The Murder of Princess Diana by Noel Botham

Diplomatic Protection Corps.
    A friend at the time said that Diana was stunned by the suddenness of the transfer. “He was about the only one she could talk to at that time. It was quite natural that they should become such close friends. This really hit her very badly. It was frightening for her to see the power other people had to so dramatically affect her life.”
    It was in 1985, I was told, that the British security services, in the shape of MI5 and Special Branch, embarked on the operation to bug all royal telephones and certain royal rooms. Ostensibly, it was said, the operation was launched purely to improve protection of the royals themselves; their personal conversations would not be stored or transcribed or passed to other intelligence organizations. In truth, after the Cross and Mannakee incidents, it was believed by the authorities that they could no longer rely on protection-squad officers to apprise them fully of what was happening with their charges. They were confident the new surveillance techniques would not intrude on the royals. Why should they? The royals were not told for many years that the new operation was even in place.
    Perhaps because of her feeling of isolation at that time, Diana already suspected she was being spied upon, and blamed her husband and faceless palace courtiers. But in May 1987 she received the devastating news that Barry Mannakee had been killed in a road accident.
    The news was broken to her by Prince Charles in a deliberately brutal and calculated way, designed to cause her the maximum of pain. A car was about to drop them on the airport tarmac for a royal flight to Cannes to attend the film festival. “Oh, by the way”, said Charles, “I got news from the protection unit yesterday that poor Barry Mannakee was killed. Some sort of motorcycle accident. Terrible shame, isn’t it?”
    As the car stopped, Diana burst into tears. Charles pushed her out. “Let’s go, darling,” he said sarcastically. “Your press awaits you!”
    Mannakee was a pillion passenger on a motorcycle being driven by a fellow police officer, Stephen Peat, which had collided with a car. Sergeant Mannakee died instantly. Peat suffered serious head injuries. Diana was convinced, from the moment she received the news, that Mannakee was the victim of an MI5 plot. “He knew too much about Charles and Camilla and what was going on,” she said. Even when she was told that a seventeen-year-old girl, Nicola Chopp, had been charged with driving without due care and attention, she refused to believe his death was the result of a simple accident.
    “They have all sorts of ways of arranging these things,” Diana later told her lover Major James Hewitt. She confided in Hewitt that Barry Mannakee had been killed because they had developed too close a relationship and because she had told him too much about Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla. “MI5 and the people at the palace killed him. I am certain they killed him. One day it will be me they come for.”
    “She maintained that belief the whole time I knew her,” revealed Hewitt. “She was also fearful for my safety, for at that time she wanted to leave Charles so we could marry. ‘You could be in danger, ’ she warned me, and hinted that someone might want to kill me too. We found two phone taps in Devon, where Diana and I stayed in my mother’s home, and I am sure they were aware of most of my conversations and meetings with the princess. I was often followed and sometimes we noticed an observer when we met.
    “I received two direct threats on my life—both from someone I knew. He said it was in the best interests of my health if I ended my relationship with Diana. Or I could meet the same end as Barry Mannakee. Warnings to back off also came from a member of the royal family and Diana’s private secretary, Patrick Jephson.”
    The strength of Diana’s feelings for Barry Mannakee can be judged by the annual pilgrimage she made to the