Diana’s Therapist Said Bashir Is “FULLY Responsible” for Her Death — Not Partly, FULLY
Diana’s Therapist Said Bashir Is “FULLY Responsible” for Her Death — Not Partly, FULLY
November 5th, 1995. 23 million people watch Princess Diana say the words that would destroy her marriage. “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” The world thought they were witnessing Diana finally taking control of her story, speaking her truth, reclaiming her power. They had no idea they were watching the result of one of the most elaborate deceptions in journalism history.
And according to the woman who knew Diana better than almost anyone else, that deception didn’t just ruin Diana’s reputation. It didn’t just end her marriage. It killed her. August 31st, 1997. Paris. A Mercedes crashes in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. Princess Diana dies in the wreckage. The world mourned, blamed the paparazzi, blamed the drunk driver, blamed fate.
But one woman blamed someone else entirely. Simone Simmons, not a friend from Diana’s social circle, not a royal insider, not a courtier or staff member. Simmons was Diana’s spiritual healer. And for the last 5 years of Diana’s life, she was arguably the person Diana trusted most in the world. They spoke for hours every day, sometimes 8 hours on the phone.
They met constantly, drank chamomile tea. Diana told Simmons things she wouldn’t tell her own family, secrets about her lovers, her fears, her plans, everything. In 1997, just months before her death, Diana told Simmons something prophetic. “Simone, if anything happens to me, write a book and tell it like it is.” Something did happen, and 28 years later, Simmons finally told the full truth.
In November 2025, journalist Andy Webb published a book called Diana Rama. He spent years investigating the Panorama interview, talking to people who’d stayed silent for decades, uncovering documents that had been buried. And when Webb spoke to Simone Simmons, she said something so shocking, so unequivocal, that it demands we completely reconsider what really killed Princess Diana.
Quote, “I hold Martin Bashir fully responsible for Diana’s death, not partly responsible, fully responsible. If it wasn’t for him, she would still be alive.” Read that again. Fully responsible. Not partly, not contributing factor, not one piece of a larger puzzle. Fully responsible. The woman who spent more time with Diana than almost anyone else in those final years believes Martin Bashir killed her.
Not metaphorically, not indirectly. As she draws a direct line from the Panorama interview in November 1995 to the Paris tunnel in August 1997, and she’s not the only one. Prince William said the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to his mother’s fear, paranoia, and isolation before her death. Prince Harry said the ripple effect of exploitation and unethical practices ultimately took her life.
Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, says he draws a direct line between meeting Bashir on August 31st, 1995 and Diana’s death exactly 2 years later. But here’s what makes Simmons’ accusation different. She doesn’t just blame the institution. She doesn’t just blame the media culture. She names one man, Martin Bashir.
And she says he is fully responsible. If you want to know the truth about what really happened to Princess Diana, hit that subscribe button right now. Because what you’re about to hear will change everything you thought you knew about her death. This isn’t speculation. This isn’t conspiracy theory. This is documented fact from a formal government inquiry.
And it’s more disturbing than you can imagine. Let’s go back to where it all started. Because to understand why Simmons believes Bashir killed Diana, you need to understand exactly what Bashir did to get that interview. August 31st, 1995. Exactly 2 years to the day before Diana would die in Paris. A date so precise it seems impossible to be coincidence.
Martin Bashir, a relatively unknown BBC journalist, drove to Althorp, the Spencer family estate. He was there to meet Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer. What Bashir brought with him that day would set in motion a chain of events that would end in a tunnel in Paris. You see, he pulled out documents, bank statements, official-looking papers with account numbers, transaction details, everything that screamed authenticity.
They showed that Spencer’s own head of security was being paid thousands of pounds by intelligence services and tabloids. Paid to spy on Diana, to leak her secrets, to betray her. Spencer was horrified. If his own security couldn’t be trusted, who could? And if they were spying on him, what were they doing to Diana? There was just one problem with those bank statements.
Every single word was a lie. Bashir had commissioned a BBC graphic designer named Matt Wiessler to forge them, create fake documents that looked real enough to fool a member of the British aristocracy. And it worked. But here’s what makes this even more sinister. Matt Wiessler knew what he was doing was wrong.
And he knew these documents would be used to manipulate someone. And the guilt consumed him so completely that when Diana died 2 years later, he attended her funeral. He stood in the crowd watching her coffin pass, knowing that the fake documents he’d created had played a role in the chain of events that led to this moment.
But in August 1995, none of that had happened yet. Spencer believed the documents were real, and Bashir had only just begun. Over the following weeks, Bashir fed Spencer a series of increasingly disturbing allegations about the royal family. Each one more shocking than the last. Each one designed to make Diana feel like she was surrounded by enemies.
He said Prince Edward had AIDS, a complete fabrication. He claimed that Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the nanny to William and Harry, had been having an affair with Prince Charles, and that she’d gotten pregnant, and that she’d had an abortion of Charles’s baby. None of it was true. But Diana believed it so completely that she confronted Tiggy at a Christmas lunch, accused her directly.
The encounter was humiliating for everyone involved. Bashir told Diana that Prince William had been given a special watch. Not just any watch, a watch with a recording device hidden inside, a spy tool to monitor Diana’s conversations. Imagine that. Your own son given a device to spy on you by the very people who were supposed to protect you both. It was a lie.
But Diana didn’t know that, and the paranoia it created was very, very real. But perhaps the most devastating lie was the one about Patrick Jephson. Jephson was Diana’s private secretary, yeah, a man who genuinely cared about her safety, who wanted to protect her, who had the experience and connections to keep her secure as she navigated life outside the royal family.
Bashir convinced Diana that Jephson couldn’t be trusted, that he was compromised, that he was part of the machinery working against her. Diana pushed him away. And when she did, she lost one of the few people who actually could have kept her safe. Charles Spencer kept detailed notes from every meeting with Bashir, dates, times, direct quotes of the allegations Bashir made. He wrote it all down.
And then he put those notes in a drawer and didn’t talk about them for 25 years. Why? Because Diana asked him not to. Because she wanted the interview. Because she believed Bashir’s lies and thought she was finally going to expose the truth. But in 2020, it on the 25th anniversary of the Panorama interview, Spencer finally broke his silence.
He shared his notes with journalist Andy Webb and the Daily Mail. The revelations triggered something massive, something that the BBC had been desperate to avoid for decades, a formal government inquiry. But what that inquiry revealed was so damning, so shocking, that even people who defended Bashir for years couldn’t deny it anymore.
Stay with me because the evidence is about to get even more disturbing. The Dyson report, published May 20th, 2021. Lord Dyson, a retired senior judge, led the investigation. He had full access to BBC records, emails, internal documents, everything. He interviewed dozens of people, examined the evidence from every angle.
His conclusion was unambiguous. Quote, “Mr. The Bashir acted inappropriately and in serious breach of the BBC’s producer guidelines on straight dealing.” Translation, Bashir lied, repeatedly, systematically, deliberately. The report confirmed that Bashir commissioned those fake bank statements, that he showed them to Charles Spencer to gain his trust, that he used them as leverage to get an introduction to Diana. But it gets worse.
The report also revealed that the BBC knew about this. In 1996, just months after the interview aired, an internal investigation looked into Bashir’s conduct. They found evidence of the fake documents. They knew what he’d done, and they covered it up. The internal inquiry was led by Tony Hall, who would later become BBC Director General.
Hall concluded that the fake documents weren’t used to secure the interview. Case closed. Nothing to see here. Nice, except that conclusion was demonstrably false. The Dyson report proved it. The fake documents were absolutely central to getting the interview. Without them, Bashir never would have gained Spencer’s trust.
Without Spencer’s trust, he never would have met Diana. The BBC knew this in 1996, and they buried it. Why? Because the Panorama interview was a massive coup for the BBC. 23 million viewers in the UK alone. International coverage, awards, prestige. Admitting that it was obtained through fraud would have destroyed all of that. So, they protected Bashir.
They protected their reputation, and they left Diana exposed. Prince William’s response to the Dyson report was scathing. He said, and I’m quoting directly, “It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, her paranoia, and isolation that I remember from those final years with her.
” He continued, “But what saddens me most is that if the BBC had properly investigated the complaints and concerns first raised in 1995, my mother would have known that she had been deceived.” Think about that. If the BBC had done the right thing in 1996, Diana would have known the truth. She would have known that Bashir had lied to her.
That the paranoia he fed was based on fabrications. That the people she’d pushed away, like Patrick Jephson, were actually trying to help her. She would have known who to trust. And according to Charles Spencer, that knowledge might have saved her life. If you’re not subscribed yet, do it now. Hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications, because this story gets even more shocking.
We’re about to reveal exactly how Bashir’s deception led directly to Diana being in that car, in that tunnel, on that night. Don’t click away. Spencer says it explicitly. “If Diana had known she was deceived, quote, she could have restored her confidence in the right people around her, especially Patrick Jephson.
I think she’d have had a much more secure team around her as she progressed into that phase of her life.” Instead, the Panorama interview left her, in Spencer’s words, “totally exposed.” Exposed to what? That’s the question that haunts everyone who knew Diana. After the interview aired, the consequences were swift and severe.
The Queen wrote to both Charles and Diana urging them to divorce quickly. The fairytale was over. Make it official. Diana lost her HRH title, Her Royal Highness. It might seem like just a title, but it came with something much more important, protection. Royal protection officers are among the best-trained security professionals in the world.
They’re former military, intelligence-trained. They know how to assess threats, plan routes, manage situations where their principal is in danger. When Diana lost her HRH title, she lost access to that level of protection. She could have paid for private security, of course. She had money. But here’s the thing about Diana after the Panorama interview.
She didn’t trust the traditional security establishment anymore. Bashir had convinced her they were all compromised, all working against her. So, when she started dating Dodi Fayed in 1997, she accepted the security that his father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, provided. And that security was not up to royal standards.
Charles Spencer calls it, and I’m quoting him directly, “Al-Fayed’s Mickey Mouse outfit of protection and drivers.” Mickey Mouse. That’s what Diana’s brother calls the security team that was supposed to keep her safe on the night of August 30th, 1997. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because there’s something else you need to know about what happened between the Panorama interview and Diana’s death.
Something that proves she knew she was in danger. Days before the Panorama interview aired, Diana met with her lawyer, Lord Mishcon. This meeting is documented. It’s not speculation or rumor. It’s in the official record. Diana told Mishcon that she had fears about her safety, specific fears. She said she believed there was a plan, and I’m quoting from the Mishcon memo, “to arrange a car accident that would cause serious injury or death to her.
” Read that again. Diana told her lawyer, before the Panorama interview even aired, that she feared someone would stage a car accident to kill her. She asked Mishcon to write it down, to create an official record, just in case. The Mishcon memo exists. It’s real, and it’s one of the most chilling documents in the entire Diana saga, because less than 2 years later, Diana died in a car accident. Coincidence? Maybe.
But it’s the kind of coincidence that makes people like Simone Simmons draw direct lines from Bashir to that tunnel in Paris. Now, let’s be clear about something. Bashir did not cause the car crash. He wasn’t driving the Mercedes. He wasn’t chasing Diana through the streets of Paris. He didn’t make Henri Paul drink three times the legal limit before getting behind the wheel.
But that’s not what Simmons is arguing. She’s not talking about direct causation. She’s talking about a chain of events, decisions that led to other decisions, lies that destroyed trust, paranoia that made Diana push away the people who could have protected her. And at the beginning of that chain, she sees Martin Bashir.
Here’s how that chain worked. Step one. Bashir creates fake documents and spreads lies to gain Diana’s trust. Step two. Diana believes she’s surrounded by traitors and spies. She pushes away people like Patrick Jephson who actually want to protect her. Step three. Diana does the Panorama interview revealing intimate details of her marriage, her affairs, her struggles.
She thinks she’s taking control of her narrative. Step four. The interview triggers immediate consequences. The Queen demands a divorce. Diana loses her HRH title and the royal protection that comes with it. Step five. Without trust in traditional security, Diana accepts protection from Mohamed Al-Fayed when she starts dating his son, Dodi.
Step six. August 30th, 1997. Diana and Dodi are at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Paparazzi swarm outside. The Al-Fayed security team makes a decision. They’ll try to escape through the back, use a decoy car, lose the photographers. Step seven. Henri Paul gets behind the wheel. He’s the acting head of security at the Ritz. He’s also been drinking.
His blood alcohol level will later be measured at 1.75 g per liter. Three times the legal limit in France. Would royal protection officers have let him drive? No. Would they have even attempted the high-speed escape plan? Probably not. Royal protection doesn’t play games with the paparazzi. They plan routes in advance.
They maintain security protocols. They don’t improvise. But Diana didn’t have royal protection anymore. She had Al-Fayed’s team. Step eight. The Mercedes enters the Pont de l’Alma tunnel at high speed. Henri Paul loses control. The car crashes into a pillar. Dodi Fayed dies instantly. Henri Paul dies instantly.
Diana is pulled from the wreckage alive, but critically injured. She dies at 4:00 a.m. at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. That’s the chain of events, and every link in that chain traces back to one decision. Diana’s decision to do the Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. Except it wasn’t really her decision, was it? Because she made that choice based on lies, based on fabricated bank statements, based on false allegations about her friends and family, all based on manufactured paranoia about being watched and betrayed.
She thought she was speaking her truth. She was actually speaking lines in a script that Bashir had written for her with forged documents and psychological manipulation. Rosa Monckton, another close friend of Diana’s, put it this way in 2020. She wrote in the Daily Mail that Panorama, quote, “probably changed the course of history.
” Monckton argued that if Diana had retained her royal title and protection, she would have still been in the embrace of the royal family when in Paris on August 31st, 1997. Would that have saved her life? We can’t know for certain. But what we do know is this. Royal protection would never have let Henri Paul drive drunk.
Royal protection would never have attempted a high-speed escape through Paris streets at midnight. Royal protection would have had planned routes, backup vehicles, secure locations. Diana didn’t have any of that, because Bashir’s deception had severed her connection to the very people and institutions that could have kept her safe.
Now, Bashir has responded to these accusations multiple times, and it’s only fair to include his perspective. In a 2021 interview with The Sunday Times, he said, “I don’t feel I can be held responsible for many of the other things that were going on in her life and the complex issues surrounding those decisions.
” He argued that placing the tragedy of Diana’s death solely on his shoulders was unreasonable and unfair. He pointed out that Diana’s relationship with the royal family was already troubled, that her life was complicated, that many factors contributed to where she was and what she was doing in August 1997. He’s not entirely wrong about that.
Diana’s life was complicated. Her marriage to Charles had been troubled for years before Bashir came along. The media had been hounding her since she was 19 years old. She struggled with bulimia, with depression, with the crushing weight of being the most photographed woman in the world. Bashir didn’t create any of those problems, but here’s what he did do.
He destroyed her ability to distinguish between real threats and imaginary ones. He fed paranoia that made her push away genuine allies. He manipulated her into making decisions based on false information. And he did it all for a television interview. The Dyson report itself acknowledges this complexity. It concluded that yes, Bashir used deceitful tactics to get the interview, but it also noted that Diana, quote, “would probably have agreed to be interviewed by any experienced and reputable reporter in whom she had
confidence.” Diana wanted to tell her story. She was looking for an opportunity to speak publicly about her marriage, her struggles, her truth. But would she have said the same things to a different journalist? Would she have been as vulnerable, as raw, as unguarded if she hadn’t been primed by months of Bashir’s manipulation? We can’t know.
But what we do know is that the interview she gave to Bashir, based on the false reality he’d constructed for her, had consequences that reverberated all the way to that tunnel in Paris. Prince Harry understands this. In his statement after the Dyson report, he said, “The ripple effect of a culture of exploitation and unethical practices ultimately took her life.
” Ripple effect, that’s the key phrase, not direct causation. Ripple effect. One action creating waves that spread outward, touching everything, changing the course of events in ways that are impossible to predict, but undeniable once you trace them backward. Bashir threw a stone into the water in 1995. The ripples reached Paris in 1997.
And that brings us back to Simone Simmons, the spiritual healer who knew Diana’s deepest fears, who spoke with her for hours every day, who watched her spiral into paranoia and isolation after the Panorama interview. Simmons doesn’t deal in ripple effects or complex causation chains. She makes her position crystal clear.
Quote, “Without Martin Bashir, she would never have been in Paris with Dodi Fayed, and she would still be alive. Therefore, I hold Martin Bashir fully responsible for Diana’s death, not partly responsible, fully responsible.” It’s a stark statement, maybe too stark for some people to accept. Maybe the truth is more nuanced, more complicated, spread across multiple people and institutions and circumstances.
But when someone who spent the last five years of Diana’s life as her closest confidant makes that accusation, when someone who saw firsthand how the Panorama interview changed Diana says one man is fully responsible for her death, it’s worth taking seriously. It’s worth examining what we mean by responsibility.
Bashir didn’t kill Diana in the legal sense. He won’t ever be charged with murder. He didn’t plan her death. He probably never imagined that his deception would lead to a car crash in Paris. But responsibility isn’t just about legal culpability. It’s also about moral accountability, about understanding that our actions have consequences, that lies told to vulnerable people in positions of power can ripple outward in ways we can’t control.
Bashir lied to get a story. That lie destroyed Diana’s trust in the people who could protect her. That destroyed trust led to decisions that put her in a car with a drunk driver in a Paris tunnel. Is he fully responsible? That’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves. But what’s not debatable is this.
The BBC covered up his deception for 25 years. They knew what he’d done, and they protected him. They prioritized their reputation over Diana’s well-being. The BBC has since apologized. They paid damages to the people named in the fake bank statements. Matt Wiessler, the graphic designer who created the forgeries, received around 750,000 pounds in compensation.
Tiggy Legge-Bourke received substantial damages for the false claims made about her. In 2021, BBC Director-General Tim Davie issued a full and unconditional apology to Charles Spencer, Prince Charles, Prince William, and Prince Harry. But Simone Simmons wants more than apologies and compensation. She wants acknowledgement of the full cost, not just damaged reputations, not just hurt feelings, not just professional misconduct, a life, Diana’s life.
And she wants the world to know exactly who she holds accountable. The question that haunts everyone who studies this case is the simplest one. What if? What if the BBC had investigated the complaints in 1996? What if they’d told Diana the truth about Bashir’s deception? What if she’d known that the bank statements were fake, that the allegations about her friends were lies, that the paranoia about being watched was manufactured? What if she’d been able to restore her trust in Patrick Jephson and the other people who wanted to protect her?
What if she’d had proper royal protection on the night of August 30th, 1997? Would she have been in Paris at all? Would she have been dating Dodi Fayed? Would she have been in that car? We can’t know. But the fact that we have to ask the question tells you everything about how consequential Bashir’s deception was.
Prince William said it himself. “If the BBC had properly investigated the complaints and concerns first raised in 1995, I might my mother would have known that she had been deceived. She would have known, and knowing changes everything.” Diana died not knowing that she’d been manipulated, not knowing that the interview she thought would set her free had actually been obtained through lies, not knowing that the people she’d pushed away were actually trying to help her.
She died believing Bashir’s false reality. And that false reality led her to make decisions that put her in mortal danger. That’s what Simone Simmons means when she says Bashir is fully responsible, not that he planned Diana’s death, but that his deception set in motion an irreversible sequence of events that ended with Diana in a car crash in Paris.
And 30 years later, we’re still trying to understand the full scope of what one journalist’s lies cost. The interviews, the investigations, where’s the apologies, the compensation? All of it is an attempt to reckon with a simple, devastating truth. Martin Bashir wanted a story, and Princess Diana paid for that story with her life.
That’s not hyperbole. That’s not conspiracy theory. That’s the considered opinion of people who knew Diana best. Her spiritual healer, her brother, her sons. They all draw the line from Panorama to Paris. They all see Bashir’s deception as the catalyst that made everything else possible. And they want the world to understand what really happened to Princess Diana, not the fairy tale version, not the media narrative, the truth.
The truth is that Diana was manipulated, exploited, and ultimately left vulnerable by a journalist who valued a scoop over her safety. The truth is that the BBC knew about this and covered it up for 25 years. Uh the truth is that if Diana had known she was deceived, she might still be alive today.
And the truth, according to Simone Simmons, is that Martin Bashir is fully responsible for her death, not partly, fully. If this story shocked you, if it made you see Diana’s death in a completely new light, then make sure you’re subscribed to this channel, hit that like button, turn on notifications, because there are more stories about Diana that the establishment doesn’t want you to know.
Stories about what really happened behind palace walls, stories that change everything you thought you knew about the royal family. The people who knew Diana are finally telling the truth, and you need to hear it. Share this video, spread the word. Because Simone Simmons waited 28 years to say what she believes, and her words deserve to be heard.
Martin Bashir is fully responsible for Diana’s death, not partly responsible, fully responsible. Those words should make us all reconsider what we thought we knew about that night in Paris, about the Panorama interview, about the price Diana paid for trusting the wrong person at the wrong time. She deserved better.
She deserved the truth. She deserved to know she was being manipulated, and she deserved to live. Remember that the next time you see footage of the Panorama interview, the confident Diana telling her story, taking control of her narrative, finally speaking her truth. Remember that she was sitting in that chair because a journalist lied to her, and those lies killed her.
Not partly, fully.
