Why THIS man may hold key to last mystery of Princess Diana's death... but ...

Why THIS man may hold key to last mystery of Princess Diana's death... but ...
Why THIS man may hold key to last mystery of Princess Diana's death... but ...

Next week, ‘the most famous woman in the world’ would have turned 60. 

For a landmark series and podcast that re-examines Diana’s last days, the Mail has spoken to a host of crucial witnesses and members of her inner circle, many of whom have not spoken before. 

Yesterday, we told the story of the shattering aftermath of Diana’s car crash and funeral. Today, we piece together the investigation into the mystery Fiat Uno said to have collided with Diana’s Mercedes seconds before it met disaster...

For many, it is the ‘final piece in the jigsaw’ that is the story of Diana’s death. If so, an until-now confidential letter written in 2017 by the former head of Scotland Yard to a Parisian bodybuilder is the last serious attempt to put that piece in place.

‘Now that you too have become a parent . . . I hope that you might reconsider your previous position,’ asked Lord Stevens (whose words were translated from English into French and are paraphrased here) of the Frenchman.

‘For the sakes of Princes William and Harry, who were children when they suffered the loss of their mother . . . with all the mental anguish and other consequences that loss has entailed . . . can you not help me draw a line under this matter, once and for all?’

Resprayed: Le Van Thanh in September 1999 with his once white Fiat Uno and his dog Max

Resprayed: Le Van Thanh in September 1999 with his once white Fiat Uno and his dog Max

The recipient should be assured, his letter went on, that he was not considered in any way to blame for the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in the early hours of August 31, 1997. ‘It was not your fault,’ Stevens affirmed.

Diana died of injuries suffered when the Mercedes S280 limousine in which she was a rear-seat passenger struck the 13th pillar of the central reservation of the Pont de l’Alma underpass at an approximate speed of 65mph.

Henri Paul, acting head of security at the Ritz hotel, was at the wheel. He died at the scene. He would be vilified for his role in the tragedy — notably the manner of his driving and the amount of alcohol that he had consumed. Some, including Stevens, feel that Paul had been put in an invidious position by his employers.

But there was another car involved in those moments before the catastrophic impact. There was even another, albeit minor, collision, which probably precipitated the final chain of events.

But this second driver — perhaps the only independent witness to the very last moments of Diana’s journey — has never talked; or at least has never admitted being anywhere near the Alma tunnel that night, still less that he was at the wheel of a white Fiat Uno which the two-tonne Mercedes clipped before entering the underpass out of control and crashing.

We know the sequence of events because of the forensic evidence presented by debris left on the road and marks on the Mercedes. There are also compelling witness accounts of the Fiat emerging from the other end of the tunnel and driving erratically away.

Who, then, was the man seen at the Fiat’s wheel? Why was he motoring through central Paris at that time of night? And why did he not stop? Over the years, two names have been attached to the mystery driver’s identity.

One is that of James Andanson, a French freelance photographer and paparazzo who had followed Diana and Dodi’s yacht along the Mediterranean that fatal summer.

Andanson’s role in an alleged British Establishment plot to murder Diana warranted a whole 41-page chapter in the final report of Operation Paget, the three-year British investigation into such allegations, led by Lord Stevens.

The other name is that of Le Van Thanh, the French-born son of a Vietnamese immigrant, who was a 22-year-old security guard in Paris at the time of the crash. On the day that Diana died both Andanson and Van Thanh were owners of white Fiat Unos of the same vintage as the car which collided with her Mercedes. Almost a quarter of a century has passed. One of these ‘suspect’ drivers is now dead, in circumstances which only encouraged the conspiracy theorists.

The other is very much alive and, as we shall see, was tracked down by the Mail this week to his home on the north-western fringes of the French capital. We presented him with a number of key questions; another opportunity for that jigsaw to be made complete.

THE WITNESSES IN A ROLLS-ROYCE

At least seven named witnesses gave evidence that a small white car was perilously close to the Mercedes just before it crashed —or was spotted leaving the scene immediately afterwards.

The most persuasive were Georges and Sabine Dauzonne, a married couple returning home from a dinner out with friends in the 7th arrondissement. The Dauzonnes were in their Rolls-Royce and had joined the Seine embankment expressway where it becomes the Avenue de New York after the Alma underpass when they saw a white Fiat Uno being driven erratically out of the tunnel.

Monsieur Dauzonne, who was driving, noticed the Fiat zig-zagging from one lane to the other. It came so close to his Rolls that it almost touched the wing; so close indeed that he sounded his horn.

This caused the Fiat’s driver to slow down enough for Dauzonne to be able to overtake him.

The recollection of his wife was more detailed. Madame Dauzonne recalled: ‘As we got near the embankment we saw a white Fiat Uno just like my mother’s. [It] came towards our car because it was going along “crabwise”.

‘The driver was looking behind him in his two rear-view mirrors. He didn’t see us. The man overtook us . . . [he] nearly hit us at the front left, going to the right.

‘My husband tried to overtake him but the man swerved to the left again, as if he was sort of trying to stop us getting past and he nearly hit us again. The Fiat Uno was so close that I couldn’t see the number plate at that point. ‘My husband must have sounded the horn and overtook him on the left. He [the Fiat driver] was leaning so far to look behind him that I thought he must be waiting for someone a long way behind in the Alma tunnel.’

She described the driver thus: ‘[He] was European-looking, fair-skinned but a bit Mediterranean. I think his eyes must be dark, his hair was dark brown and short, he must be between 35 and 45.’

They also recalled the Fiat’s number plate. French plates carry a two-number code that indicates which administrative department the car was registered in. The couple said the Uno either bore a 78 — the department of Yvelines — or a 92, Hauts-de-Seine. Both lie in the west of Paris.

There was one other important detail. Both husband and wife saw a ‘large dog’ in the back of the Fiat. Madame Dauzonne said: ‘In the boot of the car, not on the back seat . . . there was a fairly big dog with a long nose. It might have been a German shepherd. I remember one colour detail, a muzzle going round its face but not down to its nose or just a bandana around its neck.’ Her husband described the dog as ‘an Alsatian or a black labrador’.

THE FORENSIC CLUES TO FINAL MOMENTS

In the aftermath of the crash, police accident investigators collected debris including the left-hand tail light unit from a late 1980s Fiat Uno. Traces of white paint were found on the bodywork of the wrecked Mercedes.

Analysis suggested this, too, had come from an Uno of the same era. Polymer similar to that used in the manufacture of Fiat bumpers was also discovered scuffed on the crash car. All factors suggested a glancing collision at speed.

The Paget team believed the Uno had turned on to the carriageway just before the Alma tunnel. It was probably ‘dawdling’ and the driver might not have seen the Mercedes before they came together.

PC Tony Read, the senior collision investigator in the Paget team, was later able to piece together those final seconds thanks to what was then ‘edge of science’ laser work by experts from the Transport Research Laboratory. This helped create a 3D reconstruction of the Mercedes’ journey to the underpass.

Read concluded that the point where Henri Paul first perceived the need to take the action which immediately preceded the loss of control, almost certainly to avoid a collision with the Fiat, took place where the carriageway was still at ground level, before it suddenly dipped at the tunnel entrance.

His report stated: ‘The driver of the Mercedes began to respond to the hazard of an obstruction at least 30 to 60 metres before entering the underpass, having identified that there was a problem probably around 60 to 105 metres from the entrance.

‘In other words, the chain of events that led to the fatal collision started some way back from the entrance to the underpass. By the time the Mercedes approached the 13th pillar, the result was inevitable i.e. that the Mercedes would collide with the pillar.

‘The motion of the car inside the underpass was as the result of the actions and reactions of the driver outside the underpass.’

THE PAPARAZZO AND A MYSTERIOUS DEATH

Jean-Paul ‘James’ Andanson spent most summers working as a paparazzo on the Cote d’Azur. He had been present briefly when Diana was in St Tropez in July 1997 and the following month was part of the paparazzi armada which followed her and Dodi aboard the Al Fayed superyacht Jonikal, to Portofino.

Andanson left the yacht on August 25 and was home three days later. He lived with his wife Elisabeth, children and golden retriever on a smallholding in Lignieres, 177 miles south of Paris. The family owned two cars at this time. One was a BMW — the other a Fiat Uno 60 Diesel, registration number 7704RC18.

The Fiat had been bought new in March 1988. He drove it for work for the next five years, covering more than 350,000kms. The original factory paintwork was a shade of white called Bianco 210/F. This was virtually indistinguishable from the shade of white — Bianco Corfu 224 — used on Uno production until September 1987.

In February 1998, it came to the notice of police that Andanson owned a white Fiat Uno, albeit one registered some distance from Paris. When interviewed he told

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