Famed Crime Writer Revisits Diana's Death

Jan. 22 -- Even before the smoke cleared at the crash site in August of 1997, the questions began.

It seemed so unimaginable that Diana, Princess of Wales, along with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, son of controversial billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, should die along with their driver in a simple car crash.

Almost from the beginning, there were those who thought there were darker forces at work.

Six years later, the questions are still going strong. A recent Sky News poll showed 87 percent of Britons believe Princess Diana's death was not an accident.

A new book by Paul Burrell, Diana's butler and close confidant, contains a letter he says came from the princess, in which she related a premonition she would be murdered in a car accident. It created a firestorm in England.

Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi's father, has long claimed the deaths of his son and the princess were orchestrated by British intelligence at the urging of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II's husband and Diana's former father-in-law.

Primetime asked famed crime writer Patricia Cornwell to take a fresh look at the case.

A Mysterious Burglary

Cornwell began her search for answers not with the night of the crash in Paris, but the next night, when burglars struck the London home of Lionel Cherruault, a photographer who also buys pictures for a French photo agency.

The night of the crash, most of the paparazzi who had been following Diana and Dodi were rounded up by police, and their film was confiscated.

But a few left before the police arrived and one of them called Cherruault to tell him he had photos to sell — and would e-mail them.

When Cherruault's house was burgled, though, his expensive cameras and equipment were not taken. Instead, all the hard drives to his computers were removed. Every digitally stored photo he possessed was gone.

The next day, Cherruault says, a mysterious man in a gray suit with gray hair visited and told him he had been "targeted."