The man accused of attempting to kidnap Princess Anne is free—and working to clear his name.
Ian Ball was just 26 when he stalked the princess, ambushing her limousine on London’s Pall Mall and shooting four men who attempted to help. Anne’s response to Ball’s demand that she get out of the car made headlines around the world, with the Princess reportedly telling him, “Not bloody likely!”
After Anne and her lady-in-waiting exited from the other side of the vehicle, a passerby who happened to be a former boxer punched Ball and safely escorted Anne away from the scene. After fleeing from police, Ball was arrested.
Pleading guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping, Ball was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and was detained under the Mental Health Act, spending the next 45 years in mental hospitals before being released in 2019.
Having previously self-published a book in an attempt to clear his name, Ball, who is now 77, is continuing his crusade in an interview with the Daily Mail, telling the publication that the attempted kidnapping was a stunt.
“I’m an innocent, sane man because I had good reason to believe the gunpowder had been taken out of the bullets and another girl had been substituted for Princess Anne,” Ball told the Mail.
He believes he was wrongfully imprisoned by the “upper classes” and that the late Queen Elizabeth was the “ring-leader” of a campaign against him.
He accused the “upper classes” of keeping “an innocent, sane man in a criminal lunatic asylum because he is a ”very dangerous working-class dissenter and a grave threat to their luxurious way of living.‘“
He also argued that it would be a “waste of time” to apologize to the princess.
“She wasn’t bothered on the night,” he said. “I didn’t scare her. I was more scared than she was.”
Anne later told British television presenter Michael Parkinson in a 1983 interview, “It was all so infuriating; I kept saying I didn’t want to get out of the car, and I was not going to get out of the car.”
“I nearly lost my temper with him, but I knew that if I did, I should hit him and he would shoot me,” she added.
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