Kriti Mehrotra
NBC’s ‘Dateline: The Life and Death of Princess Diana’ is an intriguing episode that gives us an in-depth look into the princess’s early experiences, troubled marriage, life and works within the monarchy, as well as her tragic and untimely death. After all, in the early hours of August 31, 1997, almost a year to the date after her divorce from Prince Charles was finalized, Princess Diana, her rumored boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their driver ended up losing their lives in a car crash in Paris, France. The only person who survived was Trevor Rees (previously Rees-Jones), Princess Diana’s British bodyguard for the night.
Who Is Trevor Rees-Jones?
Back in the summer of 1997, Trevor Ress-Jones was hand-picked by Dodi Fayed’s family to protect Princess Diana while she was in Paris with them. His military background, for which he was awarded the General Service Medal, was probably why he was entrusted with such a massive responsibility. And although Trevor remembers all the events leading up to the accident inside the Pont D’Alma tunnel, he doesn’t recall most of what transpired after he got into the car. The firefighter who was first at the scene has since revealed that all Trevor kept repeating, despite his own grave injuries, was “Where is she?,” asking about the princess.
Following the accident, Trevor was hospitalized and in a coma for ten days. His face, completely flattened and crushed, had to be reconstructed as it was beyond recognition. But fortunately, apart from a broken wrist and some smaller chest injuries, the rest of him was remarkably unscathed thanks to the airbag in the front passenger seat, where he was sitting. During an inquiry into Princess Diana’s death, Trevor revealed that he heard the princess moaning and saying Dodi’s name after the crash. “My memory then is of total confusion…I myself doubt them, but I’m mentioning them as [they] are coming back to me repeatedly.”
Where Is Trevor Rees-Jones Today?
Trevor Rees-Jones returned to Britain on October 3, 1997, having spent more than a month in the hospital. At that time, he was only able to communicate by either whispering or writing down what he wanted to say. Yet the doctor who had worked on him had full confidence that he’d be playing hard sports within the year, and he was. A year after that, Trevor’s physical well-being was such that nobody could even tell he’d been operated on. He resigned from his post as a bodyguard in May 1998, but his employer, Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, reportedly said that his job would always be available if he ever wished to return.
Bodyguard Trevor Rees Jones was the only person to survive the crash in Paris #OTD in 1997. He suffered horrific injuries but recovered. pic.twitter.com/MhyFrfcTn4
— Prof. Frank McDonough (@FXMC1957) August 31, 2017
Following that, Trevor relocated to Shropshire, England, where he worked in a small family-run sportswear shop in Oswestry for quite some time. He then wound up serving the United Nations as a security officer to help them protect foreign workers before eventually moving into the field of security consultancy. However, today, it appears as if the former bodyguard is the Head of Global Security at the biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in Cambridge. We should mention that Trevor Rees-Jones has since penned everything about his 1997 experiences in a book entitled ‘The Bodyguard’s Story: Diana, the Crash, and the Sole Survivor,’ published in 2000. Other formats of it have also been released.
In 2016, Princess Diana’s former bodyguard, Ken Wharfe, laid the fault of her death directly with the bodyguards who were with her that night. “Rees-Jones was a former soldier who had not received the training necessary to protect a member of the royal family,” he wrote in the Daily Mail. “When he was first appointed by the Fayed family to guard Diana in France, Scotland Yard could have informally provided Rees-Jones with a briefing.” He then added that Trevor’s role was to “use intelligence, contacts, and instincts” to keep the princess out of harm’s way, which he did not do, resulting in the crash. The lucky survivor has never responded to this, but he has always denied claims of being involved in any cover-up of sorts.
Read More: How Did Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed Die?
