The Royals were a House divided even before the fateful events of August 31, 1997; 25 years ago today. A million rumors later, investigative journalist Dylan Howard is calling on Scotland Yard to explore evidence that has led many (including Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed) to suspect the secret that explains their death has been uncovered. Dylan Howard probes the missteps by the French authorities—and uncovers the one man who holds the answer to the greatest conspiracy theory of them all.

Diana, Princess of Wales would have been 61 if she were alive today.

We can only speculate about how that milestone might have been marked or even what the Royal Family would look like today had Diana not tragically died in 1997 – how would she view Charles’ marriage to Camilla? What would her relationship with Meghan be like? Would she have been able to prevent Harry’s split with the rest of the family? – but the fact remains that 25 years after her death, the People’s Princess remains a fascinating figure to millions across the globe.

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Source: Mega
Most fascinating of all is her death itself. The events leading up to the tragedy, as well as just what caused the speeding car in which she was traveling to fatally lose control and smash into pillar 13 of the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, remain the subject of fierce debate, conjecture, and conspiracy theories.

In 2019 I conducted a new investigation into her death for my book Diana: Case Solved. Along with a team comprising a former detective, a paparazzo who was in the pack of snappers trailing her every move, journalists, crash scene investigators, forensic experts, and automotive engineers. We pored over every tiny scrap of evidence in a bid to find out what really happened that fateful night.

We retraced all of Diana’s movements while in Paris, we conducted extensive on-the-scene investigations at the Pont de l’Alma, we spoke to scores of people close to the Princess and her team, as well as many eyewitnesses to the accident and aftermath.

We investigated the myriad conspiracy theories – that a chasing paparazzi pack had caused the car to lose control, that she was eliminated by shady international arms dealers, that MI6 killed her after learning she was pregnant with Dodi Fayed’s child, even that Charles had ordered the hit… and ultimately the evidence led us to one inescapable conclusion.

Diana was not killed by international arms dealers, the secret service, or, in fact, by anyone deliberately. Her death was not the direct fault of the paparazzi either. It was rather the end result of a tragic sequence of events nobody could have foreseen, or perhaps even prevented.

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Source: Radar
My team and I not only proved this – we found the evidence that confirms it.

We also found evidence of another scandal, another conspiracy, entirely… and, most extraordinarily, how a crucial figure in Diana’s death was actually ordered by French police to keep quiet.

So, how did all the myriad Diana conspiracy theories start? And why do they continue to hold traction over 20 years later? The answer lies in two, apparently separate but crucially important, facets of the case.

The first is the sheer incompetence of the French authorities in the immediate aftermath of the crash. The area was not properly sealed off, the scene became contaminated, people were allowed to come and go almost at will, and vital evidence was lost, mislaid, or destroyed – all fuel for those looking to stoke the fires of conspiracy.

In the days and weeks that followed, and perhaps in part due to a kind of panic as the attention of the world focused on the French investigators, things went from bad to grotesque. Witnesses were ignored, or their statements were lost or discounted. We spoke to one American couple whose important eyewitness testimony was taken via a shaky interpreter… and who then were asked to sign their statements in French, which neither of them spoke. Naturally, they refused, and their voices were not heard.

If a police force were deliberately trying to muddle, obfuscate or cover up a crime, this looked very much like how they might go about it.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, they weren’t trying to do any of those things. The banal truth is the actions of the Parisian authorities were nothing more glamorous or sinister than basic incompetence.

The second important factor in the growth of the Diana conspiracy industry was a little more subtle… and began 21 months before her death.

Diana’s bombshell 1995 interview with Martin Bashir – an interview we now know to have been obtained through deceit – blew her relationship with the royal family apart. Her revelations about Charles’ infidelity, her desperate unhappiness, and – most of all – how the royal household saw her as, in her own words, a “threat of some kind,” was not only sensational television… it instantly and irreversibly made her the biggest news story of the decade.

The Bashir interview created a vicious cycle of paranoia and invaded privacy. It fueled the world’s ravenous obsession with the Princess, which in turn spurred on the paparazzi’s increasingly desperate attempts to satisfy that public lust… which in turn only increased Diana’s belief that someone was out to get her. With every new pap shot, every new headline, the team around Diana became more paranoid… and that paranoia only pushed the voracious snappers to greater lengths in their attempts to get a scoop.

It was all to come to a head in Paris on August 31, 1997.

On the night she died, Diana’s fever was at its peak. In the weeks preceding her stay in Paris with boyfriend Dodi Fayed, the press pack had followed her every move, and photographs of the princess were at a premium – get the right shot, at the right time, and you could be looking at a payday worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. The public was desperate for Diana news – and the paparazzi were making a killing giving it to them.

When her Mercedes left the Paris Ritz that night, the shutterbugs were always going to follow – and so they did. But it was not the chasing mopeds that caused the crash. As later inquests revealed, the car’s driver Henri Paul was seriously over the drink-drive limit, with blood tests showing he had a level of 175 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood, compared with the legal limit of 50 milligrams. We confirmed this with witnesses who had seen Paul drinking heavily throughout the night.