Paul Burrell still has doubts over Princess Diana’s tragic car crash and wonders why she made the fateful journey in Paris.
The former butler of the late Princess of Wales – who, along with her lover Dodi Fayed, died as a result of a smash in the French capital city in August 1997 – still questions why she would’ve wanted to travel across Paris that night, and doesn’t understand why she didn’t wear a seat belt.
He said: "It is strange to me to think that the princess would want to cross Paris at midnight knowing her so well, knowing she’d rather be tucked up in bed at eight o’clock at night, and not wanting to go out.
"If you look at the footage of her in the elevator, going down in the lift, that’s a woman who is saying, ‘I don’t really want to go out, why can’t we stay here?’
"I just don’t understand what that journey was about.
"She always wore a seatbelt. Always. Every time she left Kensington Palace I would lean over her and literally plug it in and say, ‘There you are.’ It was a routine we always went through. She always wore a seatbelt. Now, why didn’t she wear a seatbelt that night?"
Diana and Dodi took a car from Paris’ Ritz Hotel that fateful night but only made it just a few miles down the road, and Paul, 59, believes had he been in Paris with the princess she would never have stepped foot in the car that night.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror newspaper near the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, where Diana was killed, in his first visit to the area, he added: "Sitting here at the Ritz in Paris, I feel that I had I been here with her, she might have stayed in her suite and not gone out.
"When I saw her in Paris for the last time my over-riding thought was, ‘Why wasn’t I here?’
"I had a long conversation with her and I wasn’t very happy with her. I remember saying to her, ‘Why didn’t you take me with you? Why did you leave me behind’."
Diana’s driver Henri Paul – who had been drinking – also died in the crash, but her bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, who was the only one wearing a seatbelt, was the sole survivor.
Paul Burrell’s Princess Diana crash doubts
