A WITNESS at the post-mortem examination on Diana, Princess of Wales, has spoken out to deny that she was embalmed in France to hide evidence of a possible pregnancy.
Robert Thompson, the manager of the London mortuary where the examination took place, has broken his silence to try to end the conspiracy theories about an unborn child.
Mr Thompson, who was present at the opening of the coffin and throughout the post-mortem examination, said that the embalming in France had not been complete, covering only the top half of the Princess’s body, and had been done for cosmetic purposes.
This directly contradicts the assertion of Mohamed Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, who claims that the Princess was murdered on the orders of the Royal Family because she was expecting his son Dodi’s child. Mr Al Fayed has alleged that she was embalmed in France, before her body was flown back to RAF Northolt, to destroy the evidence.
The allegation is part of the continuing official investigation into the death of the Princess by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
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Investigators are now waiting for a senior judicial figure to be appointed to take over the inquest that will follow the report. Michael Burgess, the Royal Coroner, who had been due to preside, resigned last month citing pressure of work.
The post-mortem examination on the Princess was performed by Robert Chapman, the Home Office pathologist, with John Burton, the Royal Coroner, and Mr Thompson in attendance after the Princess had been flown from France to RAF Northolt.
In the programme Who Killed Diana?, to be broadcast on Sky One on Monday, Mr Thompson said: “A full embalming involves the perfusion of all the arteries of the body and the embalming fluid reaches all the organs and the tissues of the body. The fluid is injected by a gravity pump, once all the blood is removed.
“This fluid destroys all evidence of any kind of bacteria or viruses or germs that might have been in the body. In the case of the Princess of Wales, this full embalming did not take place.”
Only a “light” embalming of the upper body had taken place in France, he said. It had been done for cosmetic reasons so that the Princess’s head and upper body — visible to those paying their respects — would be temporarily maintained in the best possible condition.
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He also emphatically rejected that the Princess had been pregnant. “I saw no evidence of pregnancy exposed during the post-mortem procedure, and indeed the pathologist said that she was not pregnant,” he said.
“Drawing together what I heard and what I saw on that day in the post-mortem room — the pathologist said to me, ‘Well, she wasn’t pregnant.’ I saw no evidence of pregnancy within the body. My conclusion must be that she wasn’t pregnant.”
The Sky One documentary also features an interview with Frédéric Mailliez, the GP who arrived at the site of the Paris car crash within minutes, and was the first to attend the dying Princess. He denied the claim by Mr Al Fayed that there was a last message about her love for his son. Dr Mailliez said: “When I arrived she was not conscious. She was just moaning and moving her hands and her arms in every direction. That showed that she was in a little pain.
But she couldn’t speak words.” Dr Mailliez confirmed that in the half-hour or more he was at the scene, he never heard the Princess speak.
The Princess died in August 1997 after the chauffeur Henri Paul lost control of the Mercedes car in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris. The Princess and Dodi Fayed were killed along with M Paul. The only person to survive the accident was Trevor Rees-Jones, the bodyguard.
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Vic Calland, a crash investigator, told the programme that the Princess might have survived had the car struck the pillar in the underpass in a slightly different direction. Dr Calland said: “It was a matter of inches as to whether the car would actually glance off [the pillar] or be spun.
“If it had not actually hit the pillar at the angle that it did, it would probably have carried on down the tunnel having a chance to come to a halt and there probably wouldn’t have been a fatal accident at all.”
Who Killed Diana?, Sky One, Monday, August 21, at 9pm