French cop found Diana’s pearls ‘ripped from neck’
New details of crash impact revealed in TV documentary
A FRENCH detective investigating the crash that killed Princess Diana has told how she found her scattered pearls at the scene.
Martine Monteil, former head of the elite Brigade Criminelle police unit, has recalled the details of her inquiry in a documentary 25 years on.
The pearls had been ripped from Diana’s neck by the force of the highspeed crash in a tunnel in Paris on August 31, 1997.
Miss Monteil recalled how they found pieces from the wrecked car, evidence of braking and traces of paint on the vehicle in which Diana, 36, and her lover Dodi Fayed had been travelling. Driver Henri Paul was also killed.
‘I was obsessed with finding things because it’s important. I even found some tiny pearls – they belonged to the princess,’ she said.
The four-part Channel 4 documentary – Investigating Diana: Death In Paris – also raises fresh questions over why a note detailing the princess’s fears that she would be killed a car accident was kept locked in a safe by Scotland Yard for years. Diana had called a meeting with her personal lawyer Lord Mishcon in October 1995 and told him her concerns that a crash would be staged and made to look like an accident.
He made a contemporaneous note of the meeting, which he handed to the Met Police after the crash. It was only handed over to the inquest into Diana’s death in 2003 after her former butler Paul Burrell produced a similar note.
Barrister Michael Mansfield said the decision to sit on the so-called ‘Mishcon note’ ‘ demonstrated a serious reluctance to have this properly investigated from the beginning’.
Mr Mansfield, who represented Fayed’s father Mohamed Fayed, told the programme: ‘The note is important because it’s equivalent to somebody’s premonition.
‘If you were a police officer investigating it, you would want to hand the account over to the French. They didn’t do that. They stick it in the safe and they don’t reveal it. They sat on it for years to protect part of the establishment, namely the Royal Family.
‘What it demonstrates is serious reluctance to have this properly investigated from the beginning.’ Diana met with her lawyer at Kensington Palace. Mr Mansfield said: ‘It seems to me what she wanted to do was leave a marker down with somebody connected with the legal profession.’ Former Met chief Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, who headed Operation Paget – which investigated all 104 allegations and conspiracy theories about Diana’s death – said he was first made aware of the note’s existence when he became commissioner in 2000, taking over from Sir Paul Condon.
On the decision to put it in a safe and not reveal it, Lord Stevens added: ‘That was a decision made by Paul Condon – he discussed it with Lord Mishcon and he didn’t think there was anything in that.’
The documentary series, which began last night, also reveals that police contacted Prince Philip after former Harrods boss Mr Fayed made accusations that he was involved in Diana’s death.
Lord Stevens said: ‘The allegations about Prince Philip were not specific... We contacted him to say do you want to reply to anything that has been said? But he said he didn’t have anything to add.’ Oper
‘A serious reluctance’
‘Note detailing her fears locked away’
ation Paget ruled that Diana’s death was a ‘tragic accident’. Lord Stevens concluded there was ‘no evidence’ of a murder conspiracy or a cover-up by MI6.
The inquest into Diana’s death ruled in 2008 that she was ‘unlawfully killed’, partly because of the ‘gross negligence’ of the driver.
The documentary comes as new photos emerged of Diana’s former bodyguard Trevor Rees- Jones for the first time in five years.
Mr Rees- Jones, 54, was the sole survivor of the Paris crash. He suffered severe head and chest injuries, spending ten days in a coma.