Live and Let Di

Was Princess Diana actually a highly successful international criminal, who died whilst attempting to escape from the French police? According to top German conspiracy theorist Hans Carvel the horrific car crash which left Diana, boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed and ‘chauffeur’ Henri Paul dead was no accident, but instead the tragic culmination of a high speed car chase across Paris which had followed Diana and Dodi’s daring robbery of the casino at the Ritz Hotel. “At least three times police cars had unsuccessfully tried to force their Mercedes off of the road by ramming it! Only a combination of top getaway driver Henri Paul’s skilful driving and Diana’s marksmanship kept the cops at bay,” claims Carvel. “As they entered that tunnel, Diana was leaning out of the rear passenger window firing a pump action shotgun at the pursuing squad cars – she managed to shoot out the radiator of one and the windshield of another. However, a lucky shot fired by an officer in a third car took out the Merc’s rear tyre – even a wheel man as good as Paul couldn’t hope to keep control of a car under those circumstances and it inevitably smashed into the tunnel wall!”

In a further shocking claim, Carvel asserts that Diana wasn’t killed outright by the crash, and was heard shouting ‘You’ll never take me alive, coppers!” from inside the wreckage. Consequently, dozens of heavily armed officers surrounded the mangled remains of the Mercedes and peppered it with bullets, until they were satisfied that no-one could be left alive inside it. “The Ritz casino robbery was the culmination of pan-European crime spree by the Spencer gang – they’d knocked over banks, restaurants and filling stations across the continent,” says Carvel. “Of course, the French authorities, in collusion with the British government, covered it up – imagine the scandal otherwise; English Princess and wealthy Egyptian businessman in crime spree and shoot-out with the police. However, I’ve seen the security video tape from the casino during the robbery, and it is definitely Diana – there’s no mistaking that little black Gucci mask she is wearing or the pearl handled Colt Python with inlaid diamonds on its barrel vent, she uses to menace the croupiers.” In the official version of events, the pursuing police cars were explained away as over-eager paparazzi and the muzzle-flashes from Diana’s shotgun as their camera flash bulbs.

Inevitably, sceptics have raised the question as to just why a couple as wealthy as Diana and Dodi would need to go on such a crime spree. “The fact is that Diana’s money was running out – Prince Charles had cut her off without a penny and she’d already been forced to hock her jewellery in a desperate attempt to finance the extravagant lifestyle she was used to. It was a simple choice for her – making porn movies or violent crime. In truth there was no choice really – she was past her prime for adult films; the looks were beginning to go and the breasts sagging,” explains Carvel. “As for Dodi, his father had cut him off in disgust at his association with a former associate of a bunch of degenerates like the British Royal Family. Not only that, but there’s something romantic about bank robbery – the couple pictured themselves as a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, but with better table manners.”

Carvel believes that the rapid police response to their last robbery was the result of a tip off from a close associate of the gang. “There is no doubt in my mind that they were betrayed – by the very person believed to have set the robbery up for them: pop singer Michael Jackson,” opines the conspiracy theorist. “Jackson was beginning to get into financial trouble himself around this time and considered crime as a way out. Obviously, he was too obviously recognisable to pull off jobs himself, so he got into the business of planning and setting them up for others. He’s considered something of a genius, a modern-day Moriarty even, amongst the criminal fraternity.” The pop superstar’s motivation for betraying Diana was straightforward – envy. “He coveted her nose, and had bribed a morgue attendant to steal it for him,” explains Carvel. “He even had a team of top cosmetic surgeons standing by to graft it onto his face! Unfortunately, her nose had been damaged by police gunfire and was unsalvageable.” One part of Diana’s anatomy did, however, go posthumously astray – her left leg. “Medics who attended the scene had to amputate it in order to get her out of the car,” Carvel claims. “Of course, this was hushed up as there were worries that it could promote ‘amputee chic’, triggering a spate of sympathetic amputations amongst grieving women around the world. The leg itself went missing en route to the hospital – apparently it has since turned up for sale on e-bay.”

Carvel believes that Diana and her gang were planning to follow up the Ritz job by returning to England for a series of even more daring robberies, possibly targeting her estranged in-laws, the Windsors. “According to my underworld sources they were plotting to hold up the Queen’s Royal coach during a state occasion, demanding, like a pair of modern-day highwaymen, she hand over her Crown Jewels, or her life,” he says. “There were apparently also plans afoot for them to enter Buckingham Palace disguised as tourists and rob the day’s takings from the till at gunpoint.”

However, rival conspiracy theorists remain sceptical. “It is utterly preposterous to suggest that member of the Royal Family would ever indulge in any crime as common as armed robbery! Everyone knows that Diana was ‘whacked’ by the Mafia at the instigation of the Queen Mother,” snorts Edwin Plover, editor of The British Conspiracy Gazette, derisorily. “She was so disgusted by the thought of Diana being porked by some filthy foreign Johnny, she used her influence with Frank Sinatra to have the Princess ‘offed’!” Plover points to the fact that Carvel has so far failed to produce the videotape from the Ritz robbery and claims that all of his Paris police eye witnesses have mysteriously disappeared or died, whereas he can muster at least three unnamed sources and a fuzzy photograph purporting to show the Queen Mother handing a suitcase full of cash to Frank Sinatra, to back up his theory.