An account of Princess
Diana’s final hours
by Christopher Andersen
Excerpts And Analysis
She looked down at the most famous face in the world.
“It’s not her,” Béatrice Humbert thought to herself. “It isn’t
possible. I’m dreaming.” For a moment Humbert, chief
nurse at Paris’s Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, felt her
knees
begin to buckle and the room begin to swim as she
desperately fought the overpowering urge to faint. Clad in
her white hospital coat, the trim, businesslike Humbert
looked every inch the seasoned professional that she was.
And in a career that spanned three decades, Humbert had
seen the mangled corpses of hundreds of accident victims.
Yet nothing had prepared her for this. The nurse was
gazing, she had to keep telling herself, at the lifeless body of
the Princess of Wales.
From the moment she saw Diana lying there, beneath a
white cotton sheet that had been pulled up to her bare
shoulders, it struck Humbert how sad it was that the
Princess looked “so all alone.” Three hours earlier her body
had been brought up from the basement operating room to
the blue-walled second-floor room just above the main
entrance to Pitié-Salpêtrière’s eight-story, teal-green
glass-and-cement Gaston Cordier Pavilion. Although this
was the most modern section of the hospital, parts of which
date back to the seventeenth century, Gaston Cordier had
just undergone several months of extensive renovations. The
blue-walled room above the entrance, chosen because
hospital officials were told blue was Diana’s favorite color,
had been painted only three days before; the bracing smell
still lingered in the air. There had been no need to
inconvenience any other patients to make room for Diana;
the wing had not been scheduled to reopen to patients until
the following day, September 1.
Humbert was soon joined by Jeanne Lecorcher,
Pitié-Salpêtrière’s chief emergency nurse, and an
ashen-faced Sir Michael Jay, Britain’s ambassador to
France. Moments later Sylvia Jay walked in and stood at
the foot of the bed, choking back tears. Humbert was
somewhat surprised to notice that the ambassador’s wife,
who blew her nose into an Irish lace handkerchief, was
already dressed from head to toe in black.
Thierry Meresse had been there when they first
wheeled Diana, still clinging to life, into the operating room
at 2:05 a.m.
[Wait a minute. How could Diana still be "clinging to life?" According to our good Doctor Mailliez, Diana's heart was "ripped out" on impact in the tunnel. Would medical professionals please step forward and explain to us how ones heart can be ripped out and yet the patient is still alive an hour and a half later!]
“At first I didn’t dare look,” said the hospital’s
thirty-six-year-old communications director. “I had a certain
vision of what she should look like that I wanted to preserve
in my mind. And I thought, this beautiful face is going to be
horribly disfigured by such an awful accident.” Hours later,
when he finally did summon the courage to look at Diana,
he was astounded to discover that “she looked entirely
peaceful. Her face hadn’t been marked at all, really. Just a
little bruising, that’s all.”
Father Yves Clochard-Bossuet, who had worked for
Air France until he joined the priesthood just five years
earlier, had been trying to come to terms with that
realization for hours. Short and balding at age forty-six,
Pitié-Salpêtrière’s resident priest had been fast asleep
in his
apartment when he was jolted awake by a phone call at 3
a.m. “The emergency unit of the hospital told me someone
very important needed the Last Rites,” he later recalled.
“When they said it was Princess Diana, I thought someone
was playing a joke. I thought they were drunk.” He
slammed down the receiver and tried to get back to sleep.
But, he said, “Something kept me awake.”
[Diana wasn't pronounced dead until 4:05am. The priest ( if in fact he was a priest, more on this later) was supposedly called at 3am. Just exactly when did the operating surgeons give up? When did they know it was hopeless? Above it says Diana was clinging to life at 2:05am. What exactly transpired during that fateful hour? We need the precise medical details of the extent of Diana's injuries at the time, what exactly was done to her, and by whom. We need to know if Dr. Riou is indeed related to Patrick Riou, prefect of police and committed fascist. We need to know why an air ambulance was considered to bring the princess to the hosptial, and yet was rejected, and by whom. We need answers!]
When Father Clochard-Bossuet called back, hospital
officials confirmed that Diana had been in a car crash with
her Egyptian-born boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, Dodi’s
bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, and the car’s driver, acting
Ritz Hotel security chief Henri Paul. Dodi Fayed and Henri
Paul, Clochard-Bossuet was told, had died on the scene.
Rees-Jones had suffered multiple fractures and half of his
face had been literally ripped away, but he was likely to
survive. Diana was not.
The priest leapt out of bed and quickly dressed. Even
as he fumbled with his clerical collar, Mohamed Al Fayed’s
helicopter was touching down at Paris’s Le Bourget
Airport. Dodi’s controversial father, owner of Harrods
department store in London as well as Paris’ Ritz Hotel,
had been at his baronial estate in Oxted, Surrey, when Ritz
president Frank Klein called over two hours earlier with
news of “a terrible accident.” Dodi, Klein said, trying to find
some way to soften the blow, had “passed away.”
“An accident? Do you really think it was an accident?”
Mohamed Al Fayed asked Klein. Within minutes, Dodi’s
father was aboard his Sikorsky S-76 heading for Paris. At
Le Bourget, he was met by Alexander “Kes” Wingfield, one
of his son’s bodyguards, and by Dodi’s regular chauffeur,
Philippe Dourneau. Unaware that Dodi and Henri Paul had
been taken directly from the site of the accident to the Paris
morgue, Mohamed Al Fayed ordered Dourneau to take him
to Pitié-Salpêtrière, where Diana was still in surgery.
It seemed oddly fitting that the life of the Princess of
Wales, whose compassionate nature led her to reach out to
the disinherited, should have ended there. Founded in 1656
by Louis XIV to care for the poor and the insane,
Pitié-Salpêtrière (literally “Pity-Saltpeter”) took
its name
from its charitable mission and from the saltpeter once used
in arms production on the site. Much of the original
seventeenth-century structure still stands — including the
hospital’s landmark Chapel of St. Louis with its distinctive
octagon-shaped dome — in stark contrast to the modern
Gaston Cordier wing where Diana was taken.
Mohamed Al Fayed reached the hospital at 3:50, and
was met by Ambassador Jay and French Interior Minister
Jean-Pierre Chevènement. “Mr. Al Fayed got there so
quickly,” Thierry Meresse said, “that we naturally assumed
that he must have been in Paris when the accident
occurred.” Ten minutes later, at 4 a.m. Paris time, Diana
was pronounced dead. “I could not believe it,” Dodi’s
father said. “The situation was too desperate to take in.”
Yet Al Fayed wasted no time waiting to pay his
respects to Diana. Already all but convinced that Dodi and
Diana had been assassinated, presumably by enemies of the
Al Fayed family within the British Establishment, Mohamed
moved swiftly to protect his interests. Employees of Al
Fayed’s far-flung empire, many of whom already suspected
that their phone calls were bugged and their actions
monitored, were now instructed under pain of immediate
dismissal not to speak to anyone regarding Dodi and the
Princess. In a move that angered hospital officials, Al Fayed
also ordered that everything belonging to the Princess and
Dodi be packed up immediately and shipped back to
London along with their luggage. It was only then that he
asked to be driven to the morgue to see the body of his son.
Diana’s body was still on the operating table when Al
Fayed left the hospital.
[Did Fayed, even at that early hour, have any concrete information about an assassination plot? Or was it merely a feeling? Whichever, his fears are certainly now shared by the overwhelming majority of the public, in Britian and around the world. Judge Stephan reportedly will release his report in October. Perhaps more interesting will be the release of the results of Fayed's own investigation.]
Father Clochard-Bossuet, who at first had dismissed
reports of the accident involving Diana as a tasteless
practical joke, now crossed paths with Mohamed Al Fayed
just as Al Fayed was heading out the door. From the
moment the cleric arrived at Pitié-Salpêtrière, he
later
recalled, “I saw it had to be true. There were so many
people — police, the British ambassador, doctors, and
outside, journalists were already congregating. I was
shocked. It took a long time for me to absorb what was
happening.” Many of the high-ranking French officials
milling in the halls wore jeans, short-sleeved shirts, and
sneakers. Most were unshaven. Like Chevènement, they
were winding down from the weekend when they were told
the shocking news.
At 4:20, Ambassador Jay approached
Clochard-Bossuet. His voice trembling, Sir Michael told the
priest that the Princess of Wales had succumbed to her
injuries. Would he, Sir Michael asked, read her the Last
Rites?
The priest stepped into the room where Diana’s body
had been taken and turned to close the door behind him.
The room was dark, illuminated by only a small wall lamp.
Clochard-Bossuet’s heart pounded furiously as he moved
closer to the single bed in the center of the room. Diana’s
long, nude body was covered only by a thin white sheet.
“She looked extremely young,” someone who saw her at
about this time later said. “Her eves were open and so vivid.
Her skin was so smooth. She looked like the most exquisite
china doll. I felt very much in awe.”
[Above we suggested the priest may not be
who he says he is. Here our doubts become a little more concrete.
Something is wrong here. "'She looked
extremely young,' someone who saw her at about this time later said."
Is the author merely taking a license here, or did the priest actually
see her body? And if he did, why would the author have to interject
someone else's comments? Wouldn't the priest have remembered how
she looked that most memorable, painful moment?]
The decision to have Last Rites administered by the
only cleric available — a Roman Catholic priest — seemed
almost certain to raise eyebrows back in England. Not only
was Diana a Protestant, but her son William would as king
someday be the titular head of the Anglican Church. “I was
very aware of the Princess’s position in the Anglican Church
and, although I was never frightened by my task, I was very
discreet,” he said. The ritual, also known as Extreme
Unction, was non-denominational and could be
administered to any Christian.
Reacting as so many others would that day, Father
Clochard-Bossuet felt he might collapse at any moment.
Struggling to remain steady on his feet, he reached over and
gently closed Diana’s eyes. Then he used his thumb to
anoint Diana’s forehead with holy oil. For the first time, he
noticed one of the injuries she had sustained in the crash —
a quarter-inch-long nick just below the hairline. Then he
reached under the sheet to find her hand. Gently lifting it out,
he turned her palm and dabbed the center of it with oil.
Then he walked to the opposite side of the bed and did the
same to the palm of her other hand, all the while reciting the
words of the holy sacrament: “Through this holy anointing
and his most loving mercy, may the Lord assist you, by the
Grace of the Holy Spirit so that, when you have been freed
from your sins, he may save you and in his goodness raise
you up.”
The ritual completed, Father Clochard-Bossuet pulled
a chair close to the bed. He would stay alone with Diana for
the next several hours, praying for her soul as the world
outside was only beginning to waken to the terrible news. “I
could not believe I was at her bedside, in front of her,” he
later said. “It was difficult to comprehend the enormity of
the situation. All I could think of was the sadness of this
young woman dying when she had everything to live for. I
prayed for her sons, William and Harry.”
Fully four hours later, at 8:30 a.m., Father
Clochard-Bossuet’s solitary vigil ended when Bernadette
Chirac stepped into the room. The wife of French President
Jacques Chirac, dispatched from the Elysée Palace as
Chirac’s personal emissary, had worked with Diana on
several humanitarian causes. Like so many others at or near
the centers of power, she considered Diana her friend. Now
Madame Chirac and the priest bowed their heads by
Diana’s bedside and prayed, trying not to be undone by the
muffled sobs of hospital personnel standing in the corridor.
Forty-five minutes later, they were joined by Lionel
Jospin. The French Prime Minister had been presiding over
a Socialist Party conference in the seaside town of La
Rochelle, and immediately commandeered a military aircraft
for the flight to Paris as soon as he was informed of the
accident. A Protestant, Prime Minister Jospin did not join in
the prayers. “The Prime Minister was very sad, but he said
nothing,” nurse Jeanne Lecorcher recalled. “He just paid his
last respects in silence.”
Emotionally drained and physically spent, Father
Clochard-Bossuet was relieved when the Reverend Martin
Draper from the St. George’s Anglican Church in Paris
arrived to take his place.
It would be the last time the
airline-worker-turned-priest gave anyone the Last Rites at
Pitié-Salpêtrière. So profoundly changed by the experience,
he resigned to become minister at a nearby children’s
hospital on the banks of the Seine. “I often think back to
that night in August,” he later mused, “and wonder if it can
be true.”
[We have just been told that Father Bossuet
was the only cleric available. Where then did Reverend Draper come
from? And wouldn't he had been just as available as Father Bossuet
at that early morning hour? And isn't it convenient how, last rites
administered, he resigns to a nondescript children's hospital away from
the harsh glare of Pitie-Salpetriere. Is Father Bossuet really who
he says he is? What exactly did he do in that room when he was alone
with Diana all that time? Here is an alternative hypothesis on what
may have happened: Let us suppose that, as the hospital itself has
admitted, Diana was still alive when she was brought in. We also
know that the torn pulmonary vein was quickly repaired, however it is alleged
at that point it was too late for the princess. But let us suppose
it wasn't too late. Late us suppose that the princess was still alive
and clinging to life. And let us suppose that Messrs. Riou et al
were under instructions, from the highest levels, to effectively finish
the princess off. They refused. Hence, our good Father Bossuet
- intelligence asset of some kind? - was called in to do the dirty work.
This is conjecture on our part, based on information which these web pages
can't make public, but we would ask our readers to consider the likilhood
that a Catholic would be summoned at the dead of night to administer last
rites to the Protestant princess, when we know for sure that an Anglican
minister, Reverend Draper, was also apparently available. We would
suggest to the world's media that a thorough investigation needs to be
made of Father Bossuet, what exactly he did with Air France, if he has
any intelligence ties, etc. Like our Dr. Mailliez, in our opinion
his story doesn't add up.]
THE NURSES sprang into action. Humbert’s first
thought was that they were going to have to cool the room
to keep the body from decomposing. “I knew it was going
to be hot during the day,” said Humbert, who asked that an
air conditioning unit be installed in the room “But that’s a
natural professional reflex, to immediately think of
preserving the body. And I thought of all the people who
would be coming, that it would create a lot of movement,
and a lot of heat. The first thing was to chill this room.”
Even the installation of an air conditioner presented
special problems. To prevent the throng of reporters as well
as run-of-the-mill curiosity seekers from learning which
room Diana was in, sheets had been placed over all the
second-floor windows of the immense hospital complex.
There was ample reason for such caution: Several
enterprising tabloid journalists had rented rooms across the
street from the hospital.
Rather than mount the air conditioner in a window and
risk opening a breach — “We can’t leave an opening
because someone might stick a camera through it,” Humbert
told the technicians — the unit was hooked up to a sink in
the room, using the running water as the cooling element. “It
worked,” Humbert recalled. While the heat in the hospital
corridors was scarcely bearable, the room where the body
of Diana lay remained a cool 60 degrees F. “It was,” the
nurse added without irony, “the most agreeable place in the
building.”
Sadly, only a single bouquet arrived for Diana all
morning — two dozen red roses from former French
President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and his wife,
Anne-Aymone, another friend of Diana’s. That afternoon,
more flowers would arrive — this time an arrangement of
lilies Prince Charles had asked the hospital to make up
“because they are her favorite.” In striking contrast to the
ocean of floral tributes that would engulf central London,
these were the only flower arrangements in Diana’s
otherwise spartan hospital room that day.
There would be an autopsy, but it would take place in
England, not in France. Until that time, the body would not
be embalmed. Meanwhile, every effort would be made to
make Princess Diana presentable to the scores of dignitaries
who would undoubtedly come to pay their respects
throughout the day. “The body is very important, whether
it’s Princess Diana or someone else,” Humbert explained.
“You have to think of the family, their pain. To come to
contemplate a body whose hair has not been arranged, that
hasn’t been washed. . .”
[Diana's autopsy, done in England, without question could clear up a lot of mystery surrounding this case. Chief of which is of course, Was Diana pregnant? Did an unborn fetus also die because of that obscene one-hour hospital ride? Or if there is no fetus, is there evidence that a fetus was removed? If the answer to any of these is yes, the likilhood that the results of Diana's autopsy will ever enter the public domain are slim and none at best.]
Members of the hospital’s amphitheater staff — the
nurses and orderlies who prepared cadavers for anatomy
courses and dissection — arrived to carefully wash Diana’s
body and shampoo her hair. Diana’s face and her famous
blond coif were, understandably, of particular concern. A
female cosmetician and a male hairstylist dispatched from a
Paris funeral home arrived carrying a large color photo of
Diana that had run in a recent issue of Paris Match.
“They tried to fix her the same way, with a curl in
front,” Humbert recalled, “and to make up her face to look
exactly like she looked in the picture. They never stopped
sending for me throughout the day, to ask if this was the
way it should be, or that. . . it was very touching, and very
hard to take. It was all rough. Very rough.”
While the couple from the funeral home applied lipstick
and styled and restyled her hair to match the photo in Paris
Match, Humbert faced an alarming fact: They had nothing to
dress her in. The white pants and black short-sleeved top
she had been wearing that night had been cut off her by
emergency medical personnel at the scene of the crash. All
that remained of her personal effects — Diana’s black
jacket, her black size 9 Versace high-heeled shoes, her
purse, her Jaeger-leCoultre gold watch with white stones,
her bracelet with six rows of pearls and a dragon-shaped
clasp, a black size 30 Ralph Lauren women’s belt, a single
gold earring — were placed in a plastic bag stored in the
basement.
“She was completely nude under the sheet,” recalled
Humbert, who asked British Consul General Keith Moss to
call the Ritz and have them supply a dress. They were
shocked to discover that all of the Princess’s possessions
had been packed up and, on Mohamed Al Fayed’s specific
instructions, shipped back to London. “Everything!”
Humbert declared. “That very morning!”
While British Embassy officials scoured Paris for a
suitable dress, the nurses were suddenly faced with yet
another emergency. Most of the Royal Family —
specifically the Queen, Prince Philip, Charles, and Diana’s
two sons — had been enjoying their summer holiday at
Balmoral Castle in Scotland at the time of the accident. The
Queen, who remained behind with Prince William and
Prince Harry while Charles flew to Paris, had phoned the
British Embassy in Paris — not with questions about
Diana’s medical care or how much she might have suffered,
but with concerns of quite a different sort.
‘The Queen! The Queen!” Consul General Moss
blurted to Humbert as he rushed into the room where Diana
still lay naked under a sheet. If there were any royal jewels
among Diana’s effects, Her Majesty wanted them returned
to the Royal Family immediately. “Madame,” said Moss,
“the Queen is worried about the jewelry. We must find the
jewelry, quickly! The Queen wants to know, ‘where are the
jewels?’”
“But there wasn’t any jewelry,” replied Humbert,
somewhat stunned at the apparent callousness of the
question. “No wedding band, of course, no rings, no
necklace.”
[From day one, these pages have embraced one
common theme: that Diana was murdered, and that this was done on expressed
orders of the British Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II. No other scenario
is plausible. Some of have bought into the notion of Prince Phillip
- who detested Diana and Dodi - or arms merchants, chiefly landmine makers,
or even renegade Arab factions, having pulled off the "hit." These
scenarios have yet to explain why the French and the Americans would cover
up the murder afterwards, which they obviously have done. It bears
repeating: Only a direct sanction by the
British Sovereign could have convinced the French and Americans to become
willing participants in the murder..
No way would the French and Americans take a chance of this magnitude simply
because Prince Phillip doesn't happen to like who his ex-daughter-in-law
is dating, or because the merchants of death want to squeeze a few more
dollars out of the hides of their poor and defenseless victims. Others
have said, well, we know Prince Phillip hated Diana, but why the Queen?
She genuinely liked Diana. Well, we would ask those people to examine
the facts. Consider the Queen's order that Diana's name never be
mentioned in her presence after the publication of the Andrew Morton book,
the stripping of HRH title, the dragging of William and Harry to church
the Sunday after the crash, and Diana's name never mentioned once during
the entire service. "Where are the jewels?"]
Before boarding the plane for Paris, Prince Charles had
also called ahead with a question about Diana’s jewelry.
Knowing that she would have wanted to look her best for
those coming to pay their respects at the hospital, Charles
called the hospital and personally requested that her gold
earrings be put on. “Diana always likes to wear her earrings
in public,” Charles said, still speaking of his ex-wife in the
present tense. “There will be so many people there, looking
at her. I’m sure she’ll want the earrings. . .” But after
scouring the premises, hospital officials failed to find the
missing earring.
It would be seven weeks before the gold earring, which
had been ripped from Diana’s ear by the force of the crash
and embedded deep in the dashboard, was recovered from
the crumpled interior of the Mercedes by crash
investigators. Still, Humbert later said she was impressed by
the Prince’s interest in preserving Diana’s dignity, even in
death. “That he cared to think of such details,” Humbert
later said, “oh la la, that surprised me.”
[You would think these people could be a little less obvious. Is Andersen on Prince Charles' payroll? What ever happen to the fine art of subtlty!]
Meantime, the hunt for a suitable dress continued for
nearly two hours. Finally Ambassador Jay’s wife, Sylvia,
who was roughly Diana’s size, offered one of her own.
Shortly after noon, two men arrived at the hospital with a
suitcase. One was a former bodyguard of Diana. The other
was the man who had arguably been closest to Diana —
her trusted butler, confidant, and protector, Paul Burrell. He
had expected to be in Paris, but never under these
circumstances; the evening before, Diana had phoned
Burrell in high spirits, saying how eager she was to see her
sons for the first time in five weeks. Would her old friend fly
to Paris and accompany her on the flight home to London?
she had asked.
Humbert stopped the two Britons, neither of whom
spoke French, at the door, “They wanted to see her,” she
recalled, and they said that they had the dress in the bag.”
Before they could enter the room, Humbert insisted that
they open the suitcase. “It was a black dress with a
V-necked shawl collar that fastened in the front, in a light
wool material that was a bit thicker than wool crepe.” The
dress, which came down just below the knee, had long
sleeves and was belted at the waist. The suitcase also
contained a pair of Sylvia Jay’s black patent leather pumps.
[Who is the unnamed former bodyguard who accompanied Burrell to visit the body? We need names! Was he a member of the Protective Squad? MI5/MI6? In addition, Death of a Princess paints an entirely different scenario about how the dress was obtained. Why the discrepency in stories? Whose lying, and whose telling the truth!]
While Burrell waited in the hallway, Humbert and
Lecorcher took the suitcase into the room, placed it on a
chair, opened it, and removed the dress. Humbert, who
with the others had marveled at the extent to which Diana’s
face had remained unmarred, steeled herself as Lecorcher
pulled back the sheet. In an instant, the brutal nature of her
injuries became horrifyingly apparent. A scar crisscrossed
with sutures ran from her sternum almost to her navel — the
graphic, Frankenstein-like result of the surgeons’ frantic
attempts to repair her heart. Diana’s hands and feet were
bruised, as was her right side — the only external evidence
that her ribs had been crushed. Similarly, her right forearm,
which had been badly fractured, was also black and blue.
As they maneuvered Diana’s body so they could slip the
dress over it, the nurses discovered more injuries including a
two-inch-long cut on the right buttock and a nasty
three-inch gash on the right thigh.
All of Diana’s injuries were duly noted on Humbert’s
chart, although no one reading it would have had the
slightest inkling as to the identity of the patient. On her chart,
Diana was not listed by name. “We used the saint’s name of
the day, St. Patricia,” Humbert explained. “She was listed
on her chart simply as Patricia.” Appropriately St. Patricia,
patron saint of Naples, was born into a noble family in
Constantinople, fled to Italy to escape a royal marriage,
distributed her wealth to the poor, and died young.
Diana had once told Burell that she wanted to be
buried in a casket with a window in it so that her face could
be clearly seen. Now just such a gray metal casket — the
strangest either of the nurses had ever seen — was rolled
into the room. Humbert and Lecorcher, aided by the
undertaker and two British Embassy staffers, then lifted
Diana’s body (“one takes the arms, the other the legs,”
Humbert explained) and placed her inside. They then
carefully arranged her arms and feet. For the dignitaries who
would arrive that afternoon, the coffin lid was left open. Just
ten weeks earlier, an auction of seventy-nine gowns
belonging to Diana at Christie’s in New York had raised
over $3 million for AIDS research — an idea that originally
had been proposed by her increasingly publicity-savvy son
William. Now the most fashionable woman in history lay in
her coffin wearing a borrowed dress.
Diana often described the burly soft-spoken Burrell as
“my rock — the only man I can trust.” As soon as he saw
her, Diana’s rock dissolved. “He broke down, just came
undone,” Beatrice Humbert remembered, contradicting later
reports in the Sunday Times of London and elsewhere that
Diana’s butler had never lost his composure. Burrell “wept,
with great sobs.” He placed his hand on hers, which the two
nurses had lovingly folded across her chest. (“He had to
touch her because he just could not believe she was dead,”
Lecorcher said.) Then he “sat down at the Princess’s feet,
and he cried and cried.”
Burrell reached into the suitcase that had contained the
dress and pulled out a rosary. “These were a gift to the
Princess from Mother Teresa,” he said, handing Lecorcher
the beads. Burrell then asked if the rosary could be placed
in Diana’s hands. Lecorcher gently opened Diana’s fingers
and placed the rosary inside. Then Burrell produced a
framed photograph of William and Harry that Diana always
traveled with, and a snapshot of her adored late father Earl
Spencer. These were also placed in Diana’s hands.
Burrell began to stagger, as if he were about to faint.
“We were afraid he was going to pass out,” Humbert said.
“We made him sit down, we tried to reassure him.” But
Burrell was beyond consolation. “He didn’t want to leave
her body. We had to tell him, ‘Paul, it’s time to leave
now…’”
[A great many tears were shed that day for Diana. But you can't help but wonder how many were crocodile tears. If Mr. Burrell, Diana's "rock," truly loved Diana and wished to perserve her memory, why did he destroy so many of her personal letters, which have to be considered evidence, since the French, as of yet, have not issued a formal ruling regarding the crash? And isn't it happenstance that not long after, he was showered with honors by the Queen? Has Mr. Burrell been compromised in someway? Did the "bodyguard" who was with him in the hospital have something to do with that? Mr. Burrell is now in the employ of the Diana Memorial Fund, his stated aim to "perpetuate the princess' memory." Noble words to be sure. But men reveal themselves not only by their words, but by their deeds. And in his deeds Mr. Burrell has shown himself to be a loyal servant, not of Diana and her memory, but her enemies.]
Burrell was not the only devastated mourner Humbert
tried to comfort that day; she had been assigned the
thankless task of escorting all visitors to Diana’s bedside.
The reaction of France’s Health Minister Bernard Kouchner
was typical. Monsieur Kouchner was, Humbert said,
“overwhelmed” when he saw her.
“It’s impossible, it’s impossible it’s impossible,”
Kouchner kept saying. “This beautiful lady. It’s impossible.”
Humbert would become emotional when she remembered
this. “It is dreadful, every time I think of these people. It
was very hard for me.”
[Reading paragraphs like the above, one gets
a sense of what the last days of the Roman Empire must have been like as
civilization took its fatal plunge down the abyss. How could any
serious jounalist, with an ounce of respect for himself, allow this type
of dribble to pass unchallenged? Instead of printing such gibberish,
let's hear from Messr. Kouchner how it is that it took that ambulance 1
hour to get to the hospital. Let the Health Minister explain, in
detailed fashion, who was on that ambulance, what they did, how they did
it, why they stopped only yards from the hospital (supposedly to administer
a shot of adrenalin, denied by the hospital). Let's here in precise
detail why it took a good 45 minutes before the ambulance even left the
accident site. Let us hear in exhaustive detail exactly which medical
personnel were at the crash site, what is their backgrounds, experience,
what they did to the princess and how they did it. Let us have hard
facts, not this sickening bathos!]
At 2 p.m. about thirty people — including Dr. Bruno
Riou, who headed the emergency medical team that tried to
save Diana, Chief of Police Philippe Massoni, the heads of
protocol from the Elysée Palace and the British Embassy, as
well as several security chiefs and press attachés — met to
decide how the afternoon was to proceed. The most
pressing question: How would the coffin carrying the body
of the Princess of Wales leave the hospital? At first, it was
assumed that the casket would leave via the hospital’s
rooftop helipad. From there, it would be taken to
Villacoublay, a military airfield southwest of Paris, and
placed on a British military aircraft for the journey home.
But Charles himself, in constant touch from Scotland
via phone, insisted Diana leave by the main entrance. By
then a crowd of thousands had gathered in front of the
hospital. “People want to see her and they should,” said
Charles, much to the relief of police officials, who feared
any attempts to spirit her body away in secret might spark a
riot. “There is no reason to sneak out. We have to leave
normally.”
To Meresse, the hospital’s communications director,
the atmosphere was decidedly Shakespearean. “It reminded
me of Hamlet,” he said. “Inside the castle everything is
conspiratorial, very quiet, very hushed. Outside there is this
gathering mob.”
There was, it turned out, legitimate cause for concern.
Early news dispatches had already laid the blame for the
crash on the notorious Parisian paparazzi. Outside the angry
mob shouted ‘Bastards! Assassins! Murderers!’ at the pool
of six reporters and six photographers allowed inside. “I did
not want an ugly scene to greet Prince Charles when he
arrived,” said Meresse, who had spent the morning sprinting
between the emergency wing and his press office down the
street. “It would not have looked good for the hospital. It
would not have looked good for France.”
Tossing off his jacket, Meresse climbed over the police
barriers and waded into the anxious crowd, “I picked out
the ones that seemed to be ringleaders,” he said, “and told
them that Prince Charles was about to arrive and I didn’t
want to hear a word, not a murmur, nothing. To my total
astonishment, they agreed. No one wanted to do anything
that might upset the family.”
By 4:30 p.m., in strict accordance with protocol, a red
carpet had been rolled from the curb to Pitié-Salpêtrière’s
main entrance, flanked by officers of the French President’s
colorfully garbed Republican Guard. The rest of the hospital
was not so pristine. In the wake of a wave of bombings by
Algerian terrorists, trash receptacles throughout the hospital
had been sealed. To make matters worse, the maintenance
staff had not yet arrived to clean up the mess that had
accumulated over the weekend. As a result, the hallways
and stair landings were strewn with discarded plastic coffee
cups, candy wrappers, and cigarette butts. Members of the
nursing staff were dragooned into picking up brooms and
hastily tidying up before the arrival of His Royal Highness.
The British Royal Squadron BAe 146 carrying Charles
and Diana’s sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady
Jane Fellowes, touched down at Villacoublay at 5 p.m.
Thirty minutes later, their silver Jaguar limousine pulled up in
front of the entrance to the hospital’s Gaston Cordier wing.
Meresse’s admonition to the crowd had worked. “All you
could hear was the whisper of the luxury car’s tires,” he
said. “A vibrating silence.” The trio emerged from the car,
Charles wearing a double-breasted dark blue suit, Lady
Jane in a tan coat draped with a floral print scarf, and Lady
Sarah dressed all in black, her glasses hanging from a chain
around her neck. French President Chirac bent down and
took Charles’s hand as he offered words of condolence.
The Prince, smiling bravely, thanked the French President
and Madame Chirac in his perfect French, then placed his
right hand into his jacket pocket as he was led inside.
[Prince Charles may have had good reason to smile. Remember Mohommad Fayed's comment that ever since the princess died, notice how certain people seemed to be smiling a lot more nowadays? And I'm sure he had good reason to thank President Chirac too - for a job well done. How could he ask for more? The loose cannon permanentely disposed of, no Muslim step-father a hair's breath from the throne, millions saved in the divorce settlement. Who wouldn't be smiling like a Cheshire Cat under such circumstances?]
Chirac accompanied them to the second floor, but
stopped short of accompanying them to Diana’s body.
Instead, Chief Massoni, the British protocol chief, and
Beatrice Humbert escorted Charles and his former
sisters-in-law down the hall. As they reached the two
uniformed police officers guarding the room, Humbert
recalled, “the British protocol chief turned to me and said,
‘Madame, ici s’arrête mon rôle, c’est à vous d’introduire
son Altesse royale’ — ‘Madame, my role ends here. It is
up to you to introduce His Royal Highness.’”
Humbert was stunned; she had been told that Charles
and Diana’s sisters would enter the room alone. What shall
I say to him? she thought to herself. What will happen?
She forged ahead. “Your Highness,” she said in
French, “if you will, please follow me.” They went to the
door, and Charles entered first. Lady Jane and Lady Sarah
followed. “Prince Charles stopped, frozen before the
casket,” Humbert said. “Lady Jane burst into sobs.”
Even after hours of watching grief-stricken dignitaries
pay their respects, Humbert was astonished by Charles’s
reaction. As he looked for the first time at Diana’s lifeless
body lying in her coffin, a breeze from the air conditioner
lifting a lock of her hair, Charles’s head snapped back as if
hit by some unseen force. “The Prince of Wales recoiled,”
she said. “He drew back his head in one involuntary motion,
as though he had actually been stricken. As though he
simply couldn’t take it in. He couldn’t believe it. You could
feel his immense sorrow.”
[Yeah, sure. If you believe this, then
perhaps you are interested in some swamp land in the Florida everglades.
If Prince Charles really cared one iotta about his former wife's tragic
fate, then let him explain why he is letting Mohammad Fayed fight it all
alone as he seeks to uncover the truth. Let him explain why he has
yet to lift a finger, or utter a word, about the glaring inconsistencies
and unanwered questions surrounding the crash. Let him explain how
he can allow a slug like John Major protect the princess' name and estate.
Until Prince Charles takes definitive action to expose his former wife's
killers and bring them to justice, his shows of emotion should be viewed
as just that: show, fake, not to be believed.]