After 9 years, Diana's ghost is laid to rest

After score of conspiracy theories fore nearly10 years, the raging speculation over the real cause of Princess Diana’s death is finally being laid to rest with a French investigation and an official British report concluding it was an accident caused by drunk-driving.

DNA tests on the blood samples of the driver of Diana’s car prove he was drunk on the night of the fatal accident in a Paris underpass. The French authorities carried out the blood tests within the past year. They found the results similar to those of the original post-mortem conducted on Henri Paul, the driver, which showed he had three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood. The recent tests also established that the blood samples examined originally and later were conclusively those of Paul.

Till now, conspiracy theories have had a field day with the claims that Paul’s blood samples were swapped with those of someone else who was drunk. The French man was variously reported to be a teetotaler or said to have certainly not been drinking on the night Diana died. M15, M16 and the Jewish lobby have variously been blamed for Diana’s death by conspiracy theorists.

The French officials had taken a DNA profile from Paul’s blood sample and matched it to those of his parents, thus concluding the samples had not been switched.

The French conclusions about the real cause of the death of Diana, aged 36, at the height of her beauty and in the throes of a giddy romance with Dodi Al Fayed –are expected to chime with the downbeat conclusions of an official British report into the crash.

Diana’s Mercedes crashed in the Pont d’Alma tunnel in Paris on August 31, 1997, while the couple was being followed by paparazzi desperate to record their romance on film.