Diana’s Death: MYSTERY SOLVED!
Princess Diana’s sudden death after a highspeed car chase and horrific crash in a Paris tunnel on Aug. 31, 1997, shocked the world. And two decades later, many suspect there is far more to the story than anyone knows. “The French investigation into Lady Diana is, alongside JFK’s assassination, the worst of the worst,” says Colin McLaren, an Australian ex-detective who has spent the last two decades investigating what really caused the crash that killed Di, her lover, Dodi Al-Fayed, and their driver. “The biggest problem was, nobody treated the death of Lady Diana as a crime scene.”
Until now. “I kept asking myself: What caused this tragedy?” says McLaren. “Were other vehicles involved? Most of all, could this have been a murder?” In a new 12-part documentary podcast, Diana: Case Closed (premiering on Aug. 28), McLaren, along with a global team of detectives, forensic pathologists and royals insiders, unpacks the conspiracy theories, listens to Di’s own secret recordings and tracks down a new witness to break this case wide open. “She made a great many enemies,” magazine editor Tina Brown says of the People’s Princess, who was just 36 when she died. “She was constantly breaking the rules, and people were upset.” Especially the royal family. Diana burned bridges by telling all about them in an
explosive 1995 interview. “In another century,” says Brown, “she would’ve been executed.”
POWERFUL FOES
She knew she’d gone too far. “She was frightened,” says her former butler Paul Burrell, who is one of several friends Diana confided in about her fear that she would be murdered in a car accident. And conspiracy theorists believe several powerful groups — including the royals, U.S. and British spy agencies and arms dealers opposed to her work eliminating land mines — had reason to target her.
McLaren finds clarity from witnesses — including one who hasn’t spoken for 22 years — and their testimony may be enough to spark a new inquest. “There is a dark power out there that looked to assassinate Diana or Dodi,” says Jack Firestone, a tourist who drove by the scene that fateful night. “If you want to know the truth, it’s all there.” ◼