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