by Thilo Wydra
The documentary film by auteur filmmakers David Cohen and Jennifer Clayton was first aired on December 29, 1997, on Channel 4. This was one week after David Cohen and his colleague David Carr-Brown revealed their presumably spectacular discoveries in the December 21 issue of the Sunday Times.
During the summer months of 1982, a friend supposedly drove Grace to a meeting of the Order of the Solar Templars. The friend in question was the French actress and singer Colette Deréal, who had represented Monaco in the 1961 Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson and who died in the principality in 1988.415 An eyewitness saw both women drive past in a gray Jaguar. In the late 1970s, the center of this ominous, secret society was located in southern France, in Beaujolais in a priory in Villié-Morgon.
The British documentary claimed to prove that it was a close, longtime friend of Prince Rainier, someone he had known since childhood, who was the leading figure of these Solar Templars. Jean-Louis “Lou-Lou” Marsan, school friend and Prince Rainier’s financial adviser, was named as a key figure in this society. Marsan also died in 1982, in August, only one month prior to the princess’s tragic accident. As the film further claimed, Marsan had been a member of the Order of the Solar Templars since 1970. Various members of the upper crust in Monaco, as well as powerful financiers, had belonged to this order, which was dissolved in the mid-1990s. Approximately fifty individuals were members of this southern French society. The French journalist Roger Bianchi explained that Marsan “was one of the most influential individuals in Monaco.” He “was fascinated by the philosophy of the Solar Templars and brought it to Monaco.” His own villa functioned as a kind of private chapel. However, Marsan was only involved in the purely spiritual aspects of the order.416
At the end of her short life, Grace Kelly was supposedly a member of the Solar Templars. This was reported by an allegedly former member of the controversial order, Monsieur Guy Mouyrin. “Mouyrin” was clearly a false name, and in other places, the man called himself Georges Leroux. The documentary filmmakers presented Mouyrin as a witness and questioned him on camera. He described the promises that the secret society made to its members. According to Mouyrin’s/Leroux’s claims, Jean-Louis Marsan permitted Princess Grace to attend a conference with Luc Jouret, who along with Joseph Di Mambro was a cofounder of the order. (Later, he died in the October 1994 apocalyptic mass suicide of the Solar Templars in Switzerland.) This conference involved acupuncture and other New Age–embraced medicinal practices. To attend, Luc Jouret demanded 20 million Francs, but he never received them. However, at this time, Luc Jouret, a former doctor and homeopath, was staying in Belgium. He first appeared again in Geneva in September 1982. It was not until 1984 that he even first established the part of the Order that he led.
The small Monegasque, purely spiritually oriented, harmless order of Jean-Louis Marsan, called “L’Ordre souverain du Temple solaire” (OSTS), which was officially recognized by Prince Rainier in 1964, had nothing to do with the religiously fanatic Order of the Solar Templars, “L’Ordre du Temple solaire” (OTS). A small but significant difference. One that the documentary film on Channel 4 failed to notice.
Thus, it is highly doubtful that the princess had any contact with all of these things. It is much more likely that the filmmakers followed a false thread, treating unproven, highly speculative claims as serious facts. After the initial airing of the program, the royal palace in Monaco disclaimed the unverifiable claims made in the documentary film in an officially published communiqué in December 1997. The palace expressed its regret that the film and its fantasies were even shown.417
1982
Annus horribilis
I would like to be remembered as someone who accomplished useful deeds, and who was a kind and loving person. I would like to leave the memory of a human being with a correct attitude and who did her best to help others . . . I don’t think I was accomplished enough as an actress to be remembered for that. I’d like to be remembered as a decent human being, and a caring one.
—Grace Kelly in July 1982418
A great darkness lay across the city. It was deathly silent. Everyone knew there had been an accident. And then, the lights in and around the casino went out. Then everyone knew that she had died.
—Rolf Palm419
There was a lot of pressure on me because everyone was saying that I had been driving the car, that it was all my fault, that I’d killed my mother. It’s not easy when you’re seventeen to live with that. There was so much magic that surrounded Mom, so much of that dream, that in some ways she almost stopped being human. It was difficult for people to accept that she could do something so human as to have a car accident. People figured I must have caused it because she was too perfect to do something like that. After a while you can’t help feeling guilty. Everybody looks at you and you know they’re thinking, “How come she’s still around and Grace is dead?” No one ever said it to me like that, but I knew that’s what they were thinking. I needed my mother a lot when I lost her. And my dad was so lost without her. I felt so alone. I just went off to do my own thing.420
In the royally-authorized book Rainier & Grace, published by author and journalist Jeffrey Robinson in 1989, Princess Stéphanie is only quoted a few times. By 1989, Grace Kelly had been dead for seven years. Prince Rainier III would reign for another sixteen years, until his death in the spring of 2005. Prince Albert and Princess Caroline were both in their early thirties. At the time she was interviewed by Robinson, Princess Stéphanie was twenty-four years old. The quotations in the book came from this interview. This was the first time she spoke with any member of the press about the accident on that fatal September morning and its far-reaching existential repercussions, especially on her own life. These were statements that corroborated the official version of events that had always been given by the palace. Those versions that do not correspond with the official statements are only speculations, hypotheses, and rumors.
In October 2002, twenty years after her mother’s death, the princess gave another interview to the French periodical Paris Match. Stéphanie was now thirty-seven years old. In this rare interview, she related the moments before the crash. She explained that from the passenger seat she had pushed the automatic gear shift to the park position and had yanked up the parking brake but the car would not stop. She did not want to comment on what they had been discussing in the car. This was something between them and them alone. Although others may blame her for the death of her mother, she does not feel guilt over it any longer. She added that even twenty years after her mother’s death, she still suffers from a double trauma: not only had she lost her mother when both women were far too young, but she was present at her mother’s side for the harrowing accident that took her life.421
It is an indisputable fact that the only person yet alive who truly knows what happened in that Rover 3500 on that sad morning of September 13, 1982, is Princess Stéphanie.
The morning of September 13, 1982, was glorious. The sun was shining. It was the start of a new week. Princess Grace had many upcoming plans. She was supposed to meet Robert Dornhelm in Paris the following day to discuss the reworking of Rearranged, as well as other joint film projects. And Stéphanie was also supposed to go to Paris. On Wednesday, September 15, she was to start her first course in fashion design at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. However, on this family weekend at Roc Agel, Stéphanie had announced to her shocked parents that she did not plan to start her intended education. Instead, she wanted to attend a car racing school with her boyfriend Paul Belmondo, the son of legendary actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. Her ambition now was to become a race car driver. Grace and Rainier could hardly believe it. Furthermore, Grace had always been strongly opposed to car driving. As Robert Dornhelm recalled, “The daughter was there because of Belmondo. Then there was an argument about whether she would go to the course. That was the next thing. The scandals were a foregone conclusion. They (Grace and Stéphanie) argued at the end—this part I knew about. The fight about the racing school,
it definitely occurred. This was not a new argument there [at Roc Agel].”422
On the other hand, Albert had just graduated from Amherst University in Massachusetts. He would soon be starting his training in finance and communication with the Morgan Guaranty Trust in New York and the luxury brand Moët-Hennessy in Paris. After this time, he would serve with the French Navy for seven months, until April 1983. Caroline was set to depart soon for London to spend time at the therapeutic resort, Forest Mere, in Hampshire. One day after her planned visit to Paris, Grace had a poetry reading scheduled at Windsor Castle that the Queen of England was set to attend. It was a time of departures.
Robert Dornhelm had arrived on September 10, and he spent that emotionally charged weekend of September 11–12 with the royal family at their estate on Roc Agel, high above Monaco. On Sunday, he departed to travel to Paris: “I had met with her for a couple of days prior, up at Roc Agel. Very steep, narrow serpentine roads. It is several hundred meters up to La Turbie, and the road grade is about ten degrees. It takes half an hour to get up there.”
The close friends were supposed to see each other again in two days in Paris. Grace was excited and full of energy and initiative to both start and finish various things.
However, on the other hand, according to Dornhelm, since her return from the cruise to Scandanavia on the SS Mermoz, which she took with Rainier, Caroline, and Albert, she was “not happy—ailing even.” In addition: “I can verify that she was not doing well beforehand. That her health was not in good shape. She had a sinus infection from the air conditioning on the ship. She had headaches and earaches. There was too much to eat, and she did not feel well. The ship journey had not been very enjoyable, even up in Greenland and at the fjords of Norway. Besides that, she had gained weight. At our last meeting, she was very depressed, very defeated. I tried to cheer her up.”423
It was about 9:45 a.m.
Grace and Stéphanie left the house at Roc Agel and started the drive down. They turned onto the narrow road that passed the Mont Agel Golf Course. Chauffeur Christian Silvestri stayed back at the house. The princess sat at the wheel, the daughter in the passenger seat. On the backseat were all the gowns and dresses, including one by Dior, which Grace did not want to get rumpled. The Dior dress became the one in which she was clothed three days later for the viewing of the open casket at the royal palace.
As theater director Patrick Hourdequin explained, “There were five or six chauffeurs in the palace, but Princess Grace only trusted Christian Silvestri. He was actually supposed to drive the car, the automatic Rover. However, the clothes were all across the backseat. And so the Princess said, ‘No, Christian, it won’t work for you to drive. You can see my daughter has to sit up front since in the back are the dresses. If you like, you can follow us by running after the car.’—That was her sense of humor.”424
The tragedy took place on the dangerous, extremely curvy Route D 37. Several sharp hairpin turns come one after the other. The cliff begins right at the edge of the road.
As he follows behind the brown Rover 3500 on the small serpentine road which leads from La Turbie, high in the French highlands, down to Monaco, the truck driver Yves Raimondo notices at some point that he can no longer see the brake lights of the car in front of him.425 At this speed and incline, the red brake lights should have been burning for a while already. Suddenly the car begins to skid and skirts along the rock wall. Observing all of this, Raimondo honks repeatedly. For a moment, the car seems to right itself. It speeds up down the hill, and the next sharp, hairpin turn is already in sight. There is still no indication that the driver of the Rover 3500 is slowing down to brake. Then, Yves Raimondo witnesses how the Rover at full speed races out over the curve. The car plunges off the steep, 130-foot cliff and comes to rest in a clump of trees and bushes in a private garden. A pile of steel. A wreck.
It was about 10:05 a.m.
About thirty-six hours passed between this moment and the time of her death.
Princess Stéphanie, who survived the plunge into the chasm, crawled out of the left side of the car and begged the first people hurrying toward her to call for help. It was her Maman, her mother, who was lying in the car. Someone needed to call her father, mon pére, the prince, right away.
“It was horrifying. I will never forget it. The car landed on the property of Monsieur Jacques Provence. He then moved away from this property; he could no longer stay there. At this time, he was the creative director for the Loews Monte Carlo Hotel, which is known today as the Fairmont Monte Carlo. Monsieur Provence was having breakfast in his garden with his wife when he heard a loud crash at the other end of his garden. He immediately recognized Stéphanie. He never discussed this much. He was intelligent. He had the foresight to call the police and fire department here in Monaco, although the accident took place on French soil. He did not want any kind of false stories to circulate,” remembered Patrick Hourdequin.426
Furthermore: “There was a man here, probably a farmer, Sesto Lequio, whom everyone here in Monaco saw on the French television. He presented himself as an eyewitness and told stories to the press. However, he seemed to be mainly interested in the money. Nonetheless, it was the house and garden of Jacques Provence, whose wife Josette was completely destroyed and traumatized by what happened.”427
The statements made by this Sesto Lequio were, in part, the source for many of the lasting speculations and legends over the years. As he later claimed, he himself helped Princess Stéphanie out of the wreck, out of the driver’s side. Supposedly still conscious, the princess whispered in Lequio’s ear these words, or something to that effect: “They should believe that I was driving.”428 Later, the relatively unreliable witness Lequio retracted part of his story, the part about Grace’s final words. He stuck by the rest of his story, just as did Monsieur Michel Pierre, the owner of the neighboring property and another “witness.” However, Jacques and Josette Provence, who called the police after Stéphanie climbed out of the wreck and came toward them, never talked about what happened.
First, cars stop above. People scurry around. One farmer calls for two rescue vehicles, which soon arrive at the scene. Grace Kelly lies across the interior of the car, her head toward the rear, her legs near the front. One of them seems twisted. Her eyes are glassy, she is non-responsive and clearly unconscious. On her forehead is a gaping wound. The emergency personnel must pull her through the bushes, and she is immediately placed into one of the ambulances and transported to her namesake hospital, Hôpital Princesse Grace. Her daughter lies in the other ambulance.
Captain Roger Bencze, French police commissioner from Menton, which lies east of Monaco, arrived at the accident site. The accident happened within Menton’s police jurisdiction. Bencze would go on to lead the investigation from the French side.
It was 10:30 a.m.
Shortly before Bencze’s arrival, Prince Rainier and his son Albert reached the site. They witnessed the initial emergency care given to Grace and Stéphanie in the ambulances prior to their transport to the hospital.
At the hospital, Grace Kelly was examined by Dr. Charles Louis Chatelin, the head of surgery, and her first emergency operation lasted four hours. Her crushed chest cavity was opened, as was her abdomen. Her internal bleeding had to be stopped. Furthermore, there were breaks in her thighs, her clavicle, and her ribs. These all had to be treated. The bleeding from her head wound was heavy, and the brain damage was determined to be lasting and severe. Thus, Dr. Chatelin in consultation with Dr. Jean Duplay, director of neurosurgery at the Hôpital Pasteur in Nice, decided that a CT scan of her brain was urgently needed in order to gauge the severity of the damage to the cranium.
However, the only CT machine in the entire principality was not located in this hospital high up on the northwestern mountainside. Only after Grace’s death would this hospital have the most modern equipment in the region. Publicist Rolf Palm shared his memories of this time: “At that time, the medical technology was not as advanced as it is today,
and this hospital had hardly anything. The hospital had never had a CT machine. The only one belonged to the private physician, Monsieur Mourou, at Boulevard des Moulins 4. And then there was another problem. The office was located on the third floor. First they tried to take the unconscious Grace up the elevator to the doctor. In that narrow elevator, they would have had to prop upright the stretcher to which she was strapped. After seeing that this was impossible, they carried her up the stairs, trying to keep the stretcher as horizontal as possible.”429 Valuable time was lost. By the time the scan was completed, thirteen valuable hours had passed since the accident.
As Patrick Hourdequin explained: “At that time, we lived on Place des Moulins, directly on Boulevard de Moulins, where Dr. Mourou’s office was. And I remember how they blocked the boulevard and carried her body into the house. It was dreadful. However, no one really knew at this point what was going on.”430
In the meantime, Roger Bencze had examined the wreck carefully. The car had been removed relatively quickly from the accident site, and with permission from the palace, the Monaco police chief and the district attorney from Nice were also present for the examination.
It was about 4:30 p.m.
In his protocol, the official investigation file, Captain Bencze wrote that the brakes worked perfectly fine—this finding was subsequently contradicted time and time again. He also found that the automatic gear shift was on “D” for drive and not on “P” for park or on “Mountain” for steep inclines. The hand brake had never been pulled.431 The seat belts had not been used; neither of them were strapped in. Furthermore, the Rover did not have any headrests, which is why Grace was tossed about in the car interior. In terms of its physical state, prior to the accident and the resultant massive damages, the car functioned properly and was in good condition. Also, despite the claims by Sesto Lequio and others, at no point was the car on fire.