Diana letter: Charles was trying to kill me

The handwritten letter in which Princess Diana claimed that her husband was trying to kill her was shown in full for the first time yesterday at the High Court inquest into her death. Apparently written by the Princess in October 1996, 10 months after she officially separated from Charles, Diana suggested that her husband was "planning an accident in my car". She also claimed that Camilla Parker Bowles was just a "decoy" while Charles's real desire was to marry William and Harry's nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.

The jury has already heard that Diana told her solicitor Lord Mischcon that she feared both she and Camilla would be assassinated to allow the prince to marry the nanny.  The letter was sent to her butler Paul Burrell. He revealed its existence in a book in 2003 but the references to "my husband" and to Legge-Bourke were blacked out. "This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous," Diana wrote. "My husband is planning an accident in my car, brake failure or some serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy."
 
However, a friend of the Princess, Lucia Flecha da Lima, told the inquest that she believed Diana's former butler was "perfectly capable of imitating" Princess Diana's handwriting. She added: "I still don't believe in it. I still don't believe she was fearing for her life, especially from Prince Charles, the future king of your country." Charles and Diana finally divorced in July 1996. Tiggy Legge-Bourke, 42, is now called Alexandra Pettifer and runs a bed-and-breakfast business near Abergavenny, South Wales.
 
The inquest was also told yesterday that half-empty contraceptive packets were seen among the Princess's belongings in the weeks before she died. Deborah Gribble, the chief steward on the Fayed family's yacht the Jonikal, said yesterday that she saw the contraceptives while housekeeping on two of the three cruises the Princess took with boyfriend Dodi Fayed, who died alongside her in a Paris car crash 10 years ago. "They were clearly having a relationship and were on board as a couple," she said via video link from her home in New Zealand. ·