The Daily Beast’s authoritative royal correspondent is making a bombshell declaration: He believes that Princess Diana was deliberately killed.
Days before the 28th anniversary of the death of Diana, Tom Sykes writes on his Substack, The Royalist, that he can no longer accept the official version of events that her death was an accident.
Sykes started covering the British royal family when Diana died and has been the Beast’s Royalist Correspondent since 2011. His brilliant reporting has resulted in scoop after scoop about the most studied family in the world.
His decision to break ranks on the cause of the most significant event in recent royal history will therefore cause shockwaves.
Sykes explains in his full essay, a sweeping 3,300 word summation of the unexplained questions and catalogue of errors which surround the tragedy, why he now believes that “a powerful group of insiders in the British security services” was behind the killing—and that it was conducted without the knowledge or consent of the royals themselves.
Sykes is challenging head-on the conventional wisdom that Diana died simply because her chauffeur, Henri Paul, was drunk and speeding when the Mercedes he was driving struck the 13th pillar of the tunnel shortly after midnight on August 31, 1997. Paul and Dodi Al-Fayed were killed instantly, and Diana was pronounced dead at 4 a.m. at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. Three separate investigations—one in France and two in the U.K.—concluded that there was no other cause for her death.
In his explosive new analysis, Sykes argues that too many anomalies remain for the accident story to be fully convincing.
He highlights toxicology tests showing that Henri Paul’s blood contained carbon monoxide levels so high that he would have been unable to walk, yet CCTV footage showed him steady and composed as he left the Ritz. He points to the unexplained embalming of Diana’s body within hours of her death, which destroyed the possibility of many further tests, and the fact that ten CCTV cameras along the car’s route were out of commission, pointing the wrong way, or not recording at the critical moment.
He also unpicks the mystery of the white Fiat Uno that collided with the Mercedes, later linked to photographer James Andanson, who was himself found dead in a burnt-out car in 2000 in what was officially ruled a suicide.
Sykes believes that a second vehicle in the tunnel was used to destabilize Diana’s driver and cause him to swerve off the road.
“I believe that the white Fiat Uno that clipped Diana’s car just before it entered the tunnel was driven by a security operative, and that the collision may have triggered the car’s airbags, obscuring the driver’s view for a crucial few seconds,” Sykes writes. “Even if the airbags didn’t go off prematurely…I suspect that the collision created a chaotic moment of panic that led to the car smashing into the 13th pillar.”
Sykes notes that Diana’s sons have themselves rejected the official explanations, with Prince Harry describing the inquest verdict as “a joke” in his memoir.
Sykes explains why he is not indulging wild conspiracy theories but confronting the extraordinary series of what are referred to in Britain as “cock-ups”—errors—that are not open to being explained away.
He writes: “There are great differences of opinion about who ordered the killing. Mohamed Fayed famously blamed Prince Philip, but I side with those who argue that the most credible suspect is a powerful group of insiders in the British security services, who may have disposed of Diana, without consulting or seeking approval from individual royals, believing that Diana was a grave threat to the monarchy and the wider establishment.
“Don’t forget, she said in her Panorama interview, that she didn’t believe Charles was fit to be king. Imagine if she were the one living in California and giving interviews to Oprah. Can anyone really imagine a Queen Camilla in such a scenario?”
Sykes told the Beast, “I have given many years of thought to the death of Diana. No event has shaken more people or shaped more profoundly the future of the British monarchy.
“I know many people will disagree with me about this, but they should read my full analysis. No organization is more secretive and controlling than the British monarchy. It is time for open discussion and debate—and for all the facts to finally be told.”
Read the full explosive essay and subscribe for more unmissable royal gossip, scoops and scandal, The Royalist on Substack
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