Mohamed Al Fayed spent years insisting Princess Diana was carrying his son’s baby when she died, a claim that became central to an explosive royal conspiracy theory that nearly 30 years later is being dragged back into the spotlight.
Diana was 36 when she and Dodi Fayed were killed following a car crash inside Paris’ Pont de l’Alma tunnel on Aug. 31, 1997, along with driver Henri Paul.
In the years that followed, Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, reportedly made an extraordinary allegation about the couple’s final weeks together, claiming the Princess of Wales had been pregnant with his son’s child and that their deaths were not an accident.
The pregnancy claim was eventually scrutinized during the lengthy British inquest into Diana and Dodi’s deaths, where jurors heard evidence pointing strongly in the opposite direction.
Pathologist found no signs of pregnancy
Dr. Robert Chapman, the pathologist who carried out Diana’s postmortem, testified that he saw no physical signs of pregnancy in her womb or ovaries.
“No, I did not,” he said when asked whether he had noticed any indication she was pregnant, according to the Guardian.
But there was an important scientific caveat.
Chapman explained that signs of pregnancy would not necessarily have been visible during its earliest stages, particularly within the first few weeks after conception.
“If one is dealing with a pregnancy, the appearance will vary depending, of course, on the duration of that pregnancy, but an established pregnancy will show as a change in the size of the uterus, a change in the thickness of the lining and the presence of a gestation sac,” Chapman said during the inquest, which started in 2007.
He continued, “I would say that from day one to seven, one could not or would not see anything. From day seven to fourteen, one might see something, although it is rather unlikely. Thereafter, there is an increasing likelihood of being able to see things which would indicate pregnancy.”
That sliver of scientific uncertainty helped fuel the theory that she was carrying the younger sibling to Prince William and Harry, and now, almost three decades after Diana’s death, it is being examined all over again.
Diana’s final hours revisited
The pregnancy claim is among the theories revisited in Celebrity Crime Scene: Princess Diana, a new FOX special co-produced by TMZ that premiered Aug. 20.
Using virtual reconstruction technology, the program recreates the crash from different perspectives while examining questions that have surrounded Diana’s death for decades.
Among the most explosive allegations came directly from Dodi’s father, who died at 94 in 2023.
Al Fayed claimed that Lady Di and his son had told him they were planning to marry and were expecting a child. He also accused authorities of embalming Diana’s body in Paris to conceal evidence of the pregnancy.
But that particular allegation was challenged during the inquest by Chapman, who told jurors that embalming fluid would not have interfered with his ability to identify physical signs of pregnancy during his examination of Diana’s womb and ovaries.
Al Fayed’s claims, however, extended far beyond whether Diana was pregnant.
‘That car didn’t accidentally crash’
The former owner of Harrods alleged that British security services had orchestrated the couple’s deaths because of their relationship and plans for the future, eventually pointing the finger at MI6 and Prince Philip as part of a sprawling assassination conspiracy.
“I believe in my heart 99.9% that it was not an accident,” Al Fayed told the BBC in 1998. “That car didn’t accidentally crash. There was a conspiracy. I will not rest until I have established exactly what happened.”
Those accusations were examined extensively during the inquest, and the coroner ultimately found no evidence that Prince Philip, MI6 or another government agency had orchestrated Diana and Dodi’s deaths.
Contraceptives and conspiracies
While the assassination allegations expanded the theory far beyond Diana’s pregnancy, the question at the heart of Al Fayed’s original claim received its own extensive scrutiny.
The inquest heard that Diana had been taking contraceptive pills and had given no indication to her doctor, relatives, friends or associates that she believed she was pregnant.
Investigators also examined scientific evidence as part of Operation Paget, the British police inquiry established to investigate the conspiracy allegations surrounding Diana and Dodi’s deaths.
Blood recovered from the wrecked Mercedes was tested for human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), the hormone associated with pregnancy, but none was detected.
Taken together, the evidence pointed away from Al Fayed’s claim, although Lord Justice Scott Baker acknowledged there was one question science could not conclusively settle.
“It is likely that pregnancy is a matter that cannot be proved one way or the other in scientific terms in this case,” he told jurors.
That uncertainty, however, did not mean the evidence was evenly balanced.
‘She was not’ pregnant
By the time Baker summed up the case months later, his assessment was much clearer, telling the jury that “there was a great deal of evidence that she was not” pregnant.
The wider conspiracy theory fared no better, with the inquest finding no evidence to support allegations that Prince Philip or British intelligence had ordered Diana’s death, while earlier French and British investigations had also rejected claims of an assassination plot.
Yet Al Fayed’s pregnancy allegation has proved remarkably difficult to bury and nearly three decades after Diana’s death, that small gap in certainty is enough for the pregnancy theory to be pulled back into the spotlight once again.
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