It's a miracle that Trevor Rees-Jones made it out alive, but that didn't save him from rumors and finger-pointing
Who Is Trevor Rees-Jones? All About the Sole Survivor of Princess Diana’s Fatal Car Crash
Updated on May 28, 2025
At half-past midnight on Aug. 31, 1997, a black Mercedes crashed into a concrete pillar outside the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. The world was shaken by the tragic death of Princess Diana, whose funeral just days later, on Sept. 6, became a global moment of mourning. But Diana wasn’t the only one who died that night—her partner, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, were also killed in the crash. Only one person survived: bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones. But who is Trevor Rees-Jones?
That’s not the only question people still want answered more than 25 years later. How did he manage to survive when no one else did? Why has his name become entangled in a web of conspiracy theories? And how did he end up in that car with Princess Diana in the first place?
To answer these questions, Reader’s Digest spoke with royal biographer Ingrid Seward, author of Diana: An Intimate Portrait and editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, and royal commentator Kinsey Schofield, host of the To Di For Daily podcast and author of R Is for Revenge Dress. Read on to find out if things might have ended differently for Diana if she’d had a different bodyguard that night, along with everything we know about Trevor Rees-Jones—the man who lived.
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Who is Trevor Rees-Jones?
Trevor Rees-Jones is a bodyguard employed by the Fayed family in the late ’90s, and he was the bodyguard on duty the night of Princess Diana’s fatal crash. Twenty-night years old at the time of the crash, he was born on March 3, 1968, in Germany. As an adult, he enlisted in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and served in Northern Ireland. He began working as private security for the Fayed family in 1995.
His role as a bodyguard to Princess Diana that fateful night was unusual, according to Seward. In the past, Diana had been protected by her assigned personal Royal Protection Officer (RPO), an expert bodyguard highly trained specifically in keeping the royal family safe in all situations. However, Diana had just abruptly dismissed her RPO. This left Rees-Jones to fill in the security gaps.
Was Trevor Rees-Jones close with Princess Diana?
No—and that was part of the problem, Schofield says. Typically, members of the royal family are assigned their own Royal Protection Officer (also called a Personal Protection Officer, or PPO)—a specially trained police officer who protects the royal from physical threats, including attacks, stalking and harassment. These are highly vetted professionals, often from the military, with years of experience.
In Princess Diana’s time, the same person was usually assigned to the same royal, and they often became very close—perhaps too close. This led to some publicly messy entanglements, and it’s rumored that Diana had an affair with at least one, but possibly more, of her bodyguards. Since then, “PPOs are no longer the same person assigned to the same royal, as they became too close to their principals, so it was decided to keep them rotating amongst many others,” Seward explains. “It is a shame, but they became too recognizable, and some became celebrities in their own right through no fault of their own.”
So while Diana had, in the past, established close relationships with her security, it does not appear to be the case with Rees-Jones. This meant he could not have understood the unique threats a princess would face. “Trevor Rees-Jones was not an RPO. Rather, he had been employed as a bodyguard by Mohammed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father,” Schofield says. “He was not specifically Princess Diana’s security guard, and there is little to no evidence of communication between the two beyond the short amount of time Di was around Dodi.”
Why didn’t Diana have her own Royal Protection Officer that night?
Princess Diana had voluntarily—and against the advice of her friends, family and staff—terminated her Royal Protection team because Martin Bashir, a BBC journalist, had lied to the princess and given her Photoshopped documents suggesting her personal bodyguards had been selling stories to the media. The reason? To manipulate Diana into trusting him. “Sadly, this left the princess in an incredibly vulnerable and unsafe position,” says Schofield.
Would things have ended differently if Princess Diana had kept her RPO? Schofield thinks so. “There is a significant amount of people who blame Princess Diana’s death on the accusations that she was being spied on by her staff, the lie suggested by Bashir. Had he not lied to Diana, she would have had a proper Royal Protection Officer helping her navigate her way around Paris safely,” she says. “Trevor was clearly in over his head, and you see it in the look on his face in the photos moments before Diana’s death.”
What happened to Trevor Rees-Jones in the crash?
Rees-Jones was in the car with Princess Diana, Fayed and Paul when it crashed, but since he was sitting in the front passenger seat, he had the protection of an airbag. That said, like the other passengers, he wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and he certainly didn’t come out unscathed. He was conscious after the crash, but his face was shattered, with numerous broken bones. His injuries were so extensive that his French facial surgeon had to use old photos of him—and about 150 pieces of titanium—to recreate his face. It took 10 hours of surgery just to fix his jaw.
He spent a month in the hospital before returning to England. It took him about a year to recover physically, although he reportedly still has the amnesia brought on by the crash.
What are the conspiracy theories about Trevor Rees-Jones and Princess Diana?
In the wake of the crash, rumors and conspiracy theories began to emerge about why the accident happened and whether it could have been prevented—and Rees-Jones wasn’t immune from the finger-pointing. Critics argued that he shouldn’t have let a supposedly visibly drunk Paul drive, he should have insisted Diana and Fayed wear seat belts, and he should have told Paul to slow down.
Rees-Jones himself had little recollection of the fateful night’s events, since the head trauma from the crash caused amnesia. Meanwhile, Fayed’s father insisted Rees-Jones was lying about the memory loss to avoid blame.
What happened to Trevor Rees-Jones after the accident?
Given the strain with Fayed’s father after the crash, Rees-Jones quit his job with the family the year after the accident. He moved back to Shropshire county with his mother and stepfather, and got a job at a friend’s sportswear store.
At first, Rees-Jones kept the few memories he had of the tragedy to himself. “Unfortunately, he remembered very little of the details,” Schofield says, adding that she doesn’t think it was intentional. “I say ‘unfortunately’ because that seemed to haunt him.”
To this day, he’s given just a handful of interviews, though he did publish a book in 2000, The Bodyguard’s Story: Diana, the Crash, and the Sole Survivor, putting his side on the record once and for all. One of his few recollections of that night was a woman’s voice (presumably Diana’s) moaning “Dodi,” though he couldn’t say for sure if it was a real or false memory. Most of the reported £1 million ($1.5 million) he made from the book deal went toward legal fees for lawsuits led by Fayed’s father. However, in the 2008 inquest of Princess Diana’s death, it was concluded that Paul’s drunk driving and speeding—not actions by Rees-Jones, who police said was telling the truth—were to blame for the accident.
Where is Trevor Rees-Jones now?
“Trevor is not what I would consider a public figure today,” Schofield says. “He lives in Shropshire, [after] a stint as a security director for Halliburton oil company. We also believe he has worked as the head of security for AstraZeneca.”
Rees-Jones (who dropped the Jones from his last name and now goes by Rees) and his wife now live in Shropshire, where he works as a security consultant and plays rugby with a local team.
Additional reporting by Marissa Laliberte.
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Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of stories on the British royal family, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the fascinating facets of the monarchy. We regularly cover topics including the latest royal news, the history and meaning behind time-honored traditions, and the everyday quirks of everyone’s favorite family members, from Queen Elizabeth’s daily snack to Prince William’s confessions about his home life. We’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. For this piece on Trevor Rees-Jones, Charlotte Hilton Andersen tapped her experience as a longtime journalist who has covered the royal family for Reader’s Digest. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Kinsey Schofield, host of the To Di For Daily podcast and author of R Is for Revenge Dress; phone interview, March 19, 2025
- Ingrid Seward, royal biographer, author of Diana: An Intimate Portrait and editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine; email interview, March 18, 2025
- The Guardian: “Life after death”
- The Sun: “Who is Trevor Rees-Jones and where is he now? Princess Diana’s bodyguard who survived car crash in Paris”
- The Telegraph: “Bodyguard: All I remember is Diana’s voice”
- Sky News: “Trevor Rees-Jones: What happened to the sole survivor of Diana’s crash”
