Word: ritz
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last week TREVOR REES-JONES, the bodyguard who was with PRINCESS DIANA and DODI FAYED, underwent questioning by investigating judge HERVE STEPHAN in a heavily guarded second-floor room at Pitie-Salpetriere hospital. Although he recalls the final moments before leaving the Ritz and getting into the car, Rees-Jones, 29, remembers nothing about the accident itself. He did tell the judge that driver HENRI PAUL seemed to be in a perfectly normal state before taking the wheel, though blood tests showed he was legally drunk. But when asked for details about the moments leading up to the accident itself...
...twice every three weeks or so for a drink or two." Another employee at the Hemingway agrees. "Occasionally he would have a special cocktail I prepared for him, and at hotel staff parties he would drink," he recalls. "But he was not a big boozer." In the private Ritz Club downstairs, an employee says, "everyone here knows what really happened, but we're afraid to talk." He adds, "Monsieur Paul was not responsible. He just took orders...
...actually gave the orders remains a mystery--and on that could hinge liability on the part of the Ritz. Paul's immediate supervisor was away that night. But why bring in Paul to drive? "Because Dodi trusted him," explains a Ritz staff member. In fact Dodi had trusted him all summer, with Paul personally overseeing security for Dodi, Diana and her sons during their July vacation in St.-Tropez. Ritz staff members suggest it was Paul who persuaded Dodi to let him drive and do what he thought he did best: shield the couple from the paparazzi...
THOMAS SANCTON, our Paris bureau chief, has been piecing together the whereabouts of Henri Paul, the Ritz Hotel deputy security chief, in the hours before Paul took the wheel of the car in which he, Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were killed. Sancton and his staff interviewed dozens of people, from Paul's tennis partner to bartenders to reluctant employees at the Ritz. This week, teaming up with the CNN/TIME Impact show, which airs Sunday at 9 p.m. E.T., Sancton spoke with an eyewitness who comforted injured bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones and made the first emergency call to police. Says...
MOHAMMED AL FAYED Paparazzi no longer prime suspects. Watch for the Ritz to buy Breathalyzers...