In his newly published memoirs Spare, Britain’s Prince Harry has described how he got his private secretary to obtain police files on the Paris auto crash that led to the death of his mother, Diana Spencer, and before her divorce, Diana, Princess of Wales.
In the book, which was published against the British monarchy’s desires, Prince Harry frequently criticises the media, which he accuses of harassing his mother until she passed away and of launching a smear campaign against his wife, Meghan Markle.
The youngest son of King Charles of Britain has since stopped being a working royal and moved his family to America.
Harry explained how he obtained the police records, stating, “He was to be our new private secretary: his name was Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton. However, I don’t recall Willy or I calling him anything other than JLP.
“We should’ve just called him Marko II. Or maybe Marko 2.0. He was meant to be Marko’s replacement, but also a more official, more detailed, more permanent version of our dear friend.”
He said all the things Marko had been doing informally, the minding and guiding and advising, JLP would now do formally, we were told.
“In fact, it was Marko who’d found JLP, and recommended him to Pa, and then trained him. So we already trusted the man, right from the start. He came with that all- important seal of approval. Marko said he was a good man.
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“Despite his spit and polish, however, his enameled exterior, JLP was a force, the product of Britain’s finest military training, which meant, among other things, that he didn’t deal in bullshit. He didn’t give it, didn’t take it, and everyone, far and wide, seemed to know.
“To me, JLP’s finest trait was his reverence for truth, his expertise in truth. He was the opposite of so many people in government and working in the Palace. So, not long after he started working for Willy and me, I asked him to get me some truth—in the form of the secret police files on Mummy’s crash.”
The private secretary, Harry said looked down, looked away. “Yes, he worked for Willy and me, but he cared about us too, and he cared about tradition, chain of command. My request seemed to jeopardize all three. He grimaced and furrowed his brow, an amorphous area, since JLP didn’t have a lot of hair.
‘Finally, he smoothed back the charcoal bristles remaining on each side and said that, were he to procure said files, it would be very upsetting for me. Very upsetting indeed, Harry. Yes. I know. Sort of the point. He nodded. Ah. Hmm. I see.’
A few days later, JLP, the private secretary brought Harry into a tiny office up a back staircase in St. James’s Palace and handed him a brown Do Not Bend envelope. He said he’d decided against showing me all the police files. He’d gone through and removed the more…’challenging’ ones. ‘For your sake.’
Harry wrote, ‘I was frustrated. But I didn’t argue. If JLP didn’t think I could handle them, then I probably couldn’t. I thanked him for protecting me. He said he’d leave me to it, then walked out.
‘I took several breaths, opened the file. Exterior photos. Outside the tunnel in which the crash occurred. Looking into the mouth of the tunnel. Interior photos. A few feet inside the tunnel. Deep interior photos. Well inside the tunnel. Looking down the tunnel, and out the other end.
‘Finally…close-ups of the smashed Mercedes, which was said to have entered the tunnel around midnight and never emerged in one piece. All seemed to be police photos. But then I realized that many, if not most, were from paps (paparazzies) and other photographers at the scene.
‘The Paris police had seized their cameras. Some photos were taken moments after the crash, some much later. Some showed police officers walking about, others showed onlookers milling and gawping. All gave a sense of chaos, a disgraceful carnival atmosphere.”
He continued, ‘Now came more detailed photos, clearer, closer, inside the Mercedes.’
There was the lifeless body of Mummy’s friend, whom I now knew to be her boyfriend. There was her bodyguard, who’d survived the crash, though it left him with gruesome injuries.
‘And there was the driver, slumped over the wheel. He was blamed by many for the crash, because there was allegedly alcohol in his blood, and because he was dead and couldn’t answer. At last I came to the photos of Mummy.
‘There were lights around her, auras, almost halos. How strange. The color of the lights was the same color as her hair—golden. I didn’t know what the lights were, I couldn’t imagine, though I came up with all sorts of supernatural explanations.’
Harry wrote, As I realized their true origin, my stomach clenched. Flashes. They were flashes. And within some of the flashes were ghostly visages, and half visages, paps and reflected paps and refracted paps on all the smooth metal surfaces and glass windscreens.