Ten months before her death, Princess Diana supposedly wrote a letter detailing her fears that there was a plot to kill her in a car crash; the letter managed to remain completely unnoticed or unmentioned by everybody (even through all the talk of inquiries and consopiracies) right up until now. It has suddenly been revealed by her butler, Paul Burrell, who just happens to be launching his book in a short while.
The whole thing reeks of bullshit.
How likely is it that this letter is genuine?
…as likely as I am to become the next Pope?
…as likely as Fox News is to start acting like a real news source?
…as likely as Fred Phelps is to come out of the closet?
…as likely as Robert Jordan’s next book is to be worth a damn?
If you’re interested, we’ve been discussing this over at the NADS board.
Personally I think she was mad as a teacake, and it was a coincidence.
To parahrase myself: if someone was plotting against her, 1. how did she know the method planned for her death, and 2. why wasn’t she wearing her seat belt?
I think it’s probably genuine as Burrel has no record of outright fabrication, as best I know.
I also think it’s highly likely Diana was paranoid (amongst much else) and that Burrell has another book coming out, possibly even before Christmas - she could well have written dozens of such letters; next Christmas expect the same re green Aliens.
Overall - and especially given the modern phenomenon of the public desire/capacity to transfer their own emotional ‘needs’/shortcomings onto celebrity - she proved to be the perfect person on whom parasites could build a posthumous career.
While it may be genuine, I have a very hard time crediting it as convincing evidence that there was a plot against her.
I’m prepared to listen to all manner of conspiracy theories, on a number of subjects, as long as there’s an underlying reason for the conspiracy. So far I’ve yet to hear a good convincing argument that any particular group would be better off with Diana dead.
That aside, I also have great difficulty believing that such a complicated assasination method would have been used. There’s an almost impressive number of ways that such a scheme could have gone wrong.
And, as jjimm mentioned, if you really were convinced that someone was trying to sabotage your car, wouldn’t you become very habitual about fastening your seat belt?
The whole thing is ridiculous. Why anyone gives a flying burrito fuck about that woman (or any royalty for that matter) is, and always has been, beyond me. The snippet that I heard on the radio said that she suspected that she was going to die in a car crash due to someone tampering with the brakes. She died because of an impaired driver driving too fast and losing control of the car. She didn’t “predict” jack shit.
On the Today program this morning, it was mentioned she’d at some point predicted some sort of helicopter accident - “one day I’ll go up in a helicopter and not come down” to paraphrase.
Prince Philip: Diana, meet your new helicopter pilot, Mike Smith
UK Dopers. Tell us the story of Mike Smith and the helicopter accident. Googling only produced the barest of reports. I gather it was quite and event way back in 1988.
She died August 31, 1997. She and Charles were divorced exactly a year earlier, in August 1996. So “10 months before her death” would have been two months AFTER her divorce, when Charles would have been free to marry for two months. So why would she be worried that someone was trying to kill her–two months AFTER her divorce–so Charles would be “free to marry”? He was already free, and indeed, in July 1996, IIRC, as soon as they announced the definite divorce date, there was already rampant speculation, not on whether he would marry Camilla, but on when.
The whole thing reeks of “book sales”, is what it reeks of.
Never stopped Henry VIII, did it? … There’s no technical objection to Charles marrying Camilla, except he has to find himself a priest who doesn’t object to re-marrying divorced people in church - which is not too much of a problem, given the variety of views on offer in the Church of England these days. The only real obstacle is public relations - making the marriage acceptable to the general public.
I’ll believe that it was true clarvoyance on her part if some one can amass together all of her letters and demonstrate to me that the only time she ever mentioned something like ‘some one’s trying to kill me’ it was via a car. From what I’ve seen, the woman tended (hmm, how to put this nicely) towards a tad bit of oh, say dramatazation??? and I suspect that there’s a whole lotta other letters where she opines that some one may be trying to poison her, the aforementioned helicopter etc.
that said, I also agree w/the poster who spoke of the amazing ability of parasites to still make a buck off her even tho’ she’s been dead for years.
I also feel quite sorry for her sons, having to deal w/this sort of shit.
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