Prince Charles 'wasn't involved in any way' in Princess Diana’s fatal car crash, claims officer David Douglas
LONDON, UK: An investigating officer, who investigated Princess Diana’s horrible car crash, has claimed that Prince Charles always wanted to prove that his family had no hand in the nightmarish death of his ex-wife Princess Diana. David Douglas, who was a pivotal part of an inquiry called Operation Paget, spoke about the incident and Charles' cooperation during the investigation on TV show 'Good Morning Britain' (GMB) on Friday, August 19.
Princess Diana died on the morning of August 31, 1997, after her car in which she was traveling with her rumored boyfriend, Egyptian businessman Emad “Dodi” Fayed crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, France. While her boyfriend Emad “Dodi” Fayed and the driver of the car, Henri Paul, was pronounced dead at the scene, her bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, survived the crash with serious injuries. Diana, who suffered massive chest injuries was rushed to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, where she was declared dead by the medical experts. From the rumors claiming that her father-in-law, Prince Philips ordered her assassination to speculations that intelligence operatives caused her fatal car crash, the death of Princess Diana sparked unfounded wild conspiracy theories. But the truth behind her death never came out.
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However, now after 25 years, the police work that went into investigating the allegations against the royal family came out with a new four-part documentary 'Investigating Diana: Death in Paris', which aired in the UK on Sunday, August 21. Before the documentary aired, Douglas, a former senior investigative officer for London's Metropolitan Police, recalled how he interviewed Prince Charles about wild conspiracies in December 2006.
A new documentary explores the police investigations following Princess Diana's death & the conspiracy theories that spread in their wake.
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) August 19, 2022
Senior investigating officer at the time David Douglas recalls what it was like interviewing Prince Charles as part of the investigation. pic.twitter.com/ifwPHARX5B
Prince Charles was interviewed by the police after Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell handed over a note to the police. The note read, "This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous, my husband is planning an 'accident' in my car, brake failure, and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry Tiggy [Legge-Bourke, William and Harry's nanny]. Camilla is nothing but a decoy so we are being used by the man in every sense of the word." Burrell revealed that Diana wrote the letter back in 1995. The Operation Paget report found that Charles "knew the woman named in the note, as a family friend. There has never been any possibility at any time of marriage to her."
Recalling, the interview, Douglas said Prince Charles wasn’t a suspect as “Prince Charles knew nothing about that note until it became public in 2003. He knew no more than we did.” "So we asked him a few questions about that. The way it worked was I wrote down the answers. And eventually, we produced a witness statement, and that's all it was. And as far as Charles was concerned, that was what it was about. And I have to say as well that he could've actually refused to see us. He was only a witness. He wasn't a suspect in any way, shape, or form. But in actual fact, he said, 'No, I want to come and speak to you, I want you to explain what's happening, and I will tell you what I know,'" Douglas said.
When asked by his interviewers on 'GMB' whether Charles was happy to put the theories on Diana's death to bed, Douglas responded: "I think that covers a lot of it…The allegations that were being made, principally about the Duke of Edinburgh but involving Charles—that they had conspired with MI6, MI5, SAS, whoever you want to talk about—to murder the mother of their grandchildren, the establishment had done this, it doesn't get any more serious than that as an allegation.
"And therefore, Philip, in particular, was being attacked in the media and attacked from certain quarters about his attitude and certain things he said in the past. We all know he's never been totally PC, the Duke of Edinburgh, but I think they took this to another level. So I think Charles saw this as a way of kind of dealing with this and saying, 'Actually no, this is what happened.'"
Further in the interview, Douglas stated that the note presented by Burrell was genuine and was written by Princess Diana. "when you look at all the other work we did, there was actually nothing anywhere that indicated the Prince of Wales had anything to hide. He wasn't involved in any way, shape, or form. But we had to deal with this particular issue, otherwise, we would have been criticized," the officer added.