Posted Sunday, January 11, 2004; 15.48GMT
Coroners are sober folks, representatives of one of the oldest and most independent arms of the arcane English judicial system. They usually work in dusty rooms at the back of courthouses, establishing the cause of unexpected deaths. Few ever find themselves in the glare of the world's TV cameras. But Burgess might as well get used to it. A gray-haired, bespectacled lawyer, he is a pivotal figure in the latest chapter of the Diana saga. Not only is he Britain's royal coroner, in which capacity he is looking into Diana's death, but he is also coroner for the county of Surrey, where Dodi is buried, and is thus responsible for finding out his cause of death as well. (The conspiracy theorists may decide that this can't be mere coincidence.) The two inquests were opened separately Tuesday, but may eventually be held jointly since the two people died in the same crash.
As the reporters track Burgess's progress, they will inevitably find themselves jostling for space with a hardy band of Diana devotees — webmasters and hobbyists who incubate and nurture all manner of stories about the "truth" behind her death. Burgess must know that no matter what he finally concludes, they will never believe anything but that she was murdered. After all, they remain unmoved by the French investigation, carried out over two years by 30 detectives, who interviewed 300 witnesses to produce a 6,000-page report. The verdict: it was an accident. Diana and Dodi were being driven too fast, into a tunnel with a curve and a difficult road camber, by a chauffeur, Paul, who was not used to driving the powerful Mercedes S-280 and who was incapacitated by alcohol and prescription drugs. Paul, the investigators concluded, lost control of the vehicle and three of the four people in the car died. The survivor, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, was the only one who had bothered to buckle up his seatbelt.
The sudden or violent death of any public icon is invariably attended by fanciful, often crackpot conjecture. That Diana, in death, should go the way of John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Martin Luther King Jr. was presaged by the worldwide spasm of grief in the week following the crash. The speculation began almost immediately: a website called the First Diana Conspiracy Site was up and running within 13 minutes of news of her death. Fingers were pointed at the Freemasons, the British government, the Vatican, the I.R.A., even the global-arms industry. One instant theory was that a paparazzo who had been chasing the Mercedes was actually in the employ of Britain's MI6, and had shot out the tires. Another suggested the lovers were alive and had been spirited away in a van.
The rumors took hold quickest in the Arab world. Within hours of the crash, Egyptian writer Mohammad Hassanein Haykal wrote for the mena news agency:
They have to investigate, because there was surely foul play
— SAYED RAGAB, Cairo bookstore worker
"A conspiracy-type question arises here was something arranged to kill the two most famous lovers of the closing years of the 20th century?" A day or two later, Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi weighed in during an official broadcast: "British and French secret services mounted and executed the assassination of the Princess of Wales and the Arab citizen who were planning to get married." Gaddafi didn't explain how he had come by this information, but a poll a couple of days later showed that 47% of Palestinians believed the crash had been arranged. Soon paperbacks with titles like Did Diana Die a Muslim? were on sale in Cairo. Another — Who Killed Diana? Order From the Palace — said she was killed because she "threatened to bring down the Crown."
Mohammed al Fayed waited several months before making his allegation to the Daily Mirror on Feb. 12, 1998. He was, he said, "99.9% certain it was no accident. That car did not accidentally crash. There was a conspiracy." That August he offered a reward of up to $20 million to anyone who could prove it. A year after the crash, a poll found that nearly a quarter of Britons believed there had been a conspiracy — a figure that has held to this day (a recent Sunday Express poll found 27% believed it, while a highly unscientific call-in poll netted a whopping 85%).
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