Just weeks before she passed away, one of her former bodyguards alleges that Princess Diana was preparing to go to the United States without her boys.
In his autobiography, Protecting Diana: A Bodyguard’s Story, Lee Sansum describes how, in July 1997, while on vacation in St. Tropez with her boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed, the princess was about to tell the paparazzi about her plans to move to America in an effort to shield William and Harry from the press.
According to Sansum, who was in charge of keeping an eye on the royals throughout their vacation, the family was sleeping aboard tycoon Mohammed Al-opulent Fayed’s yacht while cameras mobbed the vessel every day.
Sansum says, “The reporters were the misery of her existence everywhere, not just at St. Tropez.” There is nothing I can do in the UK, she told me. No matter what I do, the newspapers there criticise me.
“I want to move to the US and live there so I can get away from it all,” she said after that. They will leave me alone because they like me, at least in America.”
Sansum recalled asking Diana whether her boys would be accompanying her at that point, to which she replied that she would never be able to remove them from their royal responsibilities.
Diana allegedly said, “I will probably only be able to visit them in the school vacations” if she relocated.
“You could see Diana was a fantastic mother, so devoted and attentive to her two sons, but it appeared as though she may have to leave them both behind in the UK to escape the press, who pursued her mercilessly every single day of her life,” says Sansum in his book.
Additionally, it was done to relieve them of the attention they received when she was with them.
Finally, Sansum writes, Diana declared she was going to notify the press she was leaving the UK permanently after a few days of the trip.
I was concerned because, according to Sansum, “if we thought the press pack outside was enormous now, just for her trip, it would definitely go up ten-fold if she gave them a story as big as this one.”
The area would be overrun with paparazzi eager to get images of the princess who was about to abandon everything behind and go to America.
The princess did go speak to the press that day, according to Sansum, but she ended up saying nothing regarding a future relocation to the US.
Diana was renowned for working with chosen reporters and photographers despite her concerns about the media, and she often gave them a heads-up on her location if she wanted to be shot.
In Sansum’s book, the former military contractor responds to allegations that Diana struggled with mental instability in the weeks before her death in August 1997 in a Paris vehicle accident that also claimed Dodi’s life.
In his letter, Sansum says, “I can tell you that I spent 10 days close to her, and she was one of the most balanced persons I have ever seen. I ought to know. As part of my employment, I’m taught to recognise when someone is out of balance.
He said: “Diana wasn’t unduly furious or out of control. You look for indicators that individuals give when they are under stress because it suggests they could be ready to do something.” She was typical and methodical.
Sansum also rejects the notion that her romance with Dodi Al-Fayed was only a summertime liaison to enrage her ex-boyfriend Dr. Hasnat Khan.
Sansum described the princess’s friendship and admiration for the movie producer as “very pleasant and sincere.” The security team members all believed that things would move quickly and into serious relationships.
He adds: “But her sons were frequently about and the media were usually there, so that naturally made them more careful and less demonstrative to one another. You wouldn’t see the kissing in public, so some people misunderstood it as if it wasn’t a passionate connection.
Sansum continued by stating that it was pure coincidence that he was not given the responsibility of watching after Diana and Dodi during their stay in Paris at the end of August 1997.
Instead, he claims, his close friend Trevor Rees-Jones was given the responsibility and suffered serious injuries in the automobile crash that claimed the lives of the driver, Henri Paul, Dodi, and Diana.
Paul had been rushing to get ahead of the paparazzi who were pursuing their car as they passed through the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.
In his book, Sansum called the princess “one of the loveliest individuals you could meet.”
He said that she was “beautiful, in fact, simply a regular lady who plainly loved her sons.”