Was Princess Diana pregnant when she died? Mohammed Al Fayed sparked conspiracy theory
New details about Princess Diana's death have emerged from first-hand testimonies from the people who saw her corpse after the fatal car crash in 1997 that killed the People's Princess and her then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed.
Princess's driver-minder Colin Tebbutt told Daily Mail that after he flew to Paris after learning of his boss' tragic crash, he had "lobbied" for hospital undertakers to be allowed to "tidy up" Diana as he knew that Prince Charles was on his way to pay his respects. "I'm thinking, the Prince is coming, her family's coming, I want the boss to be in good form," he said. Tebbutt said he anticipated there would just be a cosmetic makeover, however, the hospital officials rushed to embalm her.
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Father Yves-Marie Clochard-Bossuet, the Catholic priest who was the chaplain at the hospital where Princess Diana died, and was tasked with keeping a watch on the late royal's body till her ex-husband and sisters arrived, said that he was surprised to see that the late royal was all dolled up when he entered the room with her ex-husband. As a result, she looked starkly different from the time he had seen her after her death. "She didn't have the naturalness she had before. She looked like a doll, whereas before she was just a very beautiful woman," he said.
Was Princess Diana pregnant with Dodi Fayed's child?
While there are a number of conspiracy theories regarding Diana's death, one persistent theory is that the late princess was pregnant with her then-boyfriend Dodi Fayed’s baby. Most of the conspiracy theorists have fixated on this idea because a few weeks prior to her death, she told newspapers about “a big surprise.”
Since then, Dodi's father, the Egyptian millionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, has fueled the pregnancy idea, adding that the couple was about to get engaged before they were killed in the accident. He claimed that the royal family and British secret services were plotting against the marriage because they did not want Prince William, the future king, and Prince Harry to have a Muslim stepfather.
Fayed has believed that the couple was killed due to foul play because Diana was pregnant with Dodi's child at the time of the crash. He also publicly said that Diana phoned him on the night she died to tell him about the pregnancy. The fact that she was partially embalmed after her death further strengthened his belief about her pregnancy as the procedure would make it impossible to test her blood.
“She was embalmed before the autopsy, which is against the law,” said Richard Belzer, actor, author and Diana conspiracy theorist. “We couldn't prove she was pregnant or not because she was embalmed... so that’s incredibly, ghoulishly suspicious to order an embalming, especially in such a high-profile death.”
Martyn Gregory, author of 'Diana: The Last Days,' explained in the TLC documentary 'Princess Diana: Tragedy or Treason' that Dodi was planning on proposing to Diana the night of the crash. Hours before, “Dodi decided to go to the jeweler Repossi (who) showed him a new ring, which was part of a series called ‘Tell Me Yes,’" he said. "He didn’t buy one of the rings, but he did order a ring for Diana, and that was delivered to the Imperial Suite at the Ritz Hotel."
The conspiracy theory has been debunked
This conspiracy theory has been debunked by forensic scientist Professor Angela Gallop through her investigation documented in her book 'When The Dogs Don’t Bark: A Forensic Scientist’s Search for the Truth.'
"Princess Diana’s blood samples from the car tested negative for the pregnancy hormone hCG. Levels of this hormone appear in a blood test 11 days after contraception, and typically, these hCG levels double every 72 hours after. “In the end, the results of all the tests were negative,” Gallop wrote in her book. “Which meant it was extremely likely that Diana was not pregnant at the time of her death, and that she had not been taking contraceptive pills."
However, there are still people who don’t believe the blood test results, pointing to the fact that the embalming process was rushed in the case of Princess Diana, which would have made a urine pregnancy test impossible.