Speaker 1: Welcome to this Evening's classic episode. Do you guys remember
Speaker 1: Princess Diana feels like a little softball?
Speaker 2: But well, I mean I didn't know her personally, but
Speaker 2: she certainly loomed large in my childhood's on like the news,
Speaker 2: you know. And then of course her tragic demise was
Speaker 2: a massive media frenzy that you just could not be ignored.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I recall a lot of positivity reported on
Speaker 3: her in her life, at least here in the US,
Speaker 3: but I know throughout the rest of the world and
Speaker 3: in a lot of places, even in Great Britain, there
Speaker 3: were other things swirling about her in the news and
Speaker 3: in the rumor mills, and her death caused such, you know,
Speaker 3: a shock to the system, I think globally. There were
Speaker 3: so many things written about it and you know, proposed
Speaker 3: about why her death occurred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it certainly reframed the way the world thought about Paparazzi.
Speaker 1: Born on July one, nineteen sixty one, dead in a
Speaker 1: horrific car crash only age thirty six on August thirty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. People are still wondering, speculating about exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. And here in our classic episode from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: We dive all the way.
Speaker 4: In from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History
Speaker 4: is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
Speaker 4: or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Noah.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul, Mission Control deck, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are you. You are here so cheer. You know
Speaker 1: that makes this stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: a bit of a British episode for us today, we're
Speaker 1: going across the pond Pip as they called it in
Speaker 1: the Transatlantic Times. Not many people say over the pond
Speaker 1: these days.
Speaker 2: Helly ho sure, Yeah, that's all I got. I love
Speaker 2: pit Pip. People need to bring that back.
Speaker 1: I've I've been tremendously instrumental in bringing back tut tut,
Speaker 1: such that some of my friends banned me from it
Speaker 1: for a few months.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are times when, in a serious, somber moment in
Speaker 1: someone's life, Matt, they don't need to hear the phrase
Speaker 1: tut tut. It's as unhelpful as saying I told you so,
Speaker 1: or that reminds me of a thing that happened to me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's just a verbal stand in for a finger wag,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's a bit Yeah, I feel maybe a little aw
Speaker 1: shuxi too, you know, like if a kid is scared
Speaker 1: of a thunderstorm or something, it's like tut tied. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: I've definitely experienced a few. It's not erroneous tut tuts,
Speaker 3: but just tut tut that appear out of nowhere and
Speaker 3: when I'm not expecting them.
Speaker 1: Oh, really, like in the wild, in the field, in.
Speaker 2: The field, Wait, doesn't Pooh Bear say tut tut? It
Speaker 2: looks like rain Oh, I don't know it is? Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank he does.
Speaker 1: Tut tut is a small admonishment or disappointment.
Speaker 3: That's That's exactly where I've been hearing it. I've got
Speaker 3: a giant book of Winning the Pooh stuff and reading
Speaker 3: and my son and he totally says, tut tut.
Speaker 1: Uh, dude, your kid's so cool.
Speaker 3: You're so cool for bringing the Pooh man, bringing the.
Speaker 2: Poop kind of bring the Pooh dude.
Speaker 1: None of my heroes wear pants. It's true. Why are
Speaker 1: we talking about British nomenclature and terminology. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: We can answer it now. It's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a downer answer. It turns out that on August thirty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Diana, known as the Princess of Wales,
Speaker 1: died in a Parisian hospital as the result of injuries
Speaker 1: from a car crash. This is something that our fellow
Speaker 1: listeners have been asking us about for I mean, since
Speaker 1: we started this show. It's one of the first suggestions
Speaker 1: we got, and we just never did it because again
Speaker 1: we were originally video only.
Speaker 3: Yes, and our video did cover some of the main
Speaker 3: things we will be discussing today, but we in this
Speaker 3: format get to dig deep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna get weird. Her driver was a guy
Speaker 1: named Henri Paul, her boyfriend was a guy named Dodi Fayed,
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend's security guard when Trevor Rees Jones were
Speaker 1: all in the car when the accident occurred, and we
Speaker 1: were not to date the three of us too hard,
Speaker 1: but we were all alive at this time. For those
Speaker 1: of us who were residents of this part of the world.
Speaker 1: That's right after the Olympics, like a year after the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six Summer Olympics. And maybe we're too young
Speaker 1: to remember where we were when we heard about this,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people around the planet know exactly
Speaker 1: where they were when the news broke. Do you guys
Speaker 1: remember do you have any memories of this?
Speaker 3: I was fourteen at my parents' house. I know that
Speaker 3: for sure. Oh, you're just doing the math I'm just
Speaker 3: doing the maths generally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're roughly the same age, I believe, man, I
Speaker 2: guess so. I think so. We've never really compared, but
Speaker 2: it feels like we are.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: I was probably in the neighborhood of fourteen. I remember
Speaker 2: probably being at my neighbor's house. That's what I'm going
Speaker 2: to say. I was at my neighbor's house heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's strange. It's for a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the UK or in the Commonwealth, the impact of the
Speaker 1: tragedy was similar to that of nine to eleven or
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor. They remember the exact moment that they heard
Speaker 1: this news. And it's strange because the two tragedies I
Speaker 1: just mentioned involved thousands of people, and this involves three
Speaker 1: deaths and really just one that the public appeared to
Speaker 1: care about.
Speaker 2: But Diana was like a symbol, right, I mean, she
Speaker 2: was seen as this he was this beloved princess. She
Speaker 2: was seen as the epitome of goodness and lights, you know,
Speaker 2: in their country. And then the death in and of itself,
Speaker 2: of course was tragic, but it also uncovered a bit
Speaker 2: of scandal that maybe tempered some of those feelings of
Speaker 2: affection and admiration for this person.
Speaker 3: And both of these instances have another thing in common,
Speaker 3: where there are a tremendous number of people who believe
Speaker 3: that there is something fishy about them, that perhaps there
Speaker 3: was some kind of inside job at play.
Speaker 1: Absolutely good point, well said. So here are the facts.
Speaker 1: She's not born the Princess of Wales. Diana is born
Speaker 1: Diana Francis Spencer on July first, nineteen sixty one. She's
Speaker 1: already part of the long running one percent of the UK,
Speaker 1: the aristocracy, the people who own most of the land
Speaker 1: and have for hundreds and hundreds of years, which barely
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to talk about there, But that's the
Speaker 1: that's one of the huge problem of the country.
Speaker 3: Everything's fine, keep gone yea yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, right right, don't ask questions. So Diana was a
Speaker 1: child of Viscount and Viscountess Allthorpe. In February of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, she becomes engaged to Prince Charles. He's the
Speaker 1: oldest son of the British Queen Elizabeth the Second, in
Speaker 1: a very hamilton esque move, Charles had previously been engaged
Speaker 1: to Diana's older sister, one Lady Sarah mccocodell, and Diana
Speaker 1: and Charles went on about twelve dates before they announced
Speaker 1: their engagement. So it's it's like Vegas style in terms
Speaker 1: of the speed of their relationship. And they had met
Speaker 1: previously before, when she was sixteen and he was twenty nine.
Speaker 1: They were wed five months after announcing their engagement at
Speaker 1: Saint Paul's Cathedral on July twenty ninth, nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: People loved it. People all about the aristocrac and the
Speaker 1: entire you know, the theater of that system. Yes, and so.
Speaker 3: Can't just say, at the risk of being agists that
Speaker 3: that age difference of twenty nine to sixteen is in
Speaker 3: my mind personally a little bothersome, but you know, who
Speaker 3: cares whatever.
Speaker 2: Just for the record, anybody wants to know the code
Speaker 2: or the formula's half your age plus seven. Okay, that's
Speaker 2: the official okay to date.
Speaker 1: I feel that people, and this is not a ding
Speaker 1: on you, man, but I feel I've heard that before,
Speaker 1: and often when i've heard it, recite it that way.
Speaker 1: It's it's from like we're friends, but it's from someone
Speaker 1: that I don't trust. Because my immediate question, especially I
Speaker 1: don't know them well, is how many times did you
Speaker 1: run this formula? How many are you one of those guys?
Speaker 2: Well, then, first of all, I'm being tongue in cheek
Speaker 2: when I say that there's a magic formula that tells
Speaker 2: you who you are and are not allowed to date.
Speaker 2: But I agree with you, Ben. When someone really says
Speaker 2: that with a straight face, then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like when someone knows the intricacies of a
Speaker 1: weird series of laws, like they're like, look, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean quayludes and in for intent to distribute.
Speaker 2: It's really a lot.
Speaker 1: Of people think it's based just on the weight, but
Speaker 1: it's also based on how it's packaged. You're like, cool, man,
Speaker 1: I just wanted a sprite.
Speaker 2: You didn't want any quayludes in your sprite?
Speaker 1: No, No, shout out to Church's chicken and shout out
Speaker 1: to something else is completely irrelevant and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: back on the topic soon.
Speaker 2: But did you know that seven up used to have
Speaker 2: lithium in it? And yes, up, it was like represented
Speaker 2: like an up in your mood.
Speaker 3: I did not know that.
Speaker 2: I knew about cocaine and coca cola, but I did
Speaker 2: not know about lithium and seven up.
Speaker 1: Opium as well, was quite common in a lot of
Speaker 1: those curative drinks. We could go ahead, and that's a
Speaker 1: good episode of Saber. Doesn't beat us to it.
Speaker 3: Let's just switch gears, guys, let's talk about just jogg.
Speaker 3: We'll just go for the rest of the episode and
Speaker 3: pretend that it was about that.
Speaker 1: But not sprite. It was seven up. So so speaking
Speaker 1: of fantastic segues. Uh, the Diana and Charles marriage produces
Speaker 1: two sons, or they call them having issue. When you're
Speaker 1: when you're when you're, you know, you win the genetic
Speaker 1: lottery and your nobility and uh. These would go on
Speaker 1: to be the tremendously popular princes William and Harry. The
Speaker 1: marriage was the subject of tons of rumor, mungering and
Speaker 1: muck raking, and the local tabloids, which makes sense. What
Speaker 1: was it was in the old eleanor Roosevelt quote that said,
Speaker 1: small minds talk about people, middling minds talk about events,
Speaker 1: and great minds talk about ideas. There's always going to
Speaker 1: be money in celebrity reporting. It's the banana stand of journalism.
Speaker 3: You know, there's money in it.
Speaker 1: There's money in it always. So despite the fact that
Speaker 1: this marriage was seen as this continual source of like
Speaker 1: Kardashian level reaction, TV showed vicarious train wreck scandals, Diana
Speaker 1: herself was just as you said, Noel seen as a symbol,
Speaker 1: a cultural icon, despite the reality of who she was
Speaker 1: in society and where she came from. She was respected
Speaker 1: for her charity work, which was serious, including using the
Speaker 1: access to tremendous wealth and influence she had to support hospitals,
Speaker 1: to advocate for the eradication of land mines and to
Speaker 1: raise awareness of HIV AIDS, mental illness, and cancer. So
Speaker 1: people people felt, you know, that they identified with her mission.
Speaker 1: You know, more than a few folks would hear about
Speaker 1: this work and say, that's what I would do, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like, if I had that power,
Speaker 1: that's what I would do. And then add the human
Speaker 1: element of being stuck in a bad relationship, and how
Speaker 1: could you not care about this stranger a little bit?
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, I mean to have royalty care at all.
Speaker 3: You know within the ivory towers of Royalty, that that
Speaker 3: people are suffering from something, whether it is from from
Speaker 3: cancer or family members and friends being under threat of
Speaker 3: land minds everywhere. That's one of those those subjects that doesn't,
Speaker 3: at least nowadays, get much attention at all. But that's
Speaker 3: still a thing across the world, the danger of landmines.
Speaker 3: And this was literally the princess who gave a crap.
Speaker 1: Right right, and so people in general felt a little convicted.
Speaker 1: People were very You hear this a lot in fiction nowadays,
Speaker 1: when we're living through the stories of people on screen
Speaker 1: or on a page. You hear someone say, I'm team whatever,
Speaker 1: I'm team blah blah blah. There were people who were
Speaker 1: team the establishment, you know, Buckingham, Team Buckingham, let's call
Speaker 1: it that, and then team di Diana. But everybody pretty
Speaker 1: much knew all was not well over in Chuck and
Speaker 1: Diana's crib. The media was able to confirm extramarital affairs
Speaker 1: on both sides of the bed, and eventually even Charles's
Speaker 1: parents got involved. Let's try to talk these kids off
Speaker 1: a ledge.
Speaker 2: So Charles's parents, Queen Elizabeth the second you know, Queen
Speaker 2: Elizabeth is still kicking around, and Prince Philip met with
Speaker 2: the couple.
Speaker 5: For kind of like an impromptu marriage counseling session and
Speaker 5: intervention of sorts. Philip and Diana exchanged letters, very personal
Speaker 5: letters that summer, and in which she expressed her disappointment
Speaker 5: at both her and Charles's extra marital affairs and asked
Speaker 5: her to see both of their slip ups from the
Speaker 5: other person's point of view. Interesting and very seemingly progressive
Speaker 5: for what you would think would be a very rigid,
Speaker 5: high society kind of.
Speaker 1: Situation, especially since Prince Philip is on record calling people
Speaker 1: things like spear chuckers.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh that's right, Philip.
Speaker 1: Isn't he the one who has a cargo cult?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: But like I think they recently took away his license
Speaker 2: to drive, Yes, because he was crashing into stuff, because
Speaker 2: he's like one hundred or something.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, he's quite, he's quite elderly. He is not
Speaker 1: he is not a perfect.
Speaker 2: Person, yeah, exactly. At one point, Philip seemed completely just overwhelmed,
Speaker 2: ready to give up, and he wrote, quote, I will
Speaker 2: always do my upmost to help you and Charles to
Speaker 2: the best of my ability, but I am quite ready
Speaker 2: to concede that I have no talent as a marriage counselor.
Speaker 3: I can I can only imagine, Yeah, someone who has
Speaker 3: lived the life of Prince Philip, like trying to get
Speaker 3: into those the deep interpersonal relationships in that way when
Speaker 3: you're when the life that you live is so guarded
Speaker 3: from other people just by its nature.
Speaker 1: That's very empathetic of you, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think that's really I think it's really generous of you.
Speaker 2: Okay, No, it's true, Nat, because it is hard to
Speaker 2: even understand how someone with this much privilege, raised this
Speaker 2: much privilege, could even wrap their heads around or even
Speaker 2: attempt to exercise this kind of understanding, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's without me knowing it what it really is.
Speaker 3: But that's my understanding of just the schedule that you
Speaker 3: must keep, the the rigorous relationships of convenience, and just
Speaker 3: all the things you have to do to uphold your image, right,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Like, it's doesn't lead to
Speaker 3: a lot of heartfelt talks. In my opinion, he.
Speaker 1: Does sound like a like a genuinely concerned kind of parent,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like if you've ever been
Speaker 1: on the ounce with a significant other. I'm sure many
Speaker 1: of us listening have been in that situation where you're like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not working out with the person i'm dating, but
Speaker 1: her or his parents are amazing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And then they like give you advice. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's my kid. Why can I say? They're kind of
Speaker 1: like that sometimes. But you'll work it out, you'll work
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 5: You're yeah.
Speaker 2: But in this case, they didn't work it out.
Speaker 1: No, they did not. Their attempts at reconciliation on all
Speaker 1: sides were unsuccessful. In December, things start to hit the fan.
Speaker 1: Prime Minister John Major publicly announces the pair's amicable separation,
Speaker 1: reading a statement from the royal family. December twentieth, Buckingham
Speaker 1: Palace announces that the Queen has written separate The British
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth has written separate letters to the couple ordering
Speaker 1: them to file for divorce as soon as possible. This
Speaker 1: was a huge scandal. At the time. People were getting
Speaker 1: their popcorn in bulk After considering the present situation, the
Speaker 1: Queen wrote to both the Prince and the Princess earlier
Speaker 1: this week and gave them her view, supported by the
Speaker 1: Duke of Edinburgh. That's Philip, that an early divorce is desirable,
Speaker 1: and boom boom, boom, snapcrackle pop. By August twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, the divorce was official.
Speaker 3: Isn't that interesting? The divorce is desirable. Y'all are making
Speaker 3: us look bad.
Speaker 1: They called it an early divorce. I don't don't drag this.
Speaker 2: Out, just just get it over with. Let's move on.
Speaker 1: Just your your relationship is old, yeller. Where at the
Speaker 1: end of the story, just take it out back.
Speaker 2: Well, you have to imagine too that I believe it
Speaker 2: was Charles that first was discovered to have been cheating
Speaker 2: on Diana's correct with Camilla Parker Bowles, who he is
Speaker 2: now married to, which maybe led Diana to seek her
Speaker 2: own extra marital affair, and then maybe at that point
Speaker 2: it kind of becoming under became an understanding between the
Speaker 2: two because they were certainly was They were not in
Speaker 2: it to win it. They were going to maybe keep
Speaker 2: it up for the for the public image of it all,
Speaker 2: but even that I think became untenable because you see
Speaker 2: pictures of them during these periods and they're sitting at
Speaker 2: different tables with their backs to each other. It's a
Speaker 2: very cold war, unfriendly kind of situation. Not any fun
Speaker 2: to be in and try to keep up appearances, I'm sure.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: There's a sad moment in an interview where they're talking
Speaker 1: about their engagement early on, and some reporter, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they were in the Inner Circle, but some
Speaker 1: reporters says, you know, oh, so you're in love blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, And then the Diana character says, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we're in love, and then the Chuck says whatever that means,
Speaker 1: ech dies or something like that, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: not a good look. It's a cringe. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right there. It's a political alliance as much as
Speaker 1: a relationship. The idea of the idea of marrying and
Speaker 1: being in a relationship at all for the purposes of
Speaker 1: romance is relatively recent in our history, or it's rather
Speaker 1: it's relatively recent for it to be a commonplace thing,
Speaker 1: and so the old laws or the old mores probably
Speaker 1: still hold in a lot of royal families, you know,
Speaker 1: and it gets nasty. The public is loving this. Princess
Speaker 1: Diana has a tell all interview with a BBC, which
Speaker 1: is very rare for the royal family and all because,
Speaker 1: as you said, Matt, they function under many constrictions or
Speaker 1: I don't know, traditions about how they're supposed to be
Speaker 1: regarded or speak to anyone who was again outside of
Speaker 1: their inner circle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And that interview was with Martin Basheer, and that's
Speaker 3: a very memorable interview if you were alive then because
Speaker 3: in it she talks about all kinds of details. She
Speaker 3: again she talks about how she was unfaithful, she talks
Speaker 3: about Charles's affair, and she has a very famous quote
Speaker 3: that she gave while in that interview and she said,
Speaker 3: there were three of us in this marriage, so it
Speaker 3: was a bit crowded. And to that end she's talking
Speaker 3: about Camilla Parker Bowles. It's pretty tough. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And again to Ben's point about how marriage for love
Speaker 2: wasn't the thing, I mean, these two were completely paired
Speaker 2: up for political reasons between these families, and Charles and
Speaker 2: Kamla Parker Bowles had dated like in the seventies, like
Speaker 2: they already had a relationship, and then when he got
Speaker 2: paired off with Diana, she ended up marrying her, you know,
Speaker 2: a former boyfriend of hers, and then they kind of reconnected.
Speaker 2: So it's sort of like it was set up to fail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Chuck did choose Diana over her sister, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's one of the first things we set up. Now,
Speaker 3: I guess I'm just saying.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying the whole system of arranged marriages is
Speaker 2: a little bit yeah kinky.
Speaker 1: There are people would argue that the whole system of
Speaker 1: marriage in general is has problems here here yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: I said there were people who would Okay, it's very
Speaker 1: respectful and diplomatic, but yeah, you're there. These are great points. Still,
Speaker 1: despite whatever weird traditions or cultural brainwashing may be in
Speaker 1: place in these sorts of systems, you can't change the
Speaker 1: fact that people are people, and these people are parents. Right,
Speaker 1: so they have they have their divorce, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that just because they're not spouses doesn't mean they
Speaker 1: can't be good parents. So after the divorce, despite all
Speaker 1: the you know, bad blood, it's water under the bridge.
Speaker 1: Charles and Diana worked together to be decent parents to
Speaker 1: their kids after the divorce, and continue to do so
Speaker 1: up until Diana's death in August nineteen ninety seven. I
Speaker 1: didn't know how old she was at the time. She
Speaker 1: was thirty six. Yeah, I just I guess I thought
Speaker 1: she was older, because you know, she was she had
Speaker 1: done so much with her life, because you know, she
Speaker 1: didn't have to have a job or a mortgage or
Speaker 1: student loans, do loans, or pay for insurance, or didn't
Speaker 1: have to do anything.
Speaker 2: No, not really, it's so funny to me too. I
Speaker 2: think to your point as well, Ben, that she's lifted
Speaker 2: up as being this model person. But you have to
Speaker 2: keep in mind that she was a model aristocrat who
Speaker 2: had unlimited resources. So all it took was a little
Speaker 2: bit of a streak of kindness that any people in
Speaker 2: her position could have done. But the fact is most
Speaker 2: of them just don't. So she was kind of like
Speaker 2: the exception to the rule because she was an incredibly
Speaker 2: wealthy person who very openly was kind to poor people
Speaker 2: as opposed to it not seeming like just like a
Speaker 2: tax write off. She was very much in the field
Speaker 2: and visiting hospitals and all of this stuff. So I'm
Speaker 2: just saying I'm not diminishing. I don't think you are
Speaker 2: either been at all any of the good works that
Speaker 2: she did. But it certainly easier to hold her up
Speaker 2: as a shining example of someone of that station, because
Speaker 2: a lot of them are, you know, pretty self serving
Speaker 2: and awful.
Speaker 3: No matter what she existed in that framework, she did good.
Speaker 1: And she was Oh and some of the most influential
Speaker 1: work she did was making the royal family look good
Speaker 1: for the people who support their existence.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: So it was. It was as in the people of
Speaker 2: the United Kingdom, right, yes, right, right, right.
Speaker 3: Right, well yeah, and all of the other territories who
Speaker 3: also must at least tip their hat.
Speaker 1: To Can you imagine growing up in a council estate
Speaker 1: and walking by Buckingham Palace. It takes some real, some
Speaker 1: real well thought out rhetoric to make that feel like
Speaker 1: a good idea, right for society. But that's you know what,
Speaker 1: that's my opinion. I don't mean to dump on people's
Speaker 1: choice of tradition. We will return after the break because
Speaker 1: we have gotten to the pivotal night, the last night
Speaker 1: that Diana, Princess of Wales spent on Earth. Travel back
Speaker 1: with us folks It's August of nineteen ninety seven. Diana's
Speaker 1: thirty six. She's dating a forty one year old man
Speaker 1: named Dodi Fayid. He is the son of a man
Speaker 1: named Mohammed al Fayed, a billionaire, the former owner of
Speaker 1: Herod's department store. As a matter of fact, he owns
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. He owns a yacht that Dodi
Speaker 1: and Diana are hanging out on and they leave the
Speaker 1: yacht kind of a vacation excursion thing, and they arrive
Speaker 1: in Paris.
Speaker 3: And they're hanging out in Sardinia and they decide to
Speaker 3: take off. So Diana leaves in a private jet earlier
Speaker 3: on that same day, and she arrives in Paris with
Speaker 3: Dody and they're just planning to stop over briefly on
Speaker 3: their way to London. In Paris, and you know, they
Speaker 3: spent nine days together on that yacht and they were
Speaker 3: hanging out in the French and Italian riviera, just having
Speaker 3: a really good time together, spending some time. And you
Speaker 3: can see lots of photos surrounding this time of them
Speaker 3: from paparazzi and the like, because you know, whenever, even
Speaker 3: though she was outside of the of royalty, she was
Speaker 3: still one of the most photographed humans on the planet. Now,
Speaker 3: their plan was to stay at the Ritz Paris. This
Speaker 3: is another property like all the Herods that Dodie's father owned,
Speaker 3: and they dined at a place called Ritz El Espardon.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to say that correcton and Diana.
Speaker 3: We know this unfortunately because of autopsy and because of
Speaker 3: you know, just records. But Diana had dover soul vegetable
Speaker 3: tempora and an asparagus omelet, and that ladies and gentlemen
Speaker 3: would prove to be her final meal.
Speaker 1: They were continually hunted by the press. If you've ever
Speaker 1: read Watershipped Down, there's a fantastic mythology that the rabbits
Speaker 1: and that story have about being the prince with a
Speaker 1: thousand dedamies, you know, And they were in a kind
Speaker 1: of watership down situation. They were always being pursued by
Speaker 1: serious journalists, by tabloid journalists, by freelance photographers and so on.
Speaker 3: It was terrifying. That's a terrifying thing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: I can't say that I know what that's like, but
Speaker 3: I can imagine because you're using the word hunted. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I would agree that that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll say hounded, but it's a synonym at that point, right.
Speaker 1: So now we return to a man named Henri Paul,
Speaker 1: an employee of Al Fayed's Paris Ritz. He is the
Speaker 1: deputy head of security at the hotel, and he has
Speaker 1: been entrusted with the task of driving a rented black
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four Mercedes Bins S two eighty to elude
Speaker 1: the press. The idea is this, that they're going to
Speaker 1: send a decoy car out first, and that the photographers
Speaker 1: and the press gang will follow that car, and then
Speaker 1: the chauffeur, Paul, will take Dodi and Diana to an
Speaker 1: apartment owned by Dowdy's father nearby, and they will spend
Speaker 1: the night in that apartment, not in the Ritz, before
Speaker 1: they continue to London. So this car, the car they're
Speaker 1: actually in, has four passengers, the driver, Dody and Diana
Speaker 1: in the back, and the guy Trevor Rhys Jones, a
Speaker 1: member of the Fayed family security team, riding shotgun. It's late,
Speaker 1: it's around twelve, it's after twelve twelve, twenty twelve, twenty
Speaker 1: three or so. They're they're driving, and it turns out
Speaker 1: the decoy did not work as well as they want.
Speaker 1: The press is onto them. Picture people in motorcycles like
Speaker 1: hauling their keysters off and swerve in Tokyo drift style,
Speaker 1: while there's another person on the back of the motorcycle
Speaker 1: leaning out at weird right angles to try to catch
Speaker 1: the Mercedes in action, hoping against hope that one of
Speaker 1: the tented windows is for some reason rolled down. Because
Speaker 1: if you can get these people's faces in a photograph,
Speaker 1: you have you know, you have paid your rent for
Speaker 1: a month or so, you know what I mean, Because
Speaker 1: unlike the people in the Mercedes, they had jobs and
Speaker 1: mortgages stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Do you guys remember the Paparazzi mission and that Grand
Speaker 2: Theft auto game. I think it was the one in
Speaker 2: Los Santos, the most recent one. Yeah, you had to ride,
Speaker 2: you had to do some very similar stuff. It was
Speaker 2: like all about you know, literally stalking people on you know,
Speaker 2: tailing them in cars, riding alongside with motorcycles that you
Speaker 2: do in a game like that. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: it's really really nasty stuff, right, Yeah, like more than
Speaker 2: just invasion of privacy, literally putting people at risk.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, which comes into play later because the driver loses
Speaker 1: control on Repaul loses control of the Mercedes at the
Speaker 1: entrance to the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. The car strikes
Speaker 1: the right hand wall of the tunnel. It swerves to
Speaker 1: the left of the two lane road before it collides
Speaker 1: head on with one of the pillars, I think the
Speaker 1: thirteenth pillars supporting the roof of the tunnel. At this time,
Speaker 1: it's traveling about one hundred and five kilometers per hour
Speaker 1: sixty five miles an hour. The reports will say between
Speaker 1: sixty and seventy. The initial reports said one hundred and
Speaker 1: five miles per hour, but surprise, surprise, somebody was lying
Speaker 1: to sell more papers in.
Speaker 2: An enclosed space. No less, that kind of speed as
Speaker 2: bad news.
Speaker 1: You can see photographs of the Mercedes and it looks ugly.
Speaker 1: You would think that everyone in there died instantly, especially
Speaker 1: people in the front. Witnesses reported seeing smoke, and there
Speaker 1: were a ton of witnesses. They also reported that the
Speaker 1: area was swarming with photographers and they were all over
Speaker 1: the car in motorcycles and other automobiles. Before the Mercedes
Speaker 1: enters the tunnel. This meant that as the victims lay
Speaker 1: in the vehicle, the press actually arrives before any emergency survey.
Speaker 1: And this is where, this is where we can look
Speaker 1: at the media in an antagonistic way, because a lot
Speaker 1: of these folks, a lot of these photographers panicked. They
Speaker 1: ran to the crash, you know, drop their motorcycles, run
Speaker 1: out of their cars, and they start tugging on the doors,
Speaker 1: trying to save the lives of these again, human people
Speaker 1: who have just been in a terrible car accident. Within
Speaker 1: other photographers stand back, waiting, hoping against hope that someone
Speaker 1: pulls open that door of that Mercedes. Because sure, you
Speaker 1: can pay rent for a month or two if you
Speaker 1: get if you get someone's face in a photo, but
Speaker 1: if you get the face of a dying princess, you
Speaker 1: might be set. I mean, that might be a book
Speaker 1: deal for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is horrific.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's grim all around, because there's gonna be hope,
Speaker 3: you hope that there's a certain amount of guilt on it,
Speaker 3: anyone who was pursuing that vehicle once once it crashes,
Speaker 3: and the feeling of oh no, I need to help,
Speaker 3: what have I done? Kind of thing. But you're right,
Speaker 3: the self preservation in this self, the desire to, like
Speaker 3: you said, pay a mortgage, something we hit on early
Speaker 3: on in this it's such a strong desire, strong need
Speaker 3: to you know, pay for rent, pay for whatever, to survive,
Speaker 3: that it overtakes and that's what happens.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they were just they were just competitive, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a cutthroat industry. They didn't want other people
Speaker 1: to get the shot.
Speaker 2: Could be that too, either way.
Speaker 1: Police later go on to seize film from seven different
Speaker 1: photographers on this scene. Six of them are French, one
Speaker 1: of them's from Macedonia. The cops ultimately take twenty rolls
Speaker 1: of film, which have not been seen as morbid.
Speaker 2: As it may sound, kind of a good thing to
Speaker 2: have so many photographs snapped of a scene as it happened,
Speaker 2: as it took place in terms of solving the coman
Speaker 2: out that it was any mystery as to what happened,
Speaker 2: but right in terms of like evidence that could be
Speaker 2: entered into the you.
Speaker 1: Know, that's a good that's a very good point. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't know how much of it was kept from
Speaker 1: the public. We just have in this case of the
Speaker 1: confiscated stills. We just have the statements of the people
Speaker 1: who said their stuff was stolen.
Speaker 3: But there are a few images that you can find.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are there are you can see the car
Speaker 1: when it's on the back of a tow truck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and there are a couple shots. This is
Speaker 3: the one I'm just gonna shoot. Oh, there's there are
Speaker 3: a couple of shots in particular that look to be
Speaker 3: from the a car that is in front of their
Speaker 3: vehicle that's shooting in and you can see the driver
Speaker 3: and Trevor Reese Jones. Yeah, and you can kind of
Speaker 3: see Princess Diana's the back of her head, but you
Speaker 3: can see just from there that there's flash photography happening
Speaker 3: in the vehicle in front of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, flash photography. That's gonna be that's gonna be a
Speaker 1: huge part too, because we have to remember this took
Speaker 1: place in the late nineties.
Speaker 2: So what happens.
Speaker 1: We've got the scene of this car accident swarming with photographers,
Speaker 1: some helping, some not, and where are the police?
Speaker 3: So it takes the police ten minutes to arrive, and
Speaker 3: then the ambulance five minutes after that, So fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: and Henry Paul and Dodi Fayed were both dead or dying.
Speaker 3: They died at the scene. Princess Diana was conscious and
Speaker 3: she was in shock. She was removed from the car
Speaker 3: at one am, and when she was moved, she went
Speaker 3: into cardiac arrest, but was successfully resuscitated there on the scene.
Speaker 3: She was in the ambulance by one eighteen and left
Speaker 3: the scene around one forty one, and then finally she
Speaker 3: made it to the hospital at around two six am.
Speaker 1: Fayed and Paul were both declared dead at the scene
Speaker 1: of the accident. Their bodies were not taken to a hospital.
Speaker 1: They were taken to a mortuary in Paris, the Institute
Speaker 1: Medico Legal Diana's internal injuries. Although she looked relatively okay
Speaker 1: on the exterior, her internal injuries were extensive. Her heart
Speaker 1: had been physically displaced to the right side of the
Speaker 1: chest from impact, and this tore the pulmonary vein and
Speaker 1: the pericardium. This means that despite lengthy resuscitation attempts, including
Speaker 1: internal cardiac massage and emergency room work, the Princess of
Speaker 1: Wales passed away at four a m on August thirty first.
Speaker 1: An anaesthesiologist named Bruno Rio announced her death at six
Speaker 1: am at a news conference held at the hospital, and
Speaker 1: thus it came to pass that by dawn, bodyguard Trevor
Speaker 1: Rhys Jones was the only survivor of the accident, and.
Speaker 3: As you can imagine, an investigation ensued, a large investigation,
Speaker 3: and one person who will become one of the primary
Speaker 3: I guess sources of information and speculation after this is
Speaker 3: Mohammed al Fayed, Dody's father. He came forth, He came
Speaker 3: out publicly and stated that his son, Dodi and Diana
Speaker 3: were both murdered by the British royal family, and he
Speaker 3: started using all of his influence to try and find
Speaker 3: whatever evidence he could find that this was the case.
Speaker 3: A billionaire is now facing the royal family, which is.
Speaker 1: Honestly going to be one of the few forces that
Speaker 1: would be effective in presenting a counter argument. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And eventually al fay d totals up around one
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy five very specific claims that support his
Speaker 3: belief that it was indeed an inside job by the
Speaker 3: royal family.
Speaker 1: The French government follows up on each of Fayed's claims
Speaker 1: al Fayed's claims to the best of their ability. This
Speaker 1: quickly becomes the most expensive road accident investigation in all
Speaker 1: of French history, counting the time before the invention of
Speaker 1: the automobile. Autopsy reports from the mortuary mentioned earlier found
Speaker 1: that the driver on Repall had been impaired while operating
Speaker 1: the vehicle. At point one seven to five grams of
Speaker 1: alcohol per milliliter of blood. He was around three point
Speaker 1: five times over the legal limit for driving in France. Additionally,
Speaker 1: there were antidepressants in his system if you believe that autopsy.
Speaker 1: There was also paint on the car which showed that
Speaker 1: the Mercedes had made grazing impact with a white vehicle
Speaker 1: later identified partially due to the chemical composition of the
Speaker 1: paint as a Fiat Una. This French judicial investigation last
Speaker 1: eighteen months. It concludes in nineteen ninety nine, and it says,
Speaker 1: here's what happened. We looked over what you're claiming, mister
Speaker 1: al fa Ed. The crash was caused by the chauffeur Henrepall.
Speaker 1: He lost control of the vehicle at high speed because
Speaker 1: he was intoxicated. We have made a six thousand page
Speaker 1: report on this and someone's like, oh, cool, publish it
Speaker 1: and they're like none, Yeah, they never did. But British
Speaker 1: law has to be involved too. This is a former
Speaker 1: member of the government, really, so The way British law
Speaker 1: works is it requires an inquest to be held whenever
Speaker 1: there's a sudden or unexplained death, and this leads us
Speaker 1: to something called Operation Paget or Operation Paget, depending on
Speaker 1: how you want to go with it. The Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: prepare a report eight hundred and thirty two pages long.
Speaker 1: This one is published, it's made available to the public.
Speaker 1: You can read it now. It has sixteen chapters. It
Speaker 1: goes into what they see as the sixteen broad categories
Speaker 1: that al Fayed is raising when he says there's something wrong.
Speaker 1: They were essentially looking at the stuff that al Fay
Speaker 1: had said would be inconsistent with an accident, a pure
Speaker 1: chaotic interaction of chance and tragedy, or consistent with MI
Speaker 1: six having ordered the assassination. And after this operation concluded,
Speaker 1: they handed it over to a British inquest and six
Speaker 1: years after demise, Michael Burgess, who was then the coroner
Speaker 1: for the Queen's Household. The British Queen's Household held the
Speaker 1: inquest two thousand and eight. Inquest wraps up a United
Speaker 1: Kingdom jury with eleven members, finds that Henri Paul, the
Speaker 1: driver of the Mercedes at the time of the crash
Speaker 1: was culpable due to his gross negligence and that yes,
Speaker 1: his blood alcohol level was cartoonishly high, three times higher
Speaker 1: than a reasonable driver should have. Yeah, and they also
Speaker 1: found that paparazzi, specifically photographers, were partially responsible for the
Speaker 1: fatal car accident by driving dangerously, driving recklessly, by possibly
Speaker 1: distracting an already inebriated driver with flash photography, which goes
Speaker 1: on to be incredibly important. The coroner for this was
Speaker 1: a guy named Lord Justice Scott Baker, and he described
Speaker 1: these verdicts as the equivalent of manslaughter in a criminal court,
Speaker 1: which is important. That means someone dies due to maybe negligence,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't have the best intentions for them, but
Speaker 1: you're not trying to kill them.
Speaker 3: At least, yes, And in this case is the driver
Speaker 3: who wasn't trying to kill them as well as the paparazzi.
Speaker 3: So no one was like fully attempting to murder anyone, right,
Speaker 3: that's what he's saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the French police cleared photographers are being directly linked
Speaker 1: to it. But again, the Royal Court of Justice in
Speaker 1: London heard multiple eyewitnesses talk about blocking cars that were
Speaker 1: allegedly being used to try to slow down the Mercedes
Speaker 1: or funnel it, you know, the way like you funnel
Speaker 1: cattle to a slaughterhouse, into certain roots that they can predict.
Speaker 1: They found the same thing. As far as the death
Speaker 1: of dol de Fayed. They said, you know, it's drunk driver.
Speaker 1: It's a drunk driver. It's a tragedy. The paparazzi is unethical,
Speaker 1: but this is not murder. However, it should be no
Speaker 1: surprise that some people still believe there's more to the story.
Speaker 1: Quite a few people in Britain, here, in the US, Canada,
Speaker 1: and around the world are convinced that the official explanation
Speaker 1: is either somehow inaccurate or purposely a cover up. More
Speaker 1: than twenty years after the fact, this conspiracy seems to
Speaker 1: continue growing. It raises some fascinating points. We'll get to
Speaker 1: them after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: What if Diana's car accident wasn't an accident at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, for people who believe that Princess Diana's death was
Speaker 3: the result of a homicide or a conspiracy rather than
Speaker 3: an accident, it goes all the way to Buckingham Palace
Speaker 3: to Royalty, and you know, you wonder well, why in
Speaker 3: the world would somebody want to take you know, the
Speaker 3: former Princess Diana out. She's no longer in your hair,
Speaker 3: she's no longer doing anything, she's not representing you anymore.
Speaker 3: Why would you want to take her out?
Speaker 1: Oh, this is so Game of thrones. There's the idea
Speaker 1: that Diana was secretly pregnant with do de Fayette's kid,
Speaker 1: as well as engaged to him, and that the British
Speaker 1: Queen was, wait for it, royally poded by the idea
Speaker 1: of a Muslim child being associated.
Speaker 2: With the family as a racist angleton somehow, yeah, right, right.
Speaker 1: Somehow they were. They were like, look, it's all well
Speaker 1: and good, we live in an integrated society, but no
Speaker 1: Muslims in the inner circle. There's not a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence to support that. It's more like an attitude people
Speaker 1: assume the royal family would have.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Then there's the one that Charles needed his ex wife
Speaker 2: dead to somehow clear the way for this new marriage.
Speaker 1: And many of these claims would have faded off of
Speaker 1: the mainstream radar probably were it not for Dodie's father,
Speaker 1: Muhammad al Fayed. He remains convinced to this day in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen that the British Royal family or the forces
Speaker 1: under their command murdered his son. There's something interesting here,
Speaker 1: because you know, we have to be very human again
Speaker 1: and remember that no parents should ever have to bury
Speaker 1: their child. So of course you want to find for
Speaker 1: such a horrific catastrophe to occur. So you'll hear people say,
Speaker 1: sometimes diplomatically, sometimes in a somewhat callous manner, that this
Speaker 1: man is just grasping its straws because he can't believe
Speaker 1: that something as simple and chaotic as an accident could
Speaker 1: have taken his child's life. But then we see these
Speaker 1: strange breadcrumbs people have put together, and we're going to
Speaker 1: give you a couple of those to hear and to
Speaker 1: hear what you think, and we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you afterwards as well, to let us and your fellow
Speaker 1: listeners know where you find yourself in this story. Diana,
Speaker 1: Princes of Wales, may have predicted her own death, at
Speaker 1: least that's what her former butler Paul Burrell believes. When
Speaker 1: he came forward in two thousand and three, he claimed
Speaker 1: that the princess had given him a note a dated
Speaker 1: signed note ten months before death as an insurance policy,
Speaker 1: was written two months after her nineteen ninety six divorce
Speaker 1: from Chuck. Diana claimed in the note she believed there
Speaker 1: was a plan for an accident in my car, brake
Speaker 1: failure and serious head injury to clear the wave for
Speaker 1: her ex husband to marry their son's nanny, Tiggy leg Bork.
Speaker 1: This letter is not universally accepted. It's got a lot
Speaker 1: of press. Came forward in a book that the butler wrote,
Speaker 1: But there are people who will claim that Burrell, as
Speaker 1: her longtime butler, knew her handwriting well and was capable
Speaker 1: of forging it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and at that point, it's who do you believe?
Speaker 3: That's really what it comes down to you.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask, you know, what would a DNA
Speaker 1: test be worthwhile on that thing, because I would assume
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily prove anything since they were probably in
Speaker 1: close contact.
Speaker 3: That's interesting in whoever has handled it since then, who
Speaker 3: knows how it was kept? But also, you know handwriting analysis.
Speaker 3: I haven't actually seen a full investigation into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true. There are other there are other
Speaker 1: big claims too.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, well, just the last thing with that is
Speaker 3: that just because she was she had some fears about
Speaker 3: her ex husband with this other person, does not mean
Speaker 3: that he killed her for this reason. And I don't.
Speaker 3: It's one of those tough it's a tough thing.
Speaker 1: Just because her personal belief was there, even if it
Speaker 1: was her sincere personal belief, it doesn't mean that that's
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's a fantastic point. I think that's something that many
Speaker 1: of us accidentally clays over. But if we're thinking critically,
Speaker 1: then we have to we have to acknowledge that. We
Speaker 1: also have to acknowledge a lot of the I would
Speaker 1: say the bulk of the conspiratorial claims on all fa
Speaker 1: Ed's part concern secret connections to m I six the
Speaker 1: Intelligent Services is are is essentially that the royal family
Speaker 1: wanted his, his son, and and Princess Diana dead, but
Speaker 1: that you know, the Queen's not going to be out
Speaker 1: there with a sniper rifle. You know, Prince Charles isn't
Speaker 1: gonna show up in like a weird mech or something
Speaker 1: or pop tires. So they say am I six did
Speaker 1: their dirty work.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, and it let's just let's game here, really, fast.
Speaker 3: If you are going to murder a former princess and
Speaker 3: her lover, you cannot make it not look like an
Speaker 3: accident because it will be such a high profile case
Speaker 3: immediately no matter how the death occurs. If if you
Speaker 3: were going to take out a princess or royalty, you
Speaker 3: would have to make it look like an accident.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So that's that's one of the other big things that
Speaker 3: comes into play here because you got people talking about
Speaker 3: I mean spy literally like the British people paying basically
Speaker 3: with their taxes to have the princess murder.
Speaker 2: But are there any theories surrounding like it with the
Speaker 2: paparazzis or plants and they were trying to distract the
Speaker 2: driver and trying to force them off the road, Like
Speaker 2: do we have any concrete was there, you know, supposedly
Speaker 2: any manipulation done with the car, any like tampering with
Speaker 2: I mean, I've never really seen anything like any of
Speaker 2: those claims.
Speaker 3: Well, well, the claim is you don't have to tamper
Speaker 3: with the car if you've got the driver on your payroll, right.
Speaker 3: That's that's when he goes back to Henri Paul and
Speaker 3: you know, did he or did he not have any
Speaker 3: kind of contacts with the world of intelligence or with
Speaker 3: you know, people who conduct espionage.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Theorists as well as his friends and people who personally
Speaker 1: knew him, will claim that he had extensive contacts in
Speaker 1: the world of intelligence and spycraft. And they'll claim this
Speaker 1: because of the nature of his employment at the RITZ.
Speaker 1: The Ritz is a place where important people hang out.
Speaker 1: It's good to have access there behind the curtain. Was
Speaker 1: he in the pay of an intelligence agency? The evidence
Speaker 1: to support this theory, or that purports to support this theory,
Speaker 1: comes mainly from an unusual amount of money that was
Speaker 1: found in his possession at the time of his death,
Speaker 1: as well as his personal wealth, which doesn't People will
Speaker 1: argue he makes more money than his position would imply,
Speaker 1: and then the argument follows he was essentially framed for this,
Speaker 1: or possibly drugged or had the results of his autopsy doctored.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I couldn't help it to.
Speaker 2: The idea that he was not drunk of his own volition.
Speaker 2: But he was not drunk of his own free will,
Speaker 2: right right?
Speaker 1: So another and his friends and family said he liked
Speaker 1: a beer, but he you know, he would love to
Speaker 1: have a night on town with the boys, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't like a problematic drinker. Another allegation concerns the reliability
Speaker 1: of the blood tests that were carried out. The French
Speaker 1: investigator's conclusion that he was drunk was made on an
Speaker 1: analysis of blood samples, and this was according to a
Speaker 1: September nineteen ninety seven report. A British pathologist hired by
Speaker 1: al Fayed challenged these results and the French authorities carried
Speaker 1: out more tests, but every time they said, we see
Speaker 1: that he is at approximately three three and a half
Speaker 1: times over the limit and taking antidepressants. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: This is a point counterpoint opinion war between al Fayed
Speaker 1: and the French government, or as he would say, the
Speaker 1: royal family. There's another there's a more interesting angle though
Speaker 1: than Henri Paul. We're not going to get the answers
Speaker 1: for that, but maybe we can find out more from
Speaker 1: Richard Tomlinson. Very interesting character. Reminds me of some of
Speaker 1: the kind of wild West oss dudes we talked about
Speaker 1: with the US and Intelligence services. Tomlinson worked for six
Speaker 1: he was a He's someone who gave testimony to the
Speaker 1: French inquiry in May of nineteen ninety nine. He said
Speaker 1: under oath. Mind you six was involved in the crash.
Speaker 1: The Security Service has documentation which will help you figure
Speaker 1: out what's going on. You have to ask them. Furthermore.
Speaker 1: I believe that Henri Paul was working for Security Services
Speaker 1: maybe six, I don't know. They were working for someone
Speaker 1: one of the spook squads, and that this Trevor Rees
Speaker 1: Jones guy was a contact for British intelligence. He goes
Speaker 1: on to say I six was monitoring Diana before her death.
Speaker 1: He told Mohammad al Fayed himself that Henri Paul was
Speaker 1: an I six agent, and he said to the guy,
Speaker 1: he said, Al Fay ed the death of Princess Diana
Speaker 1: and your son mirror's plans. I saw a few years ago,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety two for the assassination of then
Speaker 1: President of Serbia, Slobodon Mololsovich. They used the strobe light
Speaker 1: to blind his chauffeur. That was their plan.
Speaker 2: Wow, and it's crazy too. You're talking about the strobe
Speaker 2: light idea. That image you were talking about earlier in
Speaker 2: the show, that is presumably one of these paparazzi images
Speaker 2: that was taken through the front windshield of the car
Speaker 2: incredibly close. It does look like you can see the
Speaker 2: flashbulb in the driver's eyes, but he also has a
Speaker 2: very odd look on his face, like a little doped
Speaker 2: up looking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would concur with your assessment there, and it
Speaker 3: does definitely feel strange. You got to remember that the
Speaker 3: lens could be you know, pretty telephotos, so they could
Speaker 3: Maybe the vehicle isn't as close as it appears. But
Speaker 3: that flash, and that's the big thing here. The flash
Speaker 3: is troublesome no matter how far away they are, if
Speaker 3: it's coming directly in front of them.
Speaker 2: And if you're a photographer, if you know anything about photography,
Speaker 2: you probably wouldn't use a flash in that situation, would you.
Speaker 2: What do you think from that far away? Like, why
Speaker 2: would you use a flash in a tunnel? Like I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess you would. If you're moving really fast, you
Speaker 2: might need to use a flash to get to capture
Speaker 2: an image and not be blurry. Yeah, still seems odd
Speaker 2: to use it from so far away on glass, because
Speaker 2: if you're shooting through you know a window flash is
Speaker 2: gonna reflect and mess up your shot, right.
Speaker 3: But ultimately your goal is to illuminate the interior of
Speaker 3: the vehicle, right.
Speaker 1: So initially m I six doesn't deign this worthy of response,
Speaker 1: but a source in I six later confirms that there were.
Speaker 1: In fact, this is interesting. Here's their problem with with
Speaker 1: the guy's testimony. They say, no, of course, we had
Speaker 1: no plans for that. Our own government cleared us after
Speaker 1: their investigation. And this guy is lying about this crazy
Speaker 1: Kokammi plant caused car accidents through strobe light weaponization, and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you never did that, and they're like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did, but it wasn't with Slovodam Melosevich. So clearly
Speaker 1: you can't believe this guy at all. That was a different,
Speaker 1: sketchy European dude that we were trying to kill. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this interview was over, so Tomlinson's claims were never officially corroborated.
Speaker 1: It's just off the record six and alleged I six
Speaker 1: members backing him up. However, he was imprisoned in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven for breaking the Official Secrets Act. He sent
Speaker 1: a snopsis of a book that he wanted to write
Speaker 1: about his career with Six to an Australian publisher. He
Speaker 1: served six months of a one year sentence, got paroled,
Speaker 1: and then immediately skipped the country. The inquiry concluded by
Speaker 1: dismissing his claims. They said it was an embellishment. It's
Speaker 1: not a lie, but an embellishment, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: they said furthermore, his embellishment is dangerous because it's one
Speaker 1: of the primary reasons people have these theories still that
Speaker 1: the British elite murdered one of their own. Tomlinson was
Speaker 1: also arrested by French authorities in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: when they were doing their inquiry into the death. French
Speaker 1: police at the time seized computer files and personal papers
Speaker 1: from his home in can and then eventually kind of
Speaker 1: got away. They said he wasn't worth prosecuting. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, he went ahead and published the book
Speaker 1: The Big Breach. People describe him as kind of an
Speaker 1: arrogant James Bond esque character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say that seems about Ryan basing everything we know.
Speaker 1: So he was allowed to return to Britain in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine get royalties from his book. They dropped
Speaker 1: the threat of charges against him as long as he
Speaker 1: had sort of a gentleman's agreement to stop exposing the
Speaker 1: skeletons in the six Closet. They were like, stop talking
Speaker 1: to the press, stop talking about your old job, which
Speaker 1: you know naturally leads us to conclude that he probably
Speaker 1: had something on him. You know what I mean. They
Speaker 1: didn't know what else you might.
Speaker 3: Have, absolutely, because they basically just said, just leave it alone.
Speaker 3: We'll leave you alone.
Speaker 2: Let's just stop. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Let's do Let's do one Let's do one more thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, you say one more thing.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about that Fiat you mentioned.
Speaker 1: Heck, yeah, Fiat, that white, that white paint, real smoke,
Speaker 1: show those things.
Speaker 2: When I see white Fiat in print, I can't help
Speaker 2: but think of the Starbucks beverage, the flat white, because
Speaker 2: Fiat looks like flat on paper.
Speaker 3: That's a I didn't know that was a of a
Speaker 3: flat white.
Speaker 2: No, Is it just milk? No, It's like an espresso
Speaker 2: with milk on top of those like a little dot
Speaker 2: of milk kind of So what about that white Fiat.
Speaker 3: Well, there were witnesses who were there, obviously, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people who were in that tunnel at
Speaker 3: the time, and seven of them said they saw a
Speaker 3: white Fiat Uno, the one we mentioned earlier that may
Speaker 3: or may not have made contact with a vehicle and
Speaker 3: a motorcycle speeding out of the tunnel just seconds after
Speaker 3: the crash, And there was a lot of testing afterwards.
Speaker 3: The forensics basically confirmed that a white Fiat Uno collided
Speaker 3: with the Mercedes carrying Diana Undti and everyone else, and
Speaker 3: this collision was definitely a significant factor in the crash.
Speaker 3: Now that's big, Yeah, that's really big. And then there
Speaker 3: are other eyewitnesses who told the police that they saw
Speaker 3: a powerful flash of light just seconds before the crash,
Speaker 3: before the not they crash itself, like the impact flash
Speaker 3: impact flash. Think about it this way, flash swerve impact, right,
Speaker 3: which is you know that blinding that we were talking about,
Speaker 3: which it most certainly would in a darkened tunnel like that,
Speaker 3: if you had essentially headlights coming right at you all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, there would be a blinding effect.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. The police say they have been unable
Speaker 1: to locate either the vehicles, either the Fiat or the motorcycle,
Speaker 1: or identify the driver or the passengers. However, there's a
Speaker 1: guy Jean Paul James Andenson who is closely associated with
Speaker 1: this white Fiat Oh and we should we should point
Speaker 1: out they might sound strange. They were able to find
Speaker 1: a specific make, model, of car based just on a pigment.
Speaker 1: They were able to find that because it was a
Speaker 1: factory pigment from Fiat, so they were able to match samples.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Together.
Speaker 3: There are things like that that are occurring all over
Speaker 3: manufacturing these days, where you could easily identify a certain vehicle,
Speaker 3: a certain table even, or a pencil or any of that.
Speaker 1: Still, don't print out ransom notes on your printer.
Speaker 2: And he's supposed to use this magazine cutouts. That's what
Speaker 2: you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Any printer that, any printer that you can commercially buy,
Speaker 1: is going to have identifying pixels that are there for
Speaker 1: a reason. The world's probably a slightly better place that
Speaker 1: they're there. I'm not totally against it, to be honest,
Speaker 1: only slightly, slightly slightly. But so back to this guy,
Speaker 1: James Anderson, Jean Paul James Anderson, Uh, he is linked
Speaker 1: with this. He is linked with this White Fiat. People
Speaker 1: who believe there was a conspiracy, no homicide, are convinced
Speaker 1: that he was intimately involved with this. He had been
Speaker 1: threatening to write an expose a and explosive book. He
Speaker 1: had links with the Secret Service. Apparently he met with
Speaker 1: an author named Frederic Dard to discuss this book he said,
Speaker 1: would blow the lid off a conspiracy. And then he
Speaker 1: was found in a torched car, allegedly with two bullet
Speaker 1: wounds in his head. Wow, and the authorities ruled that
Speaker 1: it was suicide.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Dard also died.
Speaker 2: How do you torch your own car?
Speaker 3: You mean the junction man?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So the so he and the author both died.
Speaker 1: Yes, yep. And Mohammed al Fayed urged police to reopen
Speaker 1: the investigation into Anderson's death. But at this point it
Speaker 1: didn't happen. And you know this, this story goes on
Speaker 1: and on and on. Like the the British public. If
Speaker 1: you were listening to this in the United Kingdom, you
Speaker 1: are a member of the most one of the most
Speaker 1: heavily surveiled populations on the planet. There are more closed
Speaker 1: circuit television cameras or CCTV camps in the UK per
Speaker 1: person than there are anywhere else on the planet. So
Speaker 1: why didn't these catch more of the accident? That's one
Speaker 1: al fay Add's questions. It's a fair question. The problem
Speaker 1: is that's that number we just gave you about, you know,
Speaker 1: being the most highly observed or surveilled. It's it's tricky.
Speaker 1: It's number of cameras per person, but most of those
Speaker 1: are private, so they're not looking out on the street.
Speaker 1: They're looking out at the door of the business. The
Speaker 1: off license are whatever, which is their name for liquor
Speaker 1: stores that I that you know, so that they can
Speaker 1: identify a burglar. They're not there to monitor traffic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the traffic monitors come much later. And we're still
Speaker 3: talking nineteen ninety seven, so you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So without without going into the entire we would have
Speaker 1: to do a mini series on all the screwy things
Speaker 1: about this tragedy. Without going into it entirely, I have
Speaker 1: to say, still, there's one big problem with this, which
Speaker 1: is that there are other more certain ways to kill anyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that wouldn't be plastered all over the news and
Speaker 2: have a gazillion photographs of it.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, what an airplane crash?
Speaker 3: But okay, yeah, there would still be photos everywhere, but
Speaker 3: you wouldn't be able to prove it would be it
Speaker 3: would be easier to just say, oh, it's an accident,
Speaker 3: I guess maybe, or I.
Speaker 2: Mean, you know the classic tales all this time movie devices,
Speaker 2: fake somebody's suicide. There was strife in this relationship. They
Speaker 2: could have written off a princess die suicide.
Speaker 3: Yeah, say, I don't know, execute someone with bullets in
Speaker 3: a car and then burn that vehicle.
Speaker 1: Also true, and still not as weird as the guy
Speaker 1: who uh got who got as fixated locked up in
Speaker 1: a duffel bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Suicide, Yeah, suicide is a huge cause of death for
Speaker 1: intelligence service operatives, it appears. But but yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: about that too. It seems a little bit not not
Speaker 1: to be automatically dismissive. It seems first blush, kind of
Speaker 1: Rube Goldberg esque, you know, unnecessarily complicated. It's why play
Speaker 1: mouse trap? Why introduce all these other variables? There are
Speaker 1: other people on the street, it's a public street. Why
Speaker 1: flash strobe lights or other devices at people just in
Speaker 1: the hopes that there's a chance that it causes an accident,
Speaker 1: and then, furthermore, hope that there's a chance that of
Speaker 1: the four people in the car, one of the ones
Speaker 1: who dies will be the person you are quote unquote
Speaker 1: trying to get like, I can see the sides of this,
Speaker 1: I can see how the details are screwy, But what
Speaker 1: do you guys think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm definitely with you. Oukham's razor is pretty darn
Speaker 3: strong with this. Just the pressure that the proparazzi was
Speaker 3: putting on the driver who was intoxicated or at least
Speaker 3: his blood, especially when they tested his eye fluid, because
Speaker 3: originally they were testing just you know, blood, they took
Speaker 3: blood signals, they test that for blood alcohol. But then
Speaker 3: they were using the I forget what they call. It's
Speaker 3: not ocular fluid, but it's your eyes, and that gave
Speaker 3: an even truer or in even harder to fake or introduce,
Speaker 3: like falsely alcohol right because of the way it travels
Speaker 3: through the capillaries and everything to get to your eye. Anyway,
Speaker 3: once once that occurred, you can all in my mind
Speaker 3: he was definitely drunk. The driver on re and the
Speaker 3: paparazzi were definitely taking flash photographs, and they were definitely speeding,
Speaker 3: and you put all that together, in my mind, you
Speaker 3: get accident and and that to me is really all
Speaker 3: you need. However, it's not that I'm not intrigued by
Speaker 3: some of the some of the claims that Muhammad alf
Speaker 3: I had had. They all though seem to be coming
Speaker 3: or stemming from that Tomlinson character has he still has
Speaker 3: the ghost apologies. Correct.
Speaker 2: It's like you said, Ben, I mean, it's grief manifests
Speaker 2: itself in all kinds of ways, and like you said, Matt,
Speaker 2: one of them can be I need someone to blame
Speaker 2: for this, and you can. It can become an obsession.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there's something at the other end of that obsession.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's just an obsession, and it's like you're chasing ghosts,
Speaker 2: you know, you're punching it shadows it.
Speaker 1: Also, regardless of what we think about this personally, it
Speaker 1: also absolutely does not help that for all all virtual, practical,
Speaker 1: forget it all literal purposes, the royal family is above
Speaker 1: the law, you know what I mean. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: no consequences and the you know, if if the pr
Speaker 1: turns bad for them, they can just have like a
Speaker 1: Megan Markle take over the celebrity news for a while
Speaker 1: and then some of the underlings and m I six
Speaker 1: will you know, will take the fall for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is life without consequences. That's so it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: It absolutely doesn't mean that they were like, hey, why
Speaker 1: let's fake a suicide and then it doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: one turned around is like, no, let's be weird with it.
Speaker 1: It just means that. It just means that, unlike the
Speaker 1: vast majority of people on this planet, they would not
Speaker 1: go to jail for a murder. They just wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they would have plausible deniability no matter what.
Speaker 1: Am I five and m I six do have licenses
Speaker 1: to kill. Remember we did an episode on that that
Speaker 1: was really depressing.
Speaker 2: Not just a clever catchphrase. Yeah, it turns out.
Speaker 1: And we're no different. But thank you for checking out
Speaker 1: our show today. Folks, let us know where were you
Speaker 1: when you heard about the death of do de fay Ed, Henri,
Speaker 1: Paul and Diana and Princess of Wells. Do you think
Speaker 1: it's an accident? Do you think there's more to the story.
Speaker 1: If so, what and why? And that's our classic episode
Speaker 1: for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1: We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 2: Find this in the handle conspiracy Stuff, where we exist
Speaker 2: on Facebook, x and YouTube, on Instagram and TikTok. We're
Speaker 2: Conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 3: Call our number. It's one eight three three std w DYK.
Speaker 6: Leave a voicemail and if you have more to say,
Speaker 6: we can't wait to hear from you at our good
Speaker 6: old fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio
Speaker 6: dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.