Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Perhaps the most startling revelation in The Diana Investigations, a four-part Discovery+ docuseries chronicling the British and French inquiries into the death of Princess Diana, concerns the “Mishcon Note.”
On Oct. 30, 1995, Victor Mishcon, the personal legal representative to Princess Diana, attended a closed-door meeting with his most famous client and her personal secretary, Patrick Jephson. During the rendezvous, Diana told Mishcon that “reliable sources,” whom she would not disclose, had informed her that by April 1996, efforts would be made to either “get rid of her”—or injure her to the point where she would be deemed “unbalanced”—in a car accident via brake failure or other means. Mishcon prepared a contemporaneous note of the meeting.
Less than two years later, on Aug. 31, 1997, Diana—along with her partner Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul—would die in a car crash in Paris’ Pont de l’Alma tunnel. Paul, who was under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs, slammed their Mercedes into a pillar going 65 mph, more than twice the speed limit, while evading hordes of paparazzi trailing them on motorbikes. It wasn’t until Jan. 6, 2004, that an inquiry into Princess Diana’s death was launched by the British Metropolitan Police. Headed by then-Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens, it was named Operation Paget. Its findings, totaling 832 pages, were revealed in December 2006.