got his wish. So an inquest is a peculiarly British institution. And unlike a trial, it doesn't determine guilt or innocence, its purpose is narrower. It is to establish who died and where and when and how, and to answer formally and legally the question of what happened. So the inquests into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Doddy Fyed, began in October of 2007, more than ten years after the crash. And Lord Justice Scott Baker presided, and the proceedings would last six months, and over 250 witnesses would testify, and the jury, 11 ordinary British citizens, would travel to Paris to walk through the Palm des Lillemaux, tunnel themselves. And it would be the longest and most expensive inquest in British history, and Muhammad Alphayed would finally have his day in court. So for months, the inquest methodically reviewed everything. The forensics, the toxicology, the CCTV footage, the eyewitness accounts, the medical records, the phone records, the financial records, and witnesses who had been interviewed by French investigators and by Operation Paget returned to testify again, and their accounts were tested, challenged, and compared against the documentary evidence. And Trevor Reese Jones, the sole survivor, took the stand. And he, as we said before, had no memory of the crash itself, because the head trauma had erased everything from the moment they left the Ritz until he woke up in the hospital. But he was clear on one point. He believed it was an accident, and there was no conspiracy and no assassination, just a drunk driver going too fast. And the medical experts confirmed again that Diana was not pregnant, and the post-mortem was thorough. And the science was unambiguous, and there was no baby. An emergency responders detailed the agonizing timeline, the hour Diana spent at the crash scene, the slow ambulance journey, the frantic efforts to save her, and could she have survived with faster treatment, and the doctors debated this very, very intensely, and some believed the scoop and run approached used in Britain or America might have given her a chance, but other said it the injury was simply too catastrophic. And that a torn pulmonary vein with a displaced heart was unsurvivable, regardless of how quickly she reached the operating table. So there was no real consensus on that, and there never would be. And then came the moment everyone had been waiting for. And that was Muhammad Al-Fahead taking the stand in February of 2008, because for years he had made his accusations through press releases and documentaries, but now he would make them under oath and subject to cross-examination in a court of law. And he did not disappoint. His Al-Fahead called Prince Philip a Nazi and a racist, and he called the royal family the Dracula family, and he accused MI6 of orchestrating the murders, and he accused the British establishment of covering up the truth. And when pressed for evidence, he invoked Diana herself, and saying she had feared for her life, he said, and she had written letters predicting her own death, and she had known they were coming for her, saying, quote unquote, "she knew Diana knew." But under cross-examination, the foundations of his claims crumbled, and his own lawyers were forced to make a stunning admission, saying, quote, "there is no direct evidence of royal or MI6 involvement in the deaths." They were asking the jury to infer a conspiracy from circumstantial evidence and alleged motives, and the direct evidence, the forensics, the toxicology, the eyewitness accounts. The phone records, the intelligence files, all pointed in one direction, and that was, in action. accident, and Alphayed left the stand, unbode, and unrepentant, and unconvinced, and he would never accept the truth. And not because the truth was hidden, but because the truth was unbearable, because his son was dead, and Diana was dead, and there was no one to blame but a drunk driver and a terrible sequence of random events, and some losses are too great to attribute to chance. So on April 7th of 2008, the jury retired to consider their verdict, and they had eleven options ranging from unlawful killing to accidental death to the open verdict favored by those who believed the truth could never be known. They deliberated for hours, but when they returned, the former delivered a verdict that was both definitive and nuanced, and by a vote of 9-2, the jury found that Diana and Dottie had been unlawfully killed, but not murdered, and not assassinated, unlawfully killed through the grossly negligent driving of the following vehicles. The paparazzi, and the grossly negligent driving of the Mercedes driver, Henry Paul. So it was a split verdict, assigning blame to both the pursuers and the pursued, and contributing factors the jury added was Henry Paul's intoxication, the failure of any occupant to wear a seatbelt, the collision with the concrete pillar rather than the tunnel wall, and what the verdict was not, was evidence to any conspiracy. So Lord Justice Scott Baker summarizing the proceedings was blunt, saying quote, "There was no evidence that Diana was pregnant, there was no evidence that there was an engagement ring, there was no evidence of any conspiracy to murder, not a shred of evidence." In Prince William and Harry released a joint statement, saying quote, "We agree with their verdicts and are both hugely grateful to each and every one of them," unquote. So it was a quiet endorsement and a desire for closure, and Muhammad al-Fayed announced he would accept the verdict for the sake of Diana and Dottie's memory, he said, and to spare William and Harry further pain, saying quote, "I'm leaving it to history, believe what you want to believe," unquote. But he never, truly let it go, and in interviews over the following years he would return again and again to his accusations, and the Dracula family, and the Nazis, and the conspiracy, and he died in August of 2023 still believing his son had been murdered. But through all the investigations and thousands of witnesses and tens of thousands of pages of documentation, everybody came to the same conclusion, and that is that, Diana, Princess of Wales, died because a drunk driver lost control of a speeding car in a Paris tunnel. No conspiracy, no assassination, no dark forces, just a terrible senseless, preventable accident. But here's the thing about truth. Sometimes it isn't enough. And because Diana herself had feared this, she had written it down in October of 1995, she told her lawyer, Victor Mishconn, that, quote, "reliable sources," unquote, had warned her of efforts to cause, quote, "an accident in my car with prepared brake failure," unquote. And in October 1996, she wrote to her butler, Paul Burl, saying, quote, "my husband is planning an accident in my car. Brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry," unquote. And she named Charles, not Philip, and she feared her ex-husband, not the intelligence services. She was wrong about who, and how, and there was no brake failure and no planned assassination. But she was right about this. She did die in a car crash, and the most hunted woman in the world had predicted her own ending. And the coincidence, that terrible, inexplicable haunting coincidence, is why the conspiracy theories will never fully die, and it's why I still don't fully believe it. I mean, it all makes sense, and there is, you know, trial and everything, but I still, there's something inside me that it just something feels off. And Paul's taken years after Diana's death consistently showed that a significant percentage of the public, sometimes a third, sometimes more, believed that she had been murdered. And maybe it's part of the grief when someone that famous and that beloved, that alive just dies so suddenly, and the mind rebells against randomness. There must be a reason, there's definitely something in my mind that just says there has to be a reason, there must be a villain, there must be something more than a drunk driver and an unlucky sequence of events. And part of it is just Diana herself. She had told people that she feared for her life, and she had written it down. And then she died exactly the way she predicted in a car crash. And part of it is just all the sheer weight of the unanswered questions. The missing fiat, a Henry Paul's unexplained wealth, for the hours he spent on a counted four, the three hour gap that no one could explain, and the official investigations address these questions, but addressing a question isn't the same as answering it. And in the gaps between evidence and explanation, conspiracy theories take root. We are now being told that Diana, princess of wealth, who was reported to be injured in that accident, you just seem pictured off, has actually died in Paris's sole petriot hospital. And the news traveled faster than anyone could process it. And by dawn on August 31, 1997, the world knew, and radio stations interrupted their programming and television networks scraped their schedules and newspapers tore up their front pages and started over. His Diana was dead, and the reaction was immediate, and visceral, and completely unprecedented. And in London, people woke to the news and didn't know what to do with themselves. So they went to Kensington Palace, and at first it was dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, and they came carrying flowers, single roses, elaborate bouquets, whatever they could find at petrol stations and corner shops on a Sunday morning. And they laid them at the gates, and they wrote cards, and they wept. And by the end of the first day, the flowers were knee deep, and by the end of the week they stretched 30 feet from the palace walls, in ocean of cellophane and petals, and around 60 million flowers in total, with 10,000 tons of bouquets. And the scent was so overwhelming, it was sickly sweet and almost suffocating people would report. But people didn't just leave flowers, they left teddy bears and photographs, and handwritten poems, and children's drawings, and candles that flickered through the night. And one woman even left her wedding dress, but strangers stood together and sobbed, and they hugged people they never met, and they waited in lines for hours just to sign condolence books. And eventually it was 43 of them filled with millions of signatures, but nothing like this has ever happened in Britain before, and nothing like this has happened anywhere else. To this degree. In Prime Minister Tony Blair understood the moment immediately, because he had been in office for only four months, and he was young and media savvy, and attuned to the public mood and ways the royal family had never been. And that Sunday morning he stood outside a church in his constituency and delivered a statement that would define the tragedy, and his voice cracked as he spoke. "I feel like everyone else in this country today utterly devastated. Our thoughts and prayers are with Princess Diana's family, in particular her two sons, the two boys, our hearts go out to them." And then he said the words that would follow her forever. She was the people's princess, and that's how she will stay, how she will remain, in our hearts and in our memories forever. The people's princess, it was perfect. It was very true, and it threw into sharp relief the silence from the actual royal family. Because the royals weren't in London. They were at Balmeral, their Scottish estate, 500 miles away, and they weren't coming back. Because the Queen had made a decision, William and Harry needed to be protected. They needed privacy to grieve, and they would remain in Scotland shielded from media frenzy surrounded by family. And it was, by royal standards, the correct choice. A tradition and a protocol, the institution was protecting its own, but it was a catastrophic misreading of the moment, and the public didn't see a grieving grandmother protecting her grandsons. They saw a cold family hiding in a castle while their people wept in the streets. And then there was the flag. Because above, Buckingham Palace, the flagpole stood bare, and this was tradition. The royal standard only flies when the monarch is in residence. And it never flies at half massed because the monarchy never dies. And one sovereign succeeds another, and the institution continues. But the public didn't care about tradition, they saw an empty flagpole above a palace while the nation drowned in grief, and they were furious. "Where is our Queen demanded the sun?" "Where is her flag?" "Show us your care," pleaded the Express, and for five days the Queen said nothing, and the silence was deafening. And inside Balmeral, the family was fracturing, and Charles was devastated. Whatever their differences, Diana was the mother of his children, and now his sons were motherless, and he wanted to fly to Paris immediately to bring her body home. But the Queen initially resisted, because Diana was no longer a royal, as she was no longer, a royal highness. A royal aircraft seemed inappropriate, but Charles reportedly exploded, and he would bring her home, and he was. would do it on a royal plane, whether the palace approved or not, he got it his way. But meanwhile, William and Harry existed in a kind of suspended animation. And they went to church that Sunday morning, which was tradition, and they walked to the Scottish Moors, which was a tradition, and the adults around them seemed to believe that maintaining routine would somehow help. Which what? And Harry would later describe those days as surreal, with the adults speaking in hushed tones and the forced to normalcy and the sense that something enormous had happened, but no one quite knew how to acknowledge it, and he didn't cry. He kept waiting for the tears to come, but they didn't, and he began to wonder if something was wrong with him. And by Thursday, the pressure had become unbearable, and the queen could no longer ignore the public rage. And Tony Blair's government was quietly warning that the monarchy itself was at risk, and that decades of goodwill were evaporating by the hour. And on September 4th, something unprecedented happened, and the Union Jack was raised above Buckingham Palace, and lowered to half staff. And it was the first time in history the queen had bent tradition, and the institution had bowed to the people. In that evening, Queen Elizabeth II finally spoke, and she addressed the nation in a live broadcast from Buckingham Palace, sitting before a window that looked out onto the crowds still gathered at the gates, still laying flowers, still weeping for a woman. That the palace had never fully embraced. "Since last Sunday's dreadful news, we have seen, throughout Britain and around the world, an overwhelming expression of sadness, a Diana's death. We have all been trying in our different ways to cope." She spoke, carefully, as she always did, and deliberately, without visible emotion, but with something that sounded almost like a "contrition." "I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good times and bad, she never lost her capacity to smile and laugh, nor to inspire others with her warmth and kindness. I admired and respected her, her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her devotion to her two boys." And then, a phrase that seemed designed to answer her critics, "I for one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life, and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death." It wasn't an apology, the Queen didn't apologize, but it was, at least, an acknowledgement. The closest the monarchy would ever come to admitting it had gotten something wrong. In the next day, the royal family finally returned to London. And Saturday, September 6, 1997, was Diana's funeral. And the coffin had been lying in the state at St. James Palace, draped in royal standard, guarded by soldiers and crimson tunics. And that morning, it was placed on a horse-drawn gun carriage, fourth procession to Westminster Abbey. And the routes stretched nearly 3.5 miles from Kensington Palace through Hyde Park, past Buckingham Palace, down the mall to the Abbey, and it would take two hours. And the crowds began gathering before dawn, and by the time the procession began, over a million people lined the streets, and they stood 10, 15, 20 deep, and they perched on lampposts and climbs statues and pressed against barricades, and they held photographs of Diana, and they threw flowers at the coffin as it passed, and they were silent. And that was what everyone remembered afterward. The silence. A million people, and you could hear the horses' hooves on pavement, and you could hear the creak of the gun carriage wheels, no cheering, no chanting, just a sound of a city holding its breath. And some people wept quietly, and others stood frozen, unable to process what they were seeing. And strangers held hands, and behind the coffin, walking in the September sun were five men, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Earl Spencer, and two boys. William, who was 15, and Harry, who was 12. Then the decision to have them walk had been controversial from the start. Earl Spencer opposed it, and he called it a barbarity, forcing two grieving children to perform their grief for the world's cameras, and Diana would have never wanted it, he said. But the palace insisted, and tradition demanded it, and the public expected it, and William was reluctant, and Harry was terrified, there were just children, but they were asked to march behind their mother's coffin for nearly two miles, surrounded by millions of strangers with every camera on earth pointed at their faces. And it was Prince Philip, who finally settled it, saying quote unquote, "I'll walk if you walk." And he would say that to his grandsons. So they walked, and 15-year-old William, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed forward, refusing to look at the crowds, and 12-year-old Harry, smaller, slider, his face, a mask of confusion and grief. And years later, Harry would say, quote, "I don't think any child should be asked to do that under any circumstances," unquote. But he did it, and they both did, because it's what Windsor's do, and they perform, and they don't let anyone see them break. And on top of the coffin lay a wreath of white roses, and tucked among the flowers a white envelope, and on it, in child's handwriting, a single word, mummy. And Westminster Abbey held 2,000 guests, heads of state and celebrities, charity workers and friends, and the famous and the anonymous seated side by side. And Queen, nor of Jordan, Hillary Clinton, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Luciano Pavarotti, but the world wasn't watching them. The world, 2.5 billion people, nearly half the planet's population, was watching the service. And it remains one of the most viewed broadcasts in human history, and in Britain alone, 32.1 million people tuned in, and streets were emptied, and offices closed, and the country simply stopped. And two moments from that service would become etched into memory forever, and the first was a song. Elton John had been Diana's friend for years, and they had a falling out shortly before her death, and one of those petty celebrity feuds, and they'd only just reconciled. And now, he sat at the grand piano in Westminster Abbey, preparing to sing a song he'd written two decades earlier, about another icon who died too young, Candle in the Wind, was originally about Marilyn Monroe. And in the days after Diana's death, Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Toppen rewrote the words "Goodbye England's Rose," he sang, "may you ever grow in our hearts." And he used a teleprompter, because he was terrified he would slip back into the original lyrics, and that he'd say Norma Jean instead of England's Rose, and desecrate the moment. But he didn't. And when he finished the Abbey was silent, and then came the applause, soft at first, then swelling, rolling through the pews like a wave. And Elton John has never performed that version of the song since, and he said he never will, not unless William and Harry personally asked him. And the recording came one of the best-selling singles of all time, it was 33 million copies, and all proceeds went to Diana's charities. In the second moment was the Eulogy, where all Spencer, Diana's younger brother, walked to the lectern, and he was handsome, composed, and furious. And what he delivered was not simply a tribute to his sister, it was an indictment, and he spoke of Diana's compassion, her humor, her gift, her connection, and he spoke of her as a sister and not a symbol. But then his voice hardened, and he said, "It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this. A girl, given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting, was in the end the most hunted person of the modern age." But he wasn't finished, and he spoke of her vulnerability and deep feelings of unworthiness, a clear shot at the institution that had failed her. And he questioned whether the press had blood on their hands, and then he made a promise that landed like a grenade, "I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you are steering these two exceptional young men, so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned." Your blood, family. All my praise goes to Earl Spencer, I tell you what, but he was talking about the Spencer's, the people Diana had come from, not the people she'd married into. It was a declaration of war delivered from a pulpit to a global audience of billions. And when Spencer finished, there was silence. And then, from outside the abbey, a sound like rain, but it wasn't rain. It was applause, rolling through the crowds on the streets, sweeping down the aisles and building and building until it filled the ancient church. And William and Harry joined in, and they clapped for their uncle, and they clapped for their mother. And the senior royals, the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, sat frozen. They did not applaud, and the cameras caught it all. And that afternoon, Diana was taken home, not to London, and not to a royal vault, but to allthorpe the Spencer family estate where she'd been born, and where she played as a child, and where her family had lived for 500 years. And she was buried on a small island in the middle of an ornamental lake called the Round Oval. Island was chosen deliberately, protected by water and thick mud. inaccessible to the public, safe from what Earl Spencer called the insane and ghoulish, and no cameras were present, and it was only family. But before they closed the coffin, they placed two items in Diana's hands, a photograph of William and Harry, and the letter Harry had written, the one addressed to Mummy, and we don't know what it said, and I hope we never will. Diana has been gone for almost 30 years, and somehow she's never left, and her sons have made sure of that, and in 2017, on the 20th anniversary of her death, William and Harry commissioned a statue for the sunken garden at Kensington Palace. The place where Diana had found peace, where she walked among the flowers, where mourners laid millions of bouquets in the days after she died. And on July 1st, 2021, what would have been her 60th birthday, they unveiled it together, and the brothers stood side by side their relationship already fracturing. That united by one afternoon by the woman who had shaped them both, saying, "Every day," they said in a joint statement, "we wish she were still with us." And her name lives on in their children, Princess Charlotte and Elizabeth Diana and a little bit Diana, and the grandmother they'll never meet written into their identities forever. And at the end of it all, she was truly the people's princess, and that is how she lived, and that is how she remained. Like that is that for Princess Diana. Let me know what you guys think down below, and this is more of a, almost a biography, but also conspiracy. I'd like to know what you guys think about it. If you have any fond memories of Princess Diana, even if you're not old enough to remember her necessarily like me, I was one when she passed away. But I mean, looking back, she was truly an icon. And she is missed by people who didn't even live in the same lifetime as her, including myself. But let me know what other cases you want me to look into. I always read the comments, and I will see you in the next episode. All right. Bye.