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PRINCESS DIANA
claimed there was a plot to kill her in a car crash in a
handwritten letter only 10 months before she died. She
gave it to her butler Paul Burrell with orders that he
should keep it as "insurance" for the future.
The princess
predicted: “This particular phase in my life is the most
dangerous.” She said (name deleted)“ is planning ‘an
accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head
injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to
marry”.
In the letter,
revealed by the Daily Mirror today, Diana named who she
believed was plotting to kill her. But the Mirror is not
able to repeat the allegation for legal reasons so we
have blanked that part of the letter out.
PLOT: Diana's
handwritten letter to Paul Burrell in which she revealed
her fears of being badly hurt in "an accident"
The document will
fuel the conspiracy theories which have raged in the six
years since she was killed in a Paris car crash.
But it also appears
to bring fresh importance to a warning by the Queen that
there were “powers at work in this country about which
we have no knowledge”.
The Queen was
speaking to Burrell at Buckingham Palace in a meeting
that would prove crucial in the collapse of his trial
for theft.
Now, plagued by
that meeting and deeply troubled that there has still
been no inquest in Britain into the death of Diana and
her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, Burrell has come forward with
the stunning new evidence.
In his new book A
Royal Duty the former servant – cleared last year of
stealing Diana’s possessions – claims she began to worry
about her security TWO YEARS before her death and that
this led her to record her fears in the document.
Before sealing the
letter in an envelope marked “Paul”, the princess told
him: “I’m going to date this and I want you to keep it
... just in case.”
In the second
paragraph of the document, written in October 1996,
Diana explained in the plainest possible language
that she was convinced of the plot to mastermind an
accident.
PEOPLE'S
PRINCESS: Diana made her accusation in a letter given to
butler Paul Burrell
Burrell describes
in his book the events that led the princess to write
the document at her desk in Kensington Palace.
Diana’s divorce
from Prince Charles had been finalised less than two
months earlier.
The princess, who
had cut down on her charities to focus on Aids, leprosy
and victims of homelessness, was enjoying huge public
support.
But according to
Burrell, by the autumn of 1996 she had “an overpowering
feeling that she was ‘in the way’.”
He adds: “Rightly
or wrongly she felt the stronger she became, the more
she was regarded as a modernising nuisance.
“She certainly felt
that ‘the system’ didn’t appreciate her work and that
for as long as she was on the scene Prince Charles could
never properly move on.”
Burrell says the
princess told him: “I have become strong and they don’t
like it when I am able to do good and stand on my own
two feet without them.” THE princess’s anxiety deepened
to such an extent that she ordered a sweep of her
apartments at Kensington Palace for listening
devices.
By October 1996 she
once again confided in Burrell that she believed there
was a concerted attempt to undermine her in the public’s
eyes.
SMASH:
Twisted wreckage of the Mercedes Diana was travelling
in
She recalled that
she had been brooding about Charles’s relationship with
Camilla Parker Bowles and the continuing role of Tiggy
Legge Bourke, nanny to Princes William and Harry, in the
Royal Household.
Burrell says the
princess was feeling “undervalued and unappreciated”.
But at the root of her fears she said she was constantly
puzzled” by attempts by Prince Charles’s supporters to
“destroy her”.
With these thoughts
and fears in her head, Diana decided to put her fears to
paper, says Burrell.
The letter betrays
the loneliness Diana was feeling: “I am sitting here at
my desk today in October, longing for someone to hug me
and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high.”
According to Burrell it was not the first time Diana had
felt it neccessary to record what was happening to her.
He said: I became the repository for royal truths.
“These notes are
her legacy and are crucial to the truths that enshrine
her memory and debunk the damaging myths that seem to
have been peddled since the day she died.”
Diana and Dodi
Fayed were killed in the early hours of August 31 1997
when a Mercedes S280 driven by drunken chauffeur Henri
Paul careered into the Pont d’Alma tunnel in the French
capital.
An inquiry in 1999
by the French authorities blamed Paul, concluding that
he had taken a cocktail of drink and drugs before losing
control of the car because he was speeding.
However, there has
been a growing unwillingness by the public to accept the
official version of her death.
BURRELL admitted he
shares the doubts. He said: “With the benefit of
hindsight, the content of that letter has bothered me
since her death.”
REVEALED:
Note that will stun world
It will strike a
chord among people who remain puzzled by inconsistences
in her death, including questions over a mysterious
white Fiat Uno which grazed the Mercedes in the tunnel
and over blood samples taken from Henri Paul.
Harrods owner
Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father, has spent tens of
thousands of pounds on a private investigation,
convinced that Diana and Dodi were murdered by British
security services at the behest of Establishment
forces.
But Diana’s family
refuse to believe the theories. Her mother Frances Shand
Kydd accepted the findings of the French inquiry
“without reservation”.
Diana’s brother
Earl Spencer also said he was satisfied that the
authorities had “reached the right conclusion”.
Hopes that some of
the mysteries would be unravelled were dashed last
month.
A spokesman for the
royal coroner Michael Burgess said the date for an
inquest on Diana would be announced within days.
But hours later Mr
Burgess ordered the statement to be withdrawn, saying it
was premature” to suggest a date and refusing to give a
timescale.
The lack of an
inquest and his prosecution for theft in 2002 steeled
Burrell’s determination to make public the princess’s
concerns for her security.
“That letter has
been part of the burden I have carried since the
princess’s death. Knowing what to do with it has been a
source of much soul-searching.”
He insists that
whether it is a wild coincidence” or an explanation for
the tragedy is a matter for a coroner’s court.
He adds: “It may be
futile in what it achieves because it can do no more
than provide yet another question mark.
“But if that
question mark leads to an inquest and a thorough
investigation of the facts by the British authorities it
will have achieved something.”
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