Security should have prevented the Princess Diana to get into the Mercedes on August 31, 1997, the day of the fatal accident in Paris. His faithful bodyguard Ken Wharfe he certainly would have done so, but he had not been in the service of the Princess of Wales for 4 years now. Talking about his death in a new documentary from the British broadcaster Channel 5 titled ‘Diana: The Princess and the Bodyguard’, he said: “I thought back to that moment when Diana abandoned her confidence because I knew deep in my heart that without it, she would ultimately die.”
When Princess Diana announced that she would retire from public life on December 3, 1993, during a speech at the Headway brain injury charity, her loyal bodyguard Ken Wharfe was not by her side. Just weeks earlier, the Royal Protection Officer had sparked a flurry of headlines after retiring from his role as Diana’s bodyguard after more than six years.
Now, Wharfe, 77, revealed he felt unable to protect the princess following her split from Prince Charlesthe previous year. And he claimed that his decision to abandon the bodyguards ultimately caused their deaths. Wharfe joined the royal family in 1986, to care for Princes William and Harry, then aged four and two respectively. Within a year, he was working as the princess’ bodyguard – her previous protection officer Graham Smith had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and Diana had appointed him to the ‘A team’.
On December 9, 1992, after the publication of Andrew Morton’s book ‘Diana: Her True Story’, Buckingham Palace announced that the couple was separating. “Only when I got back to Kensington Palace a few days later,” Wharfe says, “did she ask me, ‘Have you heard the news, Ken?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ I asked, ‘How do you feel?’. ‘Well, it’s over.’ He wanted to get out of that marriage.”
Over the next year, his relationship with the bodyguard became increasingly conflicted. “1993 became a very, very difficult time for Diana“Wharfe continues. “You know, he was actually thinking about what to do next: ‘When am I going to get divorced? What will I do when I get divorced?’ He had spoken many, many times about normality and I think he was looking for greater freedom. In March of that year, Wharfe accompanied Diana to one of her favorite ski resorts, Lech, Austria, but the princess was already pushing the limits. “It was early one morning – he says – around half past six, when I was woken up by my night security officer, who told me in a rather embarrassed tone that Diana had just come in, she was back at the hotel”.
“I asked him, ‘What do you mean, ‘just walk in’? Are you telling me you let her out?’ And he said, ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’ ‘Then how did she get out?’ He replied: ‘I don’t know.’ He just couldn’t understand how he had left the hotel. So, I went out to the front of his suite and onto the balcony. There had been heavy snow that night and I could see this footprint in the deep snow and then those footsteps on the balcony. To my amazement, I realized that she must have jumped down about 20 feet from the first-floor balcony. He could have died. I mean, I’m not making a small observation. I was really worried, really, about his state of mind in attempting or believing one can do such a thing.”
“I had to make sure that Diana was safe, that she was in the hotel. So I went and knocked on her door. And she was very, very happy, very cheerful. ‘Oh, hi Ken, come in’. I said, ‘Are you okay?’ And she said, ‘Yes. I just needed some air, Ken.’ So I said, ‘It’s a pretty stupid thing to jump off that balcony.’ He said: ‘I just decided I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to disturb your colleagues. I didn’t want to cause problems.’ I told her, ‘It could have been a real problem if she had committed suicide.’”
In his interview, Wharfe also cites another incident, in the same year, regarding the princess’s reckless behavior. Diana was returning to Kensington Palace in a car, with Wharfe sitting in the front passenger seat. “He said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do a bit of shopping in Kensington High Street. Can you park the car?’ And I said, ‘I don’t park here, there’s yellow lines. We can’t.’ let’s do it together.’ And she got very agitated. It was a little scream, as if to say, ‘Oh, okay then.’
“Luckily I knew where she was going, so I walked to Tower Records. I waited there for ten or fifteen minutes, and finally Diana came out. After that, we went to Kensington Palace, got to the main entrance and she came in. I thought this was not the way security should be handled, as the protected person was effectively running away from the people who were supposed to protect them. I went home that evening and thought: Maybe I’ve reached the point where I can no longer honestly vouch for his safety and protection. The following day, we continued our daily service and arrived at Kensington Palace in the late afternoon. I remember saying to her: ‘Before I go, ma’am, can I have a word with you?’”.
“And she said, ‘Yes, of course.’ I said, ‘Look, after what happened yesterday, I’m afraid this isn’t something I’m willing to accept. Because this, for me, it really jeopardizes your safety and for this reason I will leave the service‘. I think she was a little shocked, to be honest. I honestly don’t think he expected me to say something like that. I think he thought, well, let’s carry on like we’ve been doing, but I could see things were getting worse. And I wasn’t ready to accept something like that. It was a difficult decision. I was sorry because I liked the work I did with her, but I felt it was the right decisioneven if only to guarantee your safety. And I didn’t want to be part of a security team that would let her down.”
A few weeks after Wharfe resigned, Diana abandoned her security team. “I thought it was a fatal mistake,” the former bodyguard said. “Almost overnight Diana found herself without a protection officer.” Wharfe discovered that Diana had died in the early hours of 31 August 1997. “When I found out, I was completely stunned. After the incident in Paris, I analyzed many times the security deficiencies that occurred that night, which were numerous. It was very difficult for me to accept the failure of the security team. He died tragically when he really shouldn’t have. If Philip Dorneau, the driver, had left the hotel escorted by the police and the paparazzi had been identified before departure, Diana would not have died that night“.
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