Di's death ruled accident
LONDON — A British police inquiry released today concluded that the deaths of Princess Diana and her boyfriend in a 1997 Paris car crash were a "tragic accident" and that allegations of murder are unfounded.
"Our conclusion is that, on all the evidence available at this time, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. This was a tragic accident," said Lord John Stevens, former chief of the Metropolitan Police, who led the investigation of the deaths of Diana, 36, and Dodi Fayed, 42.
The couple was killed along with chauffeur Henri Paul when their Mercedes crashed in the Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, while being chased by media photographers. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was seriously injured.
Paul was drunk, with a blood-alcohol level twice the British legal limit, and driving at twice the local speed limit before the crash, Stevens said.
"We can say with certainty that the car hit the curb just before the 13th pillar of the central reservation in the Alma underpass, at a speed of 61 to 63 miles per hour," Stevens said. "Nothing in the very rapid sequence of events we have reconstructed supports the allegation of conspiracy to murder."
Fayed's father, Mohammed al Fayed, has alleged that the couple was killed as a result of a plot by the establishment, including British intelligence agencies and Prince Philip, her former father-in-law.
Stevens said that photographers had prompted Diana and Fayed to change travel plans before their death. Contradicting long-standing rumors, family and friends denied in interviews that Diana was about to marry Fayed, and Diana was not pregnant, Stevens said.
"From the evidence of her close friends and associates, she was not engaged and not about to get engaged," Stevens said.
Stevens said he had interviewed Prince Charles, Diana's former husband, and had communicated with Philip and her elder son, Prince William.
"I have seen nothing that would justify further inquiries with any member of the royal family," he said.
He said William had said that there had been no indication that Diana was about to get married again.
Rumors and conspiracy theories continue to swirl around Diana's death, despite a French judge's 1999 ruling that the crash was an accident.
A poll commissioned by the BBC, released earlier this month, found that 31 percent of the sample believed the deaths were not an accident, while 43 percent believed they were. The poll of 1,000 adults had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The British inquiry, which involved 15 police personnel and is estimated to have cost millions of dollars, used cutting-edge computer technology to reconstruct the crash scene in three dimensions, and examined the wrecked Mercedes in painstaking detail. Stevens looked at hundreds of witness statements and traveled to Paris to see the site of the crash.
