In October 1993, at one of the lowest points of her life, Princess Diana sat down and wrote a letter to her butler, Paul Burrell. She was separated from Prince Charles and felt watched, isolated and under pressure.
In the letter, she wrote that she believed she was in danger. She claimed that someone was planning an accident in her car, involving brake failure and serious head injury, so that the path would be clear for others.
For ten years, the letter remained private. Then, in October 2003, Burrell published it as part of his memoir, A Royal Duty, and in a British newspaper. The newspaper blacked out the name of the person Diana accused. Years later, at the official inquest, it was confirmed that she had named her husband.
The publication caused a sensation. Diana had died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, and now the world was reading her own words predicting an accident in a car. Conspiracy theories, already common, exploded.
Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, had long claimed that the couple had been murdered. The letter seemed, to many people, to support his claims. Pressure grew for a full investigation.
In January 2004, the head of the Metropolitan Police, Lord Stevens, launched Operation Paget. It was one of the most detailed investigations ever carried out by British police. Detectives examined the crash, the car, the driver and every major conspiracy claim. Prince Charles was interviewed as a witness.
In December 2006, the Operation Paget report was published. It ran to more than 800 pages. Its conclusion was clear: there was no evidence of a conspiracy to murder Diana. The crash was a tragic accident. The report found that the driver, Henri Paul, had been over the drink-drive limit and had been driving too fast.
The investigators also looked at Diana’s letter. They concluded that it reflected how she felt at a very difficult time in her life, but found no evidence to support the fears she described.
In 2008, the full inquest reached a similar conclusion. Its jury ruled that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed by the grossly negligent driving of Henri Paul and the photographers who followed them, and rejected the murder conspiracy theories.
The letter remains one of the most haunting documents Diana ever wrote. It shows how frightened and alone she felt in 1993, even though the investigations that followed found no evidence that her fears were real.