Famed Crime Writer Revisits Diana's Death

Jan. 22, 2004 -- 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."

"He said, 'Well, you can call them what you like, gray men, MI-5, MI-6, MI-7, MI-8, MI-9, Special Branch, local henchmen, anything you like, but the person who came into your house had a map of your house, had a key into your house and knew exactly where to go,' " Cherruault said.

In the Bloodstream

For French investigators, the cause of the crash that killed Diana could not have been more tragic — or straightforward. They concluded the crash was caused by the driver, Henri Paul, who was drunk and under the influence of antidepressants.

Al Fayed and his lawyers have questioned whether the blood samples tested were really Paul's, but French judges have denied repeated motions seeking DNA testing.

It was something else in the toxicology report that baffled Cornwell: It said Henri Paul's bloodstream levels registered at 20.7 percent carbon monoxide saturation. French investigators say the levels came from the car's air bags.

To test that possibility, Primetime rigged up an American equivalent of the car Paul was driving with high-speed cameras and a sensitive carbon monoxide detector, then deployed the driver's air bag. The resulting levels "may as well be nonexistent," Cornwell said.

Marks on the Pavement

Cornwell also had questions about Paul's decision to make the short drive from the Ritz Hotel, where the couple had dined, to Dodi's apartment not on the Champs Elysees, which would have been a straight shot, but through a circuitous route that included the tunnel where they died.

Looking over police diagrams of the tunnel and crash site, Cornwell said she saw evidence of something seemingly overlooked by other investigators. The police diagram of what have been called skid marks on the pavement are actually yaw marks, she said, "made by a quick turn at a high rate of speed."

"It does not appear that those brakes engaged," Cornwell said.

She also said, to the best of her knowledge, there was no examination of the bottom of Paul's shoes. After a driver has gone from a high rate of speed to a dead stop, you can sometimes tell if a foot was on the brake at the time of the impact by looking at the bottom of the shoe, she said.

"Let's say his foot was on the brake. But yet, there are no skid marks," she said. "What does that tell you about the brakes?"

Was Paul a Dupe?

Richard Tomlinson, who worked for MI-6, the British version of the CIA, for 5 ½ years, told Cornwell that while he was with MI-6 he came across a plan to assassinate then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that he believes was eerily similar to how Diana died.

He says the proposal called for using a flashgun — a device he says is used by British special forces to blind an adversary — in a tunnel.

According to Tomlinson's theory, Paul could have been ordered to drive into the tunnel, not knowing he was driving into an ambush.

Tomlinson says he testified before the French court overseeing the crash investigation that he believed Paul may have been an unwilling dupe in an MI-6 plot to kill Diana.

But Tomlinson had no direct knowledge or evidence of such a plot — and in the end, the judge ruled it was an accident.

Cornwell found one witness whose story appears to back up Tomlinson's scenario. Francois Levy says he was driving in the tunnel that night, and in his rear-view mirror, he saw a motorcycle cut in front of the car behind him, then a flash of light, and then the crash.

During their two-year investigation, the police interviewed hundreds of witnesses, including Levy — but in the end, clearly discounted his testimony. Levy is the only witness who reported the flash of light.

"Witnesses, God bless them," Cornwell said. "It's the Tower of Babel where you hear 20 different languages and not one of 'em makes sense to the other."

‘They’ll Kill Me’

Karen McKenzie was Dodi's housekeeper for 11 years, and now his father pays her to keep Dodi's London apartment as a kind of shrine.

But it is not the ghost of Dodi that haunts her but the sole survivor of the crash, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones.

Rees-Jones has said he had no memory of the crash, but one interaction McKenzie says she had with him still brings her to tears.

"He said, 'If I remember, they'll kill me,' " she said.

McKenzie told Cornwell she didn't know what he meant by that. "I don't know who 'they' are."

Cornwell said it should be noted that this conversation took place at a time when conspiracy theories were rampant.

Did Rees-Jones really say what McKenzie says he did? And if so, was he right to be afraid? Or weak, and still recovering, had he too succumbed to the conspiracy paranoia?

How Serious Was the Romance?

For a conspiracy theory to have any basis, the relationship between Diana and Dodi had to have been truly serious.

If the princess had chosen to marry Dodi, Prince William — Diana's elder son and the future king of England — would have had a Muslim stepfather, and perhaps, down the line, Muslim half brothers and sisters.

Al Fayed says he knows the princess was pregnant at the time of her death because Diana told him so during a phone conversation. But Rosa Monckton, one of Diana's closest friends, says she's absolutely sure Diana wasn't. "I was with her 10 days before she died. And she had her period in that time," Monckton said.

For years, conspiracy theorists have claimed Diana was embalmed in Paris before her autopsy in London, in order, they say, to obscure evidence. Embalming involves draining the body of fluids and replacing them with preservatives.

But Robert Thompson, the morgue assistant who took part Diana's autopsy, told Cornwell there was no formal embalming, just some wadding inserted into the body that had probably been soaked in formaldehyde.

He also said the coroner told him "quite clearly" that Diana wasn't pregnant.

However, Cornwell says she is a little bothered about Thompson's story because "at one point the coroner called him over and said — look, she wasn't pregnant, and showed him the inside of the uterus."

"It's as if he's answering a question that I didn't hear asked," she said.

Could Diana Have Been Saved?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is, did Diana really have to die?

Cornwell asked Dr. Marcella Fiero, chief medical examiner of the state of Virginia, to examine the evidence.

Fiero said the impact of the crash had created a small tear in Diana's aortic vein, which was not necessarily fatal.

But medical procedures are different in France. French ambulances are outfitted to be mini-emergency rooms, complete with a doctor. They are not equipped to perform major surgery.

It was an hour and 40 minutes before Diana arrived at the hospital. "If that was the only significant injury in the chest or abdomen," Fiero said, "if she had arrived at a trauma center, I believe the surgeons could have treated that "

Deflecting Suspicions

Martine Monteil, who headed up the investigation and has never before spoken publicly about the case, told ABCNEWS the crash was an accident.

"It was not part of a plot," she said.

She said if she had had the slightest suspicion that Paul was involved in any conspiracy, "the inquiry might still be going on."

Buckingham Palace told Primetime it sympathizes with Mohamed Al Fayed's loss, but said his theory that Prince Philip may have been behind the accident is baseless.

As for Richard Tomlinson's claims of MI-6 involvement, the British Foreign Office says there is not a shred of evidence to substantiate allegations of a conspiracy. It says Tomlinson seems to enjoy making sensationalist allegations.

Finally, Trevor Rees-Jones didn't respond to ABCNEWS' request for comment, but continues to maintain he does not remember anything about the crash.

This story originally aired Oct. 30, 2003.

Postscript:

More than six years after Diana was killed in a Paris car crash, the first coroner's inquest in Britain into the her death opened on Jan. 6, 2004. However, the coroner postponed the inquiry until he was able to collect the information and documents necessary to proceed . He also asked Scotland Yard to investigate on its own. It is expected to be at least a year before the inquest resumes.