A new FOX television special re-examines Princess Diana's 1997 fatal crash in Paris and arrives at a gut-punch conclusion: a single, ordinary decision, buckling a seat belt, likely would have kept the princess alive.
"Celebrity Crime Scene: Princess Diana," premiering August 20 at 8 p.m. on FOX, pairs investigative crime journalist Jakson Buhaj with British forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes and former U.S. Secret Service agent Rich Staropoli. The trio revisits evidence, scrutinizes conspiracy theories, and reconstructs the final minutes of Diana's life using modern recreation technology. Buhaj told Fox News Digital that the seat belt finding left the deepest mark on him after filming wrapped.
Diana, Princess of Wales, died on August 31, 1997, at age 36, after the Mercedes she was riding in slammed into the 13th concrete pillar of the Pont de l'Alma underpass in Paris shortly after midnight. Her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul also died. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, seated in the front passenger seat, survived with critical injuries. No one in the car was wearing a seat belt, a fact confirmed by the official British police inquiry that concluded in 2006.
The special zeros in on multiple failures that converged in a single tunnel. Paul, who was scheduled to be off duty that night, had a blood alcohol level more than three times the French legal limit, as People magazine reported. Surveillance video from earlier in the evening did not show obvious signs of intoxication, and several witnesses said they noticed nothing unusual about his behavior. But the toxicology results told a different story.
Buhaj did not hold back about the driver's role:
"There are many, many things that could have prevented the death of Princess Diana. I think getting into that car with Henri Paul was a death sentence for Princess Diana.... And had she not done that, she could still be with us today."
Paul taunted photographers before pulling away, telling them, "You won't catch up with us." He picked up speed but could not shake the pursuing paparazzi. The Mercedes struck the pillar, rebounded into the tunnel wall, and came to rest as a mangled wreck. Paul's body pressed against the horn. Fayed and Paul died at the scene.
Diana was found on the floor of the car, severely injured. Approximately one hour and 40 minutes passed between the crash and her arrival at the hospital, a gap shaped partly by the French emergency approach, which emphasized stabilizing critically injured patients at the scene before transport. The ambulance stopped en route when her blood pressure dropped. A team of about 20 doctors and nurses treated her. Surgeons discovered a ruptured pulmonary vein and massive internal bleeding. Her heart was restarted once, but she went into cardiac arrest again. Diana was pronounced dead at 4 a.m.
Buhaj pressed the seat belt point hard in his interview with Fox News Digital. He found it baffling that Rees-Jones, a professional bodyguard, did not insist Diana buckle up, especially given the speed at which the car was traveling.
"It's very odd that no one was wearing a seat belt. You would think that [Dodi Fayed's bodyguard] Trevor Rees-Jones, who was sitting in the front seat directly ahead of Diana... would caution her that she should definitely put a seat belt on, considering the car is driving way over the speed limit.... Yet no one thinks to do that."
His bottom line was blunt. Had everyone been belted in, Buhaj said, Paul and Fayed probably still would have died, but Diana most likely would have survived.
"And I think that's something that really stuck with me after we wrapped filming, that there is a whole other timeline out there where a seat belt could have saved Princess Diana."
That assessment lines up with what Lord Stevens said after the official British police inquiry wrapped in 2006. Stevens stated that Diana, Fayed, and Paul might not have died had they been wearing seat belts, as The Guardian reported at the time. The royal family's trajectory after Diana's death has been dissected for decades, but the seat belt detail remains one of the starkest what-ifs in the entire case.
The special also revisits Diana's own dark premonitions. In 1995, during the turbulent period surrounding her separation and divorce from then-Prince Charles, she wrote a handwritten note predicting she would die through "brake failure and serious head injury" so that Charles could marry the couple's sons' former nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke. False rumors circulated at the time that Charles and Legge-Bourke were having an affair.
Buhaj described Diana's state of mind in the years before the crash as deeply anxious. She believed she was being watched and that her phones could be tapped.
"People in her close circle described her as quite paranoid.... She is the most famous person on the planet.... So not only are billions of people across the world glued to the screen whenever she appears on it, but she's also constantly having to look over her shoulder out of fear."
Her brother, Earl Spencer, has worked to correct what he calls decades of "untruths" about Diana's life. The question of whether her fears were justified or overblown has never fully settled.
In 2005, Operation Paget investigators questioned then-Prince Charles about Diana's note. He told them he had not known about it: "I did not know anything about [the note] until it was published in the media." Charles said he did not understand why Diana had expressed those fears. Several people close to Diana told investigators she did not appear anxious about her safety in the weeks before the crash.
British investigators ultimately found no evidence that Diana's death was part of a deliberate plot. The Scott Baker Inquest reached its own conclusion: Diana and Fayed were unlawfully killed due to reckless driving by Paul and the pursuing paparazzi.
Buhaj told Fox News Digital that Diana's strained relationship with the entire royal family fed her paranoia, but he also made clear that her public image was something the institution could never replicate.
"[Princess Diana] had this way of effortlessly merging with the people, walking through that minefield in Angola, going and reaching out and touching children suffering from AIDS, which is something that the royal family would never even dream of doing. But it put her in a different light. It immortalized her in a way where she was this polarizing figure who was one of the people. And I don't think that will ever change."
Nearly three decades later, Diana's sons remain divided over how to honor her memory. A royal author has written that Prince William and Prince Harry's vow to honor Diana together is broken, a fracture that mirrors the broader dysfunction Diana herself navigated inside the monarchy.
Prince Harry has continued to invoke his mother's name in his own public life. He recently visited Diana's ancestral home at Althorp and has redirected Diana memorial fund money toward other charitable causes, decisions that have drawn their own scrutiny.
"Celebrity Crime Scene: Princess Diana" uses modern recreation technology to reconstruct the crash sequence, though the special's producers have not detailed the specific tools involved. Buhaj, Daynes, and Staropoli bring different professional lenses, journalism, forensic psychology, and executive protection, to a case that has generated conspiracy theories for nearly 30 years.
The special airs August 20 at 8 p.m. on FOX and will be available the following day for streaming on Hulu.
A drunk driver, a high-speed chase by photographers, and an unbuckled seat belt, three failures, all preventable, all converging in a single Paris tunnel. The last one may have been the simplest fix of all, and the hardest to accept.
