Murder: True Crime Stories - MYSTERY: The Death of Princess Diana

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

On August 31st, 1997, Princess Diana died in a car crash in a Paris tunnel. She was 36 years old. The official investigation concluded it was a tragic accident caused by a drunk driver and high-speed paparazzi pursuit. But for millions of people around the world, the explanation never quite fit. Questions about the events leading up to that night, the role of the British establishment, and what Diana herself had feared in the months before her death have fueled debate for nearly three decades. In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy examines the life, the crash, the investigations, and the theories that have kept the world asking whether there is more to the story than what was officially told.Head over to our Murder True Crime Stories YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@MurderTrueCrimeStoriesJoin Crime House+ to binge a special limited series on Murder: True Crime Stories for America’s 250th: The Crimes That Built America. These are the cases that created the FBI, gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and gave us America’s Most Wanted. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. You’ll also get both parts to every Murder: True Crime Stories case released at once ad-free.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosYouTube: @murdertruecrimestories

Hi listeners, it's Carter Roy. Happy America 250. If you want to binge all four parts of our limited series about the crimes that built America ad-free, subscribe to Crime House Plus. With Crimehouse Plus, you'll get all four episodes right now instead of waiting. You'll also get every episode of murder true crime stories and the rest of the crime house shows ad-free and released early. To join, go to CrimehousePlus.com. you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of this show's page. This is Crime House. Most of us think we know how this story ends with a car in a tunnel, a princess gone too soon, and the whole world watching. But what if the ending isn't as clear

cut as we've been told? Around October, 1996, Princess Diana sat at her desk and wrote a letter to her former butler, a man named Paul Burrill. She told him to keep it safe, like an insurance policy, just in case something happened to her. In that letter, she made a prediction that still gives people chills. She wrote that she believed her husband was planning an accident in her car, break failure, a serious head injury, all to clear the path for him to marry someone else. 10 months later her car slammed into a concrete pillar in a tunnel beneath the streets of Paris. The driver had been drinking, the paparazzi were in pursuit, and the princess was dead at just 36 years old. Two official investigations called it an accident.

But Diana had seen it coming. She wrote it down, put a date on it, and gave it to someone she trusted because she believed the people around her wanted her dead. And that letter stayed hidden for years. But when it finally came out, it changed the way the world looked at everything. And it made the public wonder. Was Diana's death really a tragic accident? Or was it exactly what she said it would be?

This is the story of Princess Diana. People's lives are like a story. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is murder. True Crime Stories, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look.

Thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. Please rate, review, and follow the show. and for early, add free access to every episode, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to another episode of Murder Mystery Fridays, where I'm covering cases with questions that I can't get out of my head. The ones where the evidence points in multiple directions, and every theory feels like a possibility.

Remember, these episodes are also on YouTube with full video. Just search for murder, true crime stories, and be sure to like and subscribe. Today, I'm talking about the death of Princess Diana, one of the most famous and most beloved women in the world. At the time of her death, it's hard to overstate how cataclysmic it felt to hear the news. This was all before social media. It was like the space shuttle Challenger explosion.

Everybody stopped and talked about it. The whole world knew what had just happened. On August 31st, 1997, 36-year-old Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris alongside her boyfriend, Doty Fayette, and their driver. The world grieved almost instantly, and the conspiracy theories weren't far behind. The official story pointed to a drunk driver, a high-speed chase by paparazzi, and a terrible accident. But Diana herself had predicted in writing that people close to the royal family would try to kill her in exactly this way. Two massive investigations and an 832 page police report later, the case was officially closed. But some of the details still don't sit right.

And once you see them, they're hard to ignore. All that and more coming up. Even if you weren't alive when it happened, you've probably heard the story of Princess Diana. For almost two decades, her face was on every magazine cover and her name was in, every tabloid headline. She was a fashion icon, a humanitarian, and a rebel inside the most traditional family on the planet. More than 2.5 billion people watched her funeral in 1997. She was one of those rare people who seemed to belong to the entire world. But to understand what happened in that tunnel and why so many people still don't buy the official story, you have to

understand who Diana was. In the world she was trapped in long before she got into that car. Diana Francis Spencer was born on July 1st, 1961, into one of the most powerful families in England. The Spencer's had been close to the British monarchy for more than 200 years, so Diana didn't grow up on the outside looking in. This was her world from day one. But all that privilege, didn't shield her from a rough childhood. She later described her early years as sad, and a lot of that came down to her parents' marriage. Diana watched them fight,

watched the love drain away, and in 1968, when she was just seven, she watched her family break apart for good when her parents divorced. She had her siblings to keep her grounded, two older sisters, Jane and Sarah, and a younger brother named Charles. Besides them, Diana found comfort in the simple things. Her nanny remembered her as a polite tree-climbing tomboy

who loved her pet guinea pig and couldn't get enough of romance novels. School was more difficult. She was restless, had a tough time sitting still, and an even tougher time following through. She tried ballet for a while. Love the idea of it, but dropped it once she realized how much work it would take.

The one thing Diana did stick with was helping people. When her school asked for volunteers at a hospital for people with disabilities, she was the first to raise her hand. And the people she worked with noticed something special about her. When Diana listened, you felt like you were the only person in the room. She had this gift for making people feel seen, and it stayed with her for the rest of her life. But here's the thing about Diana.

Even though she cared deeply about other people, her own biggest dream was straight out of one of those romance novels she loved. Her nanny said Diana wanted to marry a handsome man, have a big family, and live happily ever after. And from the time she was about 13 or 14, she already had someone in mind. Charles, the Prince of Wales. Her classmates said she kept his photo on her bedroom wall. Charles was 26 at the time, and plenty of teenage girls had a crush on the future king. He was handsome, photographed constantly, often in his military uniform or parachuting from planes. But Diana had an advantage that other girls didn't, because the Spencer family moved in the same

circles as the Royals. Diana's older sister Sarah was already friendly with Charles. There wasn't some impossible gap between a commoner and a prince. They were practically neighbors. In November in 1977, Charles accepted an invitation from Diana's father to go bird hunting at Allthorpe, the Spencer family's large country estate. Diana, who was 16 at the time, made sure she was there. Charles later remembered her as jolly and bouncy and amusing, cute in a kid's sister sort of way. But for Diana, it was electric. She was actually talking to her celebrity crush.

There was one problem, though. Charles was already in love with someone else, a woman named Camilla Shand. They'd met at a polo match in 1971 and dated for about two years before Charles was deployed with the Royal Navy. While he was away, Camilla married her on-again-off-again boyfriend Andrew Parker Bowles in 2017. Charles was heartbroken. And then, in 1979, things got even worse. Charles' beloved great-uncle and mentor, Lord Mountbatten, was killed in an attack by the IRA, the Irish Republican Army. Mountbatten had been like a grandfather to Charles. Losing him was devastating. Now, that's the state Charles was in when Diana re-entered the picture. In July, 1980, the 32-year-old prince reconnected with the now 19-year-old Diana at a mutual friend's house. After a polo match, Charles sat down on a hay bale to rest, and Diana sat next to him. She didn't try to charm him or make small talk.

She asked him how he was doing after his uncle's death. She asked if he was okay. Charles, who was used to people wanting something from him, was just to people. genuinely moved by how real she was. They talked for hours, and before he left, he kissed her and asked to see her again. After that, things moved fast. Their first official date was a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, followed by dinner at Buckingham Palace.

By September 1980, just two months after that first kiss, Charles invited Diana to Balmoral, the royal family's sprawling private estate in the school, Scottish Highlands where they vacation every summer. It was basically the royal equivalent of Meet the Parents, and Diana passed with flying colors. Everyone found her charming, funny, and clearly head over heels for Charles. Queen Elizabeth was particularly impressed.

Diana came from a distinguished family with deep ties to the crown. Plus, she was young, beautiful, and unproblematic. and there was another factor pushing things along. Charles was 32. By royal standards that was getting old for a bachelor, the family had been anxious for years about him settling down and producing an air. And here was Diana, practically gift-wrapped.

By her third visit to Balmoral in October, the pressure on Charles to propose was intense. On February 6th, 19th, he did, with a 12-carat sapphire surrounded by diamonds. Diana said yes right away, but privately she had doubts. By her own count, they'd only been together in person about 13 times, and most of their so-called dates had included family members. She was still learning things about Charles that made her uneasy,

including his history with commensual. Still, Diana had made a commitment, and she was going to honor it. On July 29, 1981, 20-year-old Diana Spencer married 32-year-old Prince Charles in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It was the kind of spectacle most people only see in the movies. Diana walked down the aisle in a silk gown with a 25-foot train covered in 10,000 pearls and sequins. 3,500 guests packed the church. Outside, 600,000 people lined the streets of London to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds as they rode back to Buckingham Palace in an open carriage.

And around the world, an estimated 750 million people watched on television. About 16% of everyone alive on the planet at the time. It was the biggest wedding the world had ever seen. And just about everyone believed they were witnessing. A fairy tale. But the honeymoon told a different story. The couple set sail aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia for a two-week cruise through the Mediterranean. But instead of the romantic getaway Diana had imagined, she found herself stuck in what felt more like a floating extension of palace life.

There were formal dinners every night with ship officers and staff, required church services and rigid schedules. and when they were alone together, the differences between them became impossible to ignore. Charles liked the quiet. He liked painting watercolors and reading philosophy. Diana wanted connection, affection, attention. And when Charles disappeared into a book or a canvas, she took it personally. Their fights got ugly. At one point, Diana smashed the watercolor paintings he'd been,

working on. Another time she dumped a bucket of water over his head. That kind of behavior would have been unthinkable for most royals, but Diana wasn't most royals. Whatever was happening behind closed doors, the public couldn't get enough of her. On a tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983, massive crowd showed up. Not for Charles, but for Diana. That was probably because we where other royals kept their distance, Diana got down on her knees to talk to children at eye level. She sat with people who were sick and visited communities. The rest of the family wouldn't go near. In 1987, the AIDS crisis was gripping the world,

and most people were still terrified that you could catch HIV just by touching someone. Diana didn't care. She walked into the first UK AIDS ward at Middlesex Hospital and shook a patient's hand without wearing gloves. That single gesture sent a message that no speech or press conference ever could. But all that love from the public only made things harder at home. Charles would give an important speech on a royal tour, and the next morning the headlines would all be about what Diane was wearing. He was the heir to the throne, born for the spotlight.

But the spotlight kept choosing her instead. And he resented her for it. Meanwhile, Diana was dealing with problems the public couldn't see. She was struggling with anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder called bulimia nervosa, cycles of binge eating and purging that took a brutal toll on her body. Charles's offhanded comments about her appearance only made things worse. But in the middle of all that pain, Diana had found something to hold on to. In 1982, she gave birth to their first son, Prince William.

She was 20 years old, and by all accounts, she threw herself into motherhood, and she broke just about every royal parenting tradition there was along the way. She chose William's schools herself, picked him up. whenever she could and took him to McDonald's and theme parks. She insisted that he experienced something resembling a normal childhood. When Prince Harry came along in 1984, she did the same thing. Her former bodyguard later said that although the boys had nannies, Diana was a hands-on mother who was always in their nursery. Diana later said that her pregnancy with Harry was the closest she and Charles had ever been.

But even that happiness was short-lived. According to Diana, when Charles saw that their second child was a boy, he was openly disappointed. He'd wanted a girl. Poor Diana, that was the moment she knew the marriage couldn't be saved.

But walking away wasn't an option, at least not yet. British royals almost never divorced. The Church of England saw marriage as a sacred permanent bond, and as the head of the Anglican church, the monarch was expected to uphold that standard. So Diana and Charles did what unhappy royals had done for centuries. They stayed together in name while living completely separate lives. Charles had reportedly resumed his relationship with Camilla in the late 1970s or mid-1980s.

Diana began an affair with a cavalry officer named Major James Hewitt around 1986. By the late 80s, she and Charles kept different schedules, vacationed separately, and barely spoke unless it was for royal business. Then, in 1992, everything exploded. And when it did, the whole world got a front row seat. By the late 1980s, Princess Diana and Prince Charles were living completely separate lives. Then in 1992, the whole thing blew open. That year, journalist Andrew Morton published a book called Diana, her true story. It was a bombshell.

The book laid bare the most intimate details of Diana's life, her bulimia, her mental health struggles, and Charles' ongoing affairs. with Camilla. Diana publicly denied having anything to do with it, but behind the scenes, she had secretly provided Morton with hours of tape-recorded interviews smuggled out of Kensington Palace through a trusted intermediary. For the royal family, that was the last straw, and the fallout was immediate. On December 9, 1992, Prime Minister John Major stood before the House of Commons and announced that Charles and Diana were formally separating. But the war wasn't over.

It was just going public. Charles's team booked him a televised documentary in 1994, hoping to humanize him and push back on Diana's version of events. It might have worked, except Charles admitted his affair with Camilla on camera. Whatever goodwill he might have built up went right out the window. Then in November 1995, Diana fired back with her own interview on the BBC program Panorama.

She admitted to her affair with James Hewitt. She questioned whether Charles was fit to be king and she delivered the line that would define the entire saga. She said, quote, There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. The interview was watched by nearly 23 million people, and it forced the queen's hand. Four weeks later, Elizabeth wrote separate letters

to Diana and Charles telling them the war had to end. Despite everything, a divorce was the only option. On August 28, 1996, their divorce was finalized. Diana agreed to a 17 million pound settlement, In exchange, she gave up the title, Her Royal Highness. For the first time in 15 years, Diana was no longer a member of the royal family. She was free. But the paparazzi didn't get the memo. If anything, the public appetite for Diana only grew after the divorce. The Sun tabloid could sell an extra 60,000 copies on any day they ran even a small story.

about her. Photographers followed her everywhere, shouting insults and crowding around her with cameras, sometimes physically tripping her all trying to provoke a reaction they could sell. Diana tried to turn the attention into something positive. She spoke openly about her struggles with bulimia, hoping to break the stigma for other people dealing with eating disorders. She worked with the Red Cross, and in January 1997, she made international headlines when she walked through a live minefield in Angola, putting a global spotlight on the landmine crisis. But the media scrutiny made it almost impossible for her to have a personal life. She dated a few men after the separation, but the relationships never lasted

long. Most of them couldn't handle the cameras and the chaos that came with being seen next to the most photographed woman on the planet. That changed in the summer of 1997, when a new man entered the picture by way of his father. Muhammad Al-Fayyed was an Egyptian billionaire who had spent years trying to break into the British establishment. He'd purchased Harrods, the famous London department store, partly as a way to plant his flag in high society.

In July 1997, Muhammad met Diana and turned on the charm. Before long, he invited her and her two sons, William and Harry, to join his family for a vacation in San Trope, on the French Riviera. A few days in, Muhammad called his 42-year-old son, Doty, and told him to come join. Doty was a film producer whose credits included the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, though he was better known in tabloid circles for his jet-setting lifestyle. He was actually engaged to an American model named Kelly Fisher at the time, but after his father's call, he lied to Kelly, told her he was going to London, then flew to

San Trope instead. Prince Harry later wrote about that trip in his memoir, Spare. He said, quote, everything about that trip to San Trope was heaven. He remembered riding jet skis with William, catching massive wakes off the passing ferries, and his mother smiling the whole time. When Harry met Doty, he thought he seemed nice enough, charming, with a big smile and a deep tan. Harry noticed right away that Doty was paying particular attention to Diana. At the end of July, William and Harry left for Balmoral to spend the rest of the summer with their father.

And once the boys were gone, Diana and Doty's relationship shifted from friendly to romantic. In late August, Diana and Doty set off on a second trip together, just the two of them this time, without the kids, aboard Muhammad's yacht. They spent about nine days cruising the French and Italian Riviera, eventually making their way down to the island of Sardinia. During the cruise, paparazzi snapped a photo of them kissing on the deck of the yacht, and the image ran on front pages around the world. At some point during the trip, they stopped at a Raposi jewelry boutique in Monaco. Muhammad later claimed they selected a ring together, a diamond piece from a collection called Di Moie, which is French for, Tell Me Yes. On August 30, 1997, Diana and Doty left the yacht and flew from Sardinia to Paris on a private jet.

They planned to spend one night in the city before heading back to London. Doty had an apartment in Paris, but they were staying at the Ritz, the luxury hotel owned by his father. From the moment they touched down, the paparazzi were relentless. They went to Villa Windsor, a grand mansion, Muhammad had recently purchased, and their driver managed to lose the photographers along the way, but the piece didn't last long. That evening, they tried to have dinner at a restaurant called Che Benoit at 9.30 p.m. a wall of paparazzi blocked the entrance so completely that they couldn't even get inside. Security cameras at the Ritz captured Diana wiping away tears as she walked back through the lobby.

So they ate dinner in the Imperial Suite instead behind closed doors. At some point during the meal, things lightened up. One of their bodyguards heard laughter coming from the room. Around midnight, they decided they wanted to go to Doty's apartment across the city where they could have some privacy. The question was how to get there without the paparazzi following. Doty's team came up with a plan. The idea was simple.

Use a decoy. Doty's two usual cars would stay parked at the front of the Ritz to keep the photographer's attention, while Diana and Doty would slip out the back door and leave in a different vehicle. The hotel called in a man named Henri Paul to drive them. Henri was 41 years old and worked as the deputy head of security at the Ritz. He'd already gone off duty earlier that evening, but came back to the hotel for this one job. Writing with them was Trevor Reese Jones, a bodyguard who worked with the Fayette family. He took the front passenger seat.

At 12.20 a.m. on August 31st, the four of them stepped out the back door of the Ritz and climbed into a dark Mercedes-Benz S-280. A photographer spotted them almost immediately. As they pulled away, Anri reportedly shouted back at the trailing paparazzi, quote, You will never catch us. Henri drove fast, well over the posted speed limit. He headed along the right bank of the Sen, toward the Pondalamah tunnel not far from the Eiffel Tower.

Paparazzi on motorcycles were right behind them. At approximately 12.23 a.m., the Mercedes entered the tunnel. Seconds later, Henri Paul lost control. The car swerved across two lanes and slammed head-on into the tunnel's 13th concrete support pillar, traveling somewhere around 65 miles per hour. The paparazzi on motorcycles were the first to reach the wreckage. One of them opened the rear door and found Diana wedged between the front and back seat. seats. She was conscious, moaning in pain, crying out. Doty was slumped beside her, dead,

killed on impact. Henri Paul was dead too. Trevor Reese Jones was badly injured in the front passenger seat. He'd later need extensive reconstructive surgery on his face and would have almost no memory of what happened that night. Within minutes, the tunnel was chaos. Police arrived at 1230 a.m. and had to push through a growing crowd of photographers and onlookers. They arrested several paparazzi for getting in the way of emergency services. An off-duty doctor named Frederique Maié, who happened to be driving through the tunnel, was one of the first to reach Diana. He checked her vitals, fitted an oxygen mask and tried to keep her stable.

The ambulance arrived shortly after, and paramedics carefully pulled Diana from the destroyed vehicle. Under the French emergency system, the protocol was to stabilize patients on site before transport. That meant Diana got medical care in the tunnel, but it also meant the ambulance didn't leave the scene until about 1.25 a.m., roughly an hour after the crash. Once on the road, the ambulance moved slowly. That was standard procedure. Sudden movements could make internal injuries worse, so the priority was a smooth ride, not a fast one. and partway there, they had to stop. Diana had gone into cardiac arrest.

At the emergency room, doctors gave her adrenaline to restart her heart and opened her chest to try to massage it directly. Her injuries were catastrophic. A ruptured vein in her chest had caused massive internal bleeding. They fought hard to save her, but the damage was too severe. at 4 a.m. on August 31st, 1997, 36-year-old Princess Diana was pronounced dead. And within hours, the whole world was asking, how did this happen? The reaction to Diana's death was staggering.

Acres of flowers filled the parks around Kensington Palace. Hundreds of thousands of mourners lined the streets, an estimated 2.5 billion people watching. her funeral on September 6th, 1997. The image of 15-year-old William and 12-year-old Harry walking behind their mother's coffin became one of the defining moments of the 20th century. And almost immediately, people started asking questions. The grief was enormous, and for a lot of people, the idea that someone like Diana, someone that powerful, that beloved, could die in something as ordinary, as a car crash felt wrong. It felt like there had to be more to the story. The French authorities

moved quickly. Their investigation concluded that the crash was caused by Henri Paul's reckless driving. Toxicology tests showed his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit in France. He also had antidepressants in his system, which may have made things worse. The car had been going over twice the speed limit and no one had been wearing a seatbelt. But that last detail was actually a lot messier than it sounds. In the days after the crash, major news outlets, including the BBC and CNN, reported that bodyguard Trevor Reese Jones had survived because he was the only person in the car wearing a seatbelt. That became the accepted story for years. It made a kind of reassuring sense.

The bodyguard buckled up. The others didn't, and that's why he lived. But it wasn't true. Nearly a decade later, when British investigators examined the physical evidence as part of a major inquiry, they reached a very different conclusion. They determined that none of the four people in the car had been wearing a seatbelt, including Reese Jones. So why did Reese Jones survive?

The most likely explanation has nothing to do with seatbelts. The Mercedes hit the pillar on the left side, the driver's side. Henri Paul and Doty both seated on that side, took the worst of the impact and died instantly. Reese Jones was on the right in the front passenger seat and the front airbags deployed normally, giving him a layer of protection that Diana and Doty didn't have. The fact that early reporting got something this basic wrong, fed right into the growing suspicion that the official story couldn't be trusted. And that suspicion found its loudest voice in Dode's father.

Muhammad Al-Fayed didn't buy the accident explanation for a second. He was absolutely convinced that British intelligence services had staged the crash on orders from the royal family. And his theory had a clear motive. Diana and Doty were about to get engaged. Diana was pregnant with Doty's child, and the royals couldn't stomach the idea of a Muslim man becoming a stepfather to the future king of England. It's a dramatic theory,

and Muhammad spent millions of dollars in the rest of his life trying to prove it. But let's look at the evidence. First, the pregnancy. Muhammad said Diana called him just one. one hour before the crash to say she was pregnant. He pointed to paparazzi photos from July 14th, showing Diana in a leopard print bathing suit, claiming they revealed a baby bump, but the timeline doesn't work. July 14th was right around when Diana and Doty first met.

Even if the press had their date slightly off, there's no way she would have been showing that early. And the medical evidence was clear. Multiple blood tests confirmed Diana was not pregnant at the time of the crash. And the doctor who performed the postmortem said her womb showed no signs of pregnancy. And Diana's close friend, Rosa Moncton, said Diana had her period just 10 days before the crash. And then there's the engagement ring. This part of the story has been told a dozen different ways, so let me try to untangle it. Muhammad claimed that Diana and Doty had selected a ring together at a Raposi jewelry boutique in Monaco during their Mediterranean cruise.

The ring was from a collection called Di Moawi. Tell me yes. On August 30th, the day before they died, Doty visited the Raposi store in Paris across the square from the Ritz. CCTV footage showed him inside the store looking at jewelry, but when he left, he was only carrying a catalog. Shortly after that, a Ritz hotel assistant went back to the store and picked up the ring. It was taken to Doty's apartment. But based on the evidence, Doty never actually gave it to Diana. The ring was found among Doty's belongings after the crash. Could he have been planning to propose?

Maybe. But Diana's own friend said she wasn't thinking about marriage at all. her friend lady Annabel Goldsmith said Diana told her about a week before she died quote I need marriage like a rash on my face so the two main pieces of Muhammad's conspiracy theory the pregnancy and the engagement didn't hold up but that doesn't mean every question about that night has been answered because long before Diana ever met Muhammad or Dode she was already convinced the royal family wanted her dead. There was that letter to Paul Burrill in 1996,

where she predicted a car accident and a serious head injury. And there was another note known as the Mishkan note from 1995. In that one, Diana told her lawyer that she believed MI5 or MI6, Britain's intelligence services, were going to stage a car crash to kill her. She didn't have proof, but she was certain. And then there's a detail that gave the conspiracy theorists their most unsettling piece of ammunition.

In 2001, a former MI6 officer named Richard Tomlinson published a memoir called The Big Breach in it. He described something he'd seen during his time in the service. A plan to assassinate the Serbs, be in president by staging a car crash in a tunnel. The method involved using a powerful strobe light to blind the driver forcing the car to lose control. MI6 didn't deny the plan existed. They confirmed that a document like that had been drafted, but said it was written by a junior officer, rejected immediately by management and never carried out. Still, the similarities to what happened

in the Pondulaluma Tunnel are hard to ignore. A car crash in a tunnel with a driver who suddenly lost control. Tomlinson himself drew the connection and suggested Diana's death might have followed the same blueprint. But there was one thing he couldn't remember if the document he'd seen actually mentioned a strobe light. Investigators looked into it. No witnesses saw a bright flash in the tunnel that night and a review. of classified MI5 and MI6 files turned up no evidence that any intelligence operative was anywhere near Diana or Doty.

But there was another loose end that was harder to tie up. At the time of the crash, French investigators found white paint on the damaged Mercedes, along with fragments of a broken taillight. Forensic analysis determined the paint was consistent with a Fiat-Uno manufactured between 1983 and 1987. Two witnesses reported seeing a small white car driving out of the tunnel just seconds after the collision. A man named Levant Tan was questioned once by police in November 1997. He owned a white Fiat Uno with the same paint scheme. Multiple witnesses described seeing someone matching his description leaving the tunnel right after the crash. But Tan was never

charged. He refused all further interviews, and the car was never conclusively identified. So, did a Fiat Uno clip Diana's Mercedes just before the crash, causing Henri Paul to lose control, or was the contact unrelated? French investigators confirmed the Mercedes made contact with another vehicle, but they were never able to determine exactly when or how. In January 2004, nearly seven years after Diana's death, the British Metropolitan Police launched their own full-blown investigation into the conspiracy allegations. They called it Operation Padgett, and it was led by the Mets Commissioner at the time, Sir John Stevens. It was massive. Over three years, a team of experienced detectives

examined more than 175 separate conspirators. claims, they interviewed over 1,200 witnesses. They reviewed classified intelligence files. They even sat down with Prince Charles himself, as well as the head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. In December 2006, they released the report. It ran 832 pages. And their conclusion matched the French findings. The crash was a tragic accident caused by Henri Paul's intoxication, the speed of car, the paparazzi pursuit, and the fact that nobody was wearing a seatbelt. Muhammad called the report, quote, garbage, and he wasn't the only one who was unsatisfied. With so much pressure to keep the case alive, a formal British inquest was opened in October

2007. Under English law, an inquest is required whenever someone dies suddenly or in unexplained circumstances. Diana's inquest had been delayed for a full decade because of the French and British investigations. A jury of 11 people spent six months hearing evidence from more than 240 witnesses, everyone from bodyguards and hotel staff to intelligence officials and the princes themselves. In April 2008, the jury delivered its verdict. They found that Diana and Doty had been unlawfully killed, but not because of any conspiracy. The verdict pointed to the grossly negligent driving of Henri Paul combined with the reckless pursuit by the paparazzi.

The jury also noted that the lack of seatbelts had contributed to the deaths. It was officially the end of the road. But for Muhammad al-Fayed, it never was. He continued to publicly blame the royal family for. his son's death in Diana's until his own death in August, 2003, at the age of 94. And he wasn't alone. Decades later, the theories still haven't gone away. Diana's letter.

The strobe light plan, the white fiat uno, the seatbelt confusion. The questions about why it took so long to get her to a hospital. They all sit in this space where the evidence points in one direction. but the feeling points another. And maybe that's the real heart of it. Maybe the reason people can't let go of the conspiracy theories isn't actually about the evidence. It's about Diana. Because Diana was one of those rare people who made you feel like you knew her,

even if you'd never met her. She held the hands of AIDS patients when the rest of the world was afraid to. She sat on hospital floors, with sick kids and made them laugh. She didn't use her fame to build a brand, but to shine a light on people everyone else was looking away from. She wasn't perfect. She was impulsive and emotional and sometimes unpredictable,

but she was real. And in a world of stiff upper lips and palace protocol, that was something people had never seen before. When she died at 36, the grief was so enormous that a simple explanation, a drunk driver, a pack of photographers, a terrible accident, just didn't feel big enough.

It felt like there had to be more. And there might be, but whatever happened that night, it shouldn't overshadow the life Diana actually lived because her impact didn't end that night. The modern British royal family bears Diana's fingerprints everywhere. William and Catherine's hands-on parenting, Harry's openness about mental health, the willingness to show emotion in public, to hug instead of handshake. It all traces back to

Diana's refusal to play by the old rules. William became a patron of Centerpoint, the charity for unhoused people that Diana championed and made mental health one of his defining causes. Harry founded the Invictus Games for wounded veterans and picked up where his mother left off on HIV and AIDS awareness in Africa. In 2017, on what would have been her 56th birthday, both sons honored her with a concert. The proceeds went to Diana's charities. Diana once said she wanted to be a queen of people's hearts. And she was. Not because of how she died, but because of how she lived. She proved that empathy isn't a weakness, that caring about people who can't do anything for you isn't soft. It's the strongest thing there is. We may never know the full truth of what

happened in that tunnel, but we know exactly who Diana was, and that's the part that actually matters. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of a new murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow. true crime stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your murder true crime stories listening experience, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode early and ad-free. We'll be back on Tuesday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a crime house original powered by

Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Protovsky, Lori Maranelli, Alyssa Fox, Cassidy Dillon, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.