Twenty-eight years after the screech of twisted metal silenced Princess Diana forever, a new forensic revelation has detonated like a landmine beneath the official narrative of her death.
A retired French police forensic specialist, speaking anonymously to Le Figaro and The Sunday Times under France’s whistleblower protections, has disclosed the existence of a tiny voice-recording pendant worn by Diana on the night of 30 August 1997. The device, a high-end Swiss “memory locket” gifted to her in April 1997 by a close friend (widely believed to be Rosa Monckton), was marketed as a discreet personal safety tool for high-profile women: a 9-carat gold heart containing a microchip capable of recording up to 90 seconds of audio when the clasp was pressed twice.
According to the specialist who examined it in 1998, the pendant’s internal chip, though cracked clean in half, retained a recoverable 11-second audio fragment. When reconstructed in a police lab in Toulouse, the file allegedly contained Diana’s unmistakable voice, breathless and urgent, saying:
“Henri… slow… please, Henri, slow.”
The words are followed by a sharp intake of breath, a muffled thud, and then nothing.
The pendant itself was recovered from the wreckage of the Mercedes S280, but, crucially, it does not appear in the official inventory submitted to the 2008 British inquest. The forensic officer claims the cracked chip was removed, analyzed, and then quietly returned to an unmarked evidence pouch that “disappeared” from the chain-of-custody log within 48 hours. No senior investigator from Operation Paget ever saw it. No British liaison officer ever requested it.
The specialist’s statement, delivered in a sworn affidavit filed yesterday with a Paris court, reads:
“The damage to the chip was not consistent with the crash dynamics alone. It appeared deliberately crushed by a flat, heavy object, possibly the heel of a shoe or a tool. The audio was clear enough that three of us heard it independently. We were told verbally, ‘This does not exist for the file.’ The order came from very high, very fast.”
The timing is incendiary.
The pendant revelation surfaces just ten days after Prince William unlocked Diana’s secret 1997 vault at Kensington Palace, a vault that contained her own handwritten note dated 12 July 1997:
“If anything happens to me in a car, make them listen to the locket. It will tell the truth.”
That note, photographed and leaked to the press last week, has already sent shockwaves through Buckingham Palace. Now, the alleged existence of the recording itself threatens to rewrite the final seconds of Diana’s life.
Key contradictions with the official version immediately arise:
Henri Paul, the acting security driver, was officially deemed to be traveling at 65–100 mph in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.
Diana is not recorded screaming, panicking, or bracing for impact, only a calm, almost maternal plea for the driver to slow down.
If the pendant was recording, it implies Diana had activated it before the crash, suggesting she felt unsafe prior to entering the tunnel, corroborating her repeated private fears of being “got rid of in a car.”
Within hours of the Le Figaro report, #HenriSlow and #TheLocket trended worldwide, amassing 8.7 million posts. On X, users overlaid the alleged transcript onto slowed-down CCTV footage of the Mercedes exiting the Ritz, the pendant clearly visible at Diana’s throat, glinting under the hotel lights.
Royal reaction has been glacial. Kensington Palace issued a terse statement: “We are aware of reports concerning an item of jewellery. Out of respect for the Princess and her sons, we will not comment on unverified claims.”
Behind the scenes, sources say William has demanded the pendant itself, or whatever remains of it, be located and subjected to independent forensic testing in the UK. French authorities have confirmed that certain sealed boxes from the 1997 investigation remain in judicial storage, but “access requires authorisation from multiple ministries.”
Harry, in California, posted a single black-and-white image to Instagram at 3:17 a.m. PST: the famous photograph of Diana wearing the pendant at a landmine field in Angola, captioned only with a broken-heart emoji and the date “30.08.97.” Within minutes it became the most-liked post in Instagram history.
Forensic linguists consulted by Sky News and the BBC cautiously note that the phrase “Henri… slow” is entirely consistent with Diana’s speech patterns and accent. One expert, Dr. Sophie Scott of UCL, said: “The stress placement and the soft ‘please’ are strikingly characteristic of how she spoke under pressure, listen to the 1995 Panorama interview for comparison.”
As Paris and London brace for what may be the final, unfiltered chapter of the Diana inquest, one chilling image endures: a mother in the back of a speeding car, pressing a tiny golden heart to her throat, trying one last time to protect herself and, by extension, the two boys she would never see again.
The pendant has not been seen publicly since the night she died.
Somewhere, cracked in half, it may still be waiting to speak.
