CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As a journalist, I had been investigating Diana’s story—in one way or another—for years. So much of what I had discovered would sync up perfectly with what Colin McLaren had discovered that had been overlooked.

So, we did what we had to do. We went back to Paris. We went back to confront the one man who had the answers. The one man who has never spoken publicly: Le Van Thanh. The French police had dismissed him as a player in the tragedy owing to an intact taillight (but if he could respray his car, he could surely replace a taillight). Operation Paget barely mentioned the Fiat, and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens claimed the driver would be impossible to track down. Yet that was precisely what we did.

Colin and I went to Paris to find answers to the one of the most elusive questions in modern-day history: why, how, and by whom Princess Diana was killed. We were supported by Aaron Tinney, a top-notch reporter from The National Enquirer who had been doggedly attempting to get answers to this elusive mystery for the previous two years and had broken ground in uncovering new information. We were also joined by local photojournalist Pierre Sue.

Together, we journeyed to where Le Van Thanh lived, about an hour outside of Paris.

By this point, we had no doubt whatsoever forensically that Princess Diana’s car was hit by another car, seconds—a millisecond or two—before it went out of control…or was caused to go out of control. The other car has been proven through paint sampling to be a Fiat Uno. A huge search for Fiat Unos all around Europe, particularly in and around Paris, was able to identify that the car in question was owned by Le Van Thanh—the French national of Vietnamese ethnicity. He and his family were living in Paris; he was a security guard working in Paris. His father was approached by the media back in 1997, and he admitted that his son came home that night panicking and decided to change the color of his car from white to red.

The painting was done sloppily and hastily. What happened for Le Van Thanh to cause him to do such a shoddy job on his little Fiat Uno, and to do it immediately after the night Diana was killed?

In the twenty-two years since Diana’s death, no private investigator or journalist in the world had spoken to Le Van Thanh—except for Colin, albeit not on tape.

Colin had forced a conversation with him in the driveway of his home. We were going back to that driveway now—the same home Colin had previously visited. Was there a reason for his reticence, other than not wanting to be known to history? Was he as innocent to the whole thing as Princess Diana herself was? She was just driving along in a car; her car of course was in the hands of professionals who had made all the errors.

Colin heartily agreed with me that this trip to see Le Van Thanh needed to be made.

What has been initially frustrating to McLaren is the comparatively quick and cursory way the scene of the accident was cleaned up. Then they swept up and hosed down the crime scene and opened it back up to traffic within four hours. None of this made any sense according to crime-scene principles and procedures.

When Colin first analyzed the crime scene, he cast his net much wider to include a large part of the approach road. The Alma underpass is a dangerous construction. Just before the tunnel, an on-ramp merges from the right. Then the road drops sharply down a hill that veers 15 degrees to the left. The French police focused their investigation on a 60-yard section of the road inside the tunnel.

Colin’s work paid off. He found new compelling evidence the police had missed in their hurry to reopen the tunnel. When Colin tried to share his findings with the French police, they were unreceptive. Now, he shares them with us.

The dominant theory at the time—the one upon which the French police operated—is that the paparazzi harassed the Mercedes all the way to the Alma tunnel, three-quarters of a mile away. That their camera flashes blinded the driver and made him crash.

Witnesses said they saw motorbikes pursuing the Mercedes on the chase. And yet when the police arrested the paparazzi after the crash, they found no photographs of the speeding Mercedes in their cameras. How is that possible?

“On the roadway, I found two parallel skid marks, just over seven meters long,” Colin mused to me. “They looked very fresh and, of course, my first question was were they from a Mercedes-Benz? So, I measured them. I photographed them. And then I looked for somebody that could help me.”

To find out how the paparazzi actually behaved, Colin next tracked down the first police officer to arrive at the crash site.

He found that there were perhaps ten photographers who arrived shortly after the crash. There is no evidence that they got in the way of the EMTs, and no evidence they caused the crash.

This then points Colin to consider the lone motorcyclist with the flash…and the white Fiat.

Colin knows that the Mercedes outran the paparazzi long before it reached the Alma underpass. Yet just outside the tunnel it is forced to brake hard. But none of the investigations so far have explained why. His review of witness statements taken during the French investigation shows him that one saw what made the Mercedes brake so suddenly.

As Colin shared with me, “What’s interesting about [the witness observations] is that they hear the screeching of tires before the Mercedes enters the tunnel. That must be the braking that certain witnesses talked about in this area. And also it must be related to the seven-yard-long skid marks that I found. None of these witnesses saw what made the Mercedes brake so suddenly or what made it crash. None of them saw a small white car entering the tunnel, though two people did see it racing out of the underpass just after the crash.”

The skid marks now look very sinister. Colin reviewed statements from witnesses who say they saw things in the tunnel that could be seen as a deliberate attack. Another witness in a vehicle some way behind the Mercedes sees something very similar.

This other witness found by Colin, who wishes to remain anonymous, told him, “There was an intense flash of light followed by something hitting something, a bang. And then screeching.”

Colin does not believe that the car carrying Diana had had its brakes tampered with. He believes they were depressed on purpose by the driver.

A motorcycle was in proximity, and there was a flash.

Does this finally explain the mysterious skid marks at the top of the hill?

Colin thinks it does, telling me, “I believe the Mercedes and the Fiat collided 60 yards before the tunnel—where I found the skid marks. From here, using the forensic principle that every contact leaves its trace, I’ve plotted step-by-step what happened to the car that was carrying Diana.”

Colin has worked out what the Mercedes did in those missing seconds between leaving the paparazzi behind and its fatal end in the Alma tunnel. But what made Henri Paul lose control of the car outside the tunnel?

A light vehicle like the Fiat Uno. This is where the elusive white car enters the frame once more. From the on-ramp on the right. Diana’s driver Henri Paul slams on the brakes. But at over 100 mph after seven yards, the ABS system unlocks them. He tries to avoid the Fiat but clips its rear left taillight and scrapes along its side.

Paul misses the bend in the road and rockets straight ahead. Directly in front of him is a wall. What happens next is incredible. Traveling at 104 mph, the car went over the ridge of the hill. Even if it is airborne for a second, at that speed, that car will cover over seventy feet. And the wall is closer than that. At the bottom on the road surface, Colin finds east-west gouges and also scallop marks, semicircular marks, indicating a wheel rim had hit it. This right-end tire, it was the only tire that had a tear or a cut in it, probably three or four inches long.

The Mercedes hits the thirteenth pillar, then ricochets across the road and slams into the tunnel wall where it comes to rest facing the way it came. The motorcycle disappears. Likewise, the white Fiat Uno disappears from the tunnel, leaving a host of unanswered questions and prompting a massive search for it.

Then, something very telling happens. After eliminating Le Van Thanh, the French authorities stop searching for the car and its driver. And no reason is given.

Initially, Colin wondered whether the reason they stopped searching is because they found the white Fiat they were looking for. This, however, has been revealed not to be the case. But if this is the situation, then why is the Fiat quickly eliminated from the investigation?

This now becomes the toughest question of all. More suddenly than seemed possible, we were ready for our confrontation in Van Tranh.

***

DETECTIVE’S NOTEBOOK.

DATELINE: 2019. Revisiting the Crime Scene

It would be almost four years before I returned to the scene of the crime, or, to be more correct, the Alma tunnel. Despite the time lag, I still thought of the sad motorcar accident often, and all its twists and turns. Even though I obsessed over it at times, my biggest problem was that I held no official office, I had no authority to investigate the incident or demand documents or facts. I had long been an ex-cop, having resigned from my own police department, and was now busy making documentaries in the field of true crime and cold cases. My current work commitments saw me head back to Paris again in June 2019. A media executive in America, Dylan Howard, had read my books and was highly complementary on my thoroughness, my eye for investigative detail. He was picking his own way through the death of Princess Diana, and I was impressed with his investigative know-how and desire to cast aside the crap and find the truth to one of the world’s great mysteries. He was also producing a podcast on the death of Princess Diana and asked if I could play a role. He got me at “play a role.” I was on an aircraft in double-quick time. Any reason to have another dip at trying to unravel this enigma of a puzzle. And, besides, gumshoeing Paris with Dylan Howard seemed like an earnest thing to do!

Upon arriving in Paris, Dylan and I were introduced to our fixer, which is the name of a production assistant that runs around attending to our needs, like finding equipment, chasing down a person that might help us, or driving us to a location. We were blessed with a fixer who was born in and lived in Paris: Pierre.

Not only did he know Paris like the back of his hand, but we would also learn that he was once a fast-moving paparazzi photographer. More so, he was one of the paps that lay in wait, out front of the Ritz Hotel, trying to second-guess what time Princess Diana and Dodi were going to leave the Ritz, and by what route. Pierre had an added bonus to his background: he was part Vietnamese, by ancestry. Although he had never been to Vietnam, his ethnicity niggled away at me, as one of the things Dylan and I wanted to do was try and force another chat with the part-Vietnamese Le Van Thanh.

I would learn that Pierre was part of the chase to follow Princess Diana once she left the Ritz. Trouble was he fell for the two-card trick and followed the decoy car from the hotel that took he and his paps colleague (we’ll call Alain) to Dodi’s plush apartment at the high end of the Champ Elyssa, just near the Arc de Triomphe. Most security details run decoys, to throw the paps off their scent, and this time half of the paps fell for the trick. As we know, the other half chased the Mercedes from the back door of the Ritz and along the Cours Albert to the tunnel, and the rest is history.

But, with Pierre and Alain, they were oblivious to the tunnel accident as they arrived at Dodi’s apartment and tried to work out what had happened. Then, as they milled around, out the front of the apartment building, they noticed the building security guards were acting oddly, and taking urgent calls on their mobile phones. Pierre had the cunning to get in close to them and hear what was being discussed. He heard that there had been an accident in the Alma tunnel, a short distance away, but no one was sure if it involved Dodi and Princess Diana. The uncertainty grew as time ticked over, mainly because Dodi was supposed to arrive at his apartment with Princess Diana some thirty minutes earlier. Pierre had been a pap a long time and didn’t hold much store for coincidences. A missing princess and an accident nearby? The pap answer was clear. He grabbed hold of Alain and they jumped back onto their motorcycle and headed toward the Alma tunnel, the supposed site of the supposed accident.

It would be forty minutes since the accident that Pierre and his colleague parked their motorcycle at the crash scene and observed hell breaking loose in the world of billionaires and royalty.

The approach road was a sea of confused people and emergency workers trying to act unconfused. Pierre instantly set his eyes on the photographic potential and with camera in hand ran down the approach road and to the tunnel entrance, in search of a front-page picture. What he saw would be indelibly etched into his mind: the mangled Mercedes, twisted beyond recognition and swarming with medics as heat and stream seeped from a ruined engine. There was a lone uniform cop at the entrance of the tunnel who barred access to Pierre, who could just stand and watch the end result of mayhem. Against the far tunnel wall stood seven fellow paps, lined up in an unruly way, a cop was taking their details. Within minutes Pierre had decided to retire his camera for the night; it was obvious death had come to pay a visit to the paparazzi and Princess Diana show.

Little did Pierre register but Alain—who he last saw parking his motorcycle—was having more of an active time back at the approach road to the tunnel. As Pierre and Alain got off their motorbike, they observed a police speed camera on a tripod, mounted on the center median strip that divides the Cours Albert fast moving roadway with the slower-moving merge lane. The camera was pointing at the cars approaching the tunnel. Both paps recall the flash of the speed camera light, going off as cars approached and were (obviously) caught on film speeding. There were two uniform cops standing at the tripod as Pierre raced down to the tunnel. Alain, unsure what tragedy lay ahead, decided to take out his camera and photograph the two uniform cops at the speed camera. They appeared to be dismantling the tripod, however the pap saw the camera flash a couple more times. Then something extraordinary happened. Upon seeing Alain taking pictures, both uniform cops ran toward the innocent paparazzi, who reacted by fleeing. The fitter cops pounced upon him after a short chase. They then, without any justification, set about punching him around the face and head, as they grabbed at his camera and film bag. What happened next defies logic. The cops them confiscated the film footage and all Alain’s other film rolls and camera and told the photographer to move on, which he did, thankful to be free of the violence. At this point Pierre had returned to the area and saw his colleague’s bloodied face and clear signs of a beating and the cops walking away with the speed camera and tripod, as well as Alain’s films and camera. Alain was too fearful to challenge the cops. After all, it was Paris, and cops are not lightweights.

What fascinates with this vivid account is twofold. Firstly, in the days that followed the accident there were many conspiracy theorists stating international spies were responsible for the killing of Princess Diana. To prove their wild propositions they used an alleged—and innocuous—sighting of a strange and bright flash. Suggesting a flash was used to blind the eyes of the Henri Paul, the drunken driver of the Mercedes. Obviously, here was the flash. On a tripod, catching speeding motorists.

The second and more worrying aspect of the flash of light relates to speed. The speed the Mercedes was doing. My automotive engineer went to great lengths using his state-of-the-art computer equipment to “prove” the exact speed of the Mercedes, seconds before it smashed into the thirteenth pillar. Yet, it appears the French cops had their own proof of speed, on the camera film inside the speed camera, pointed at the Mercedes-Benz as it hurtled adown Cours Albert, heading for death. There could be no doubt, from what the paparazzi twins told me, that the speed camera was working and captured at least one or more images of a crazed Henri Paul racing along the roadway.

So, what happened to those images? And, why did the French cops want to dismantle the speed camera at that exact moment? But, more troublesome, why did they set upon Pierre’s colleague and brutally assault him before seizing all his pictures? Possibly pictures proving the existence of a working speed camera?

From an evidentiary point of view, the speed camera would corroborate Vincent Messina’s assessment of speed. And my own assessment was in line with Vincent’s. It would also make a mockery of the official police estimate that the Mercedes was traveling at a speed of only 60 mph, or 100 kph. (This speed estimate was given to the media some months after the accident.) All nonsense when you look at the damage suffered by the Mercedes. A car with such horrendous damage must have been traveling at a ridiculously fast speed. So why the absurdity of 100 kph? Especially when there was photographic evidence to the contrary.

The images in the speed camera never formed any part of the official investigation or outcome. Why not?

It was Pierre’s recollection of the speed camera calamity that made me wonder if some of the madcap conspiracy theorists were correct. Insofar as, did the French cops play some underhanded role in the causation of death of Princess Diana and her companions? While I am not a conspiracy theorist in any shape or form, I couldn’t help but wonder about the rationale of the two cops being caught dismantling an active speed camera at the scene where the world’s most popular woman had lost her life at the hands of a imbecilic Frenchman riddled with booze and drugs. As I have said before: odd place, Paris.

Another reason why the speed camera images would be telling, and help understand the accident, must be mentioned. As the speed camera undoubtedly took image(s) of the speeding Mercedes, it would have certainly taken many images of the speeding paparazzi on motorcycles as they too raced toward the tunnel in pursuit of their prey. They were only a short distance behind. It would have been interesting to view these paparazzi images and see how many motorcycles were in chase and what the paps were really up to.

Were they too close to the Mercedes?

Were they doing anything illegal?

Were there others—unknown motorcycles or cars—in the pack of paps chasing Princess Diana?

More importantly for me, was it possible to see the slow-moving white Fiat Uno approaching the Cours Albert merge lane. And, as police know, speed cameras are a great source for catching a good photograph of the driver of a car. We will never know!

My luck in catching Le Van Thanh for a chat was still working as Dylan and I headed out to his house in an outer suburb of Paris. He lived in the same big house, with the same long driveway, and as it turns out the same weeds and renovation materials that were scattered about. Clearly a busy man. After a touch of uncertainty, after pressing the same gate buzzer, Le Van drove up in a gorgeous late model Mercedes-Benz and parked on his driveway, gates now open.

As he stepped from his car I immediately noticed how much more muscular he had gotten since we talked four years earlier. He and I shook hands again as we recalled our past chat. Pierre acted as translator this time and set about asking Le Van if we could talk. Le Van was disinterested. But not disinterested enough to refrain from smiling constantly.

Dylan and I tried to win over Le Van by explaining that we were not filming and had no cameras, we just wanted to talk. Of course, I was wearing a microphone and Le Van looked at my microphone lead and smiled. By way of softening the scene, Pierre told Le Van that I had a personal viewpoint that he (Le Van) was innocent, another victim in the accident that claimed many lives. Le Van Thanh said, “You don’t listen…there’s nothing to worry about.” He seemed mighty confident. We persevered.

I asked him why he needed to paint his car from white to red so quickly, to which he replied, “The police report, they know why I repainted it.”

When asked for an actual reason all he would say was, “When you have no money and you have a damaged old car, what do you do?”

We knew that his bother helped him repaint the car, just after the Diana accident, so I figured that he was referring to his brother helping him, presumably at no cost. This dovetailed with what his father was reported to have stated, that Le Van came home and seemed worried and immediately set about repainting his car, from white to red.

I knew Le Van would only give me a few minutes, so I shifted the subject to his lack of assistance with the police from England, who opened their own task force inquiry and tried to get Le Van Thanh to assist. Le Van then dropped a bombshell, as he once did previously, talking to me, four years earlier. He said, “You know what the French police told me? Not the same law as in France, don’t go there…don’t go there [to England]. It’s the police, which means they don’t agree with each other.”

It was this comment that shone a light on Le Van Thanh. He seemed supremely confident as he told us that the French police instructed him to not assist the English police into their probe into the death of Princess Diana. The French police telling a crucial witness to not assist a lawfully constructed investigation? I was gobsmacked. And of course Le Van, in an act of déjà vu, from four years earlier, never bothered to claim his innocence in the car accident that killed Princess Diana. Not once did he say that we were barking up the wrong tree.

And with that the smiling Le Van Thanh pressed his remote-control button, and the big steel gates shut us out. Just as Le Van had shut out the world from any knowledge he might have had, to unravel one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century.

Within minutes Pierre was driving back to Paris with a silent Dylan and myself back into the city of lovers. Not a sound was heard for at least the first fifteen minutes as we rolled over the comments of Le Van Thanh, coupled with what happened to Alain at the speed camera, and the saga of the flashing light. Then, as if on que, Dylan and I turned to each other and said the exact same words: “What the fuck are the French trying to cover up?”

Collectively, we were at a loss. A loss as to why the French cops seemed to go all out to stymie any attempt to identify who was involved in an accident that killed Princess Diana and her companions.

Or was it no accident, after all?

I knew well the historical animosity that festered between the English and the French, pettiness that went back much further than the dark days of the swashbuckling battle of Waterloo. But, in modern times, when the world and billions of eyes were on Paris, with newshounds picking over every facet, would the French want to upend any genuine attempt to discover what happened in a dirty, poorly designed, underlit tunnel that ran along the Seine, past medieval footings, all the way out to the cheese country of Normandy?

Only the French would know. I don’t. Or at least I can’t prove it.

***

Here is the full transcript of the exchange between Le Van Than, Colin, and Dylan:

Translator: They’re doing a podcast and writing a book, actually, on the show, and they want to exonerate you.

Le Van Thanh: Oh no, that’s okay.

Translator: The idea was to exonerate you, and show that you are a victim in all this.

Le Van Thanh: But I am exonerated; I don’t care, to be honest.

Translator: They were just trying to exonerate you in this story. That you didn’t do anything; you’re really a victim (of circumstances).

Le Van Thanh: Yes, but I know I didn’t do anything. That’s why I don’t need to be exonerated, sir.

Translator: Well, let me explain—they came from far away; they took the plane from Australia to come here.

Le Van Thanh: Yes, I know. Yes, but they shouldn’t have bothered.

Translator: Couldn’t you just talk for a couple of minutes?

Le Van Thanh: No.

Translator: You have nothing to say?

Le Van Thanh: Yes, I have nothing to say.

Translator: No one is accusing you here, pay attention. That’s what I’m telling you.

Le Van Thanh: No, but you don’t listen. I know, there’s nothing to worry about.

Translator: It was just to exonerate you through new evidence. They just have a question or two to ask you. Don’t you want to answer them?

Le Van Thanh: No, no.

Translator: Definitely not?

Le Van Thanh: Definitely not.

Translator: He (Colin) says he has read all the police reports and that you are innocent.

Le Van Thanh: But people say otherwise, but that’s okay.

Translator: Yes, he talked to witnesses who you saw that night; and you are completely innocent, and you have nothing to worry about.

Le Van Thanh: I know that, sir. That’s why I don’t even need to talk to them, if they know. I know that. We’re all happy; we all know it. But then again, I don’t mind at all. People can think what they want.

Translator: Yes, no, that’s right. But…

Le Van Thanh: Because you know, you are Vietnamese, I am a Buddhist.

Translator: Yes, I know.

Le Van Thanh: That’s why I let them think what they want.

Translator: Oh, yes.

Le Van Thanh: They imagine everything they can imagine, it’s not my problem.

Translator: Okay. There’s just one thing on his mind, you’re completely innocent, but you repainted your car. That’s what he doesn’t understand. It’s the only thing.

Le Van Thanh: Yes, it is. That was mentioned in the newspaper and so on. You can read it everywhere.

Translator: But what was the story then?

Le Van Thanh: I said it from the beginning.

Translator: And why did you repaint it?

Le Van Thanh: I will not repeat the same thing.

Translator: If you have already said it, you can say it. I don’t know anything about it.

Le Van Thanh: Last time—the people they were filming me and everything—

Translator: But now you’re not being filmed, you can clearly see, you’re not being filmed.

Le Van Thanh: No, I don’t know. I’m not looking. Everyone knows that. The police report, they know why I repainted it.

Translator: But then, why was that, what was the reason? That’s right, actually what messed things up. I don’t know if…

Le Van Thanh: When you have no money and you have a damaged old car, what do you do?

Translator: Okay. He just has one last thing to say to you. He’s a really great cop. It’s not a…

Translator: No, there is no problem. There were lots of things that were said to me again.

Translator: We are friends, I would like to tell you something. Are you listening? The English police is coming to see you soon. Because he, there is an English policeman who told him, they want to question you. They will come to see you, because when they asked you to come you didn’t go.

Le Van Thanh: No, but I know they will come. Several times they told me they would come back. Because eventually they told me, “Yes, they will come.” They wanted me to go to England.

Translator: Yes, that’s right.

Le Van Thanh: You know what the French police told me?

Translator: No.

Le Van Thanh: “It’s not the same law as in France; don’t go there.”

Translator: Oh, it was the French cops who suggested that you shouldn’t go?

Le Van Thanh: Don’t go there. He told me: “Not the same law as in France, don’t go there…don’t go there (to England) it’s the police, which means they don’t agree with each other. It’s the police, which means they don’t agree with each other, in other words.”

Translator: They will come to you. He says, “If you need him, he can testify that you are innocent. Because he’s a former police officer with a proven track record.”

Le Van Thanh: Don’t worry, I will receive them well.

Translator: Are you going to receive them well? [laughs]

Le Van Thanh: Yes, I will receive them well.

Translator: Yes, yes, they are in France, of course. No, no, they can’t do anything anyway.

Le Van Thanh: I will tell them the same thing I told you.