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When he returned to the scene, he told a squirming Rees-Jones that help was on the way; he interrupted himself to stop two bystanders, not photographers, from opening the car doors. "Don't do that. You can kill them if you move them," he warned. But he had come back too late to stop one paparazzo, Romauld Rat, from opening Diana's door and taking her pulse--and her picture. "A young North African man began shouting, saying it was wrong to take pictures and that he should help the victims instead."
A few minutes later, a car from S.O.S. Medecins, a volunteer medical group, sped up. Frederic Mailliez, an off-duty doctor who had happened by the scene, jumped out; seeing others helping Rees-Jones, he went to help the woman in the rear, whose identity he would discover only the next morning on CNN. Mailliez originally claimed Diana was moaning and gesturing, but he now refuses to describe how she looked or if there were last words. "This is the kind of situation that creates myth," he says exasperatedly. "[If she did speak], I would say it only to her family, her sons, her husband."
Police investigators say some witnesses report hearing Diana repeat, "Oh, my God." But the fervent silence of the most trustworthy witnesses has allowed myths to grow. Mohammed al Fayed claims that Diana's last "instructions" were relayed to him and that he in turn passed them on to Diana's sister Sarah. But neither he nor the Spencers are saying more. Last week the Paris daily Le Parisien quoted an unnamed doctor as saying Diana's last words, as an oxygen mask was put over her face, were "Leave me alone." But this "witness" is also the one who incorrectly claimed that Dodi's body was thrown 60 ft. from the car. Lies, conspiracy theories and outrageous tales abound. An emergency-service doctor has told TIME that an associate at the scene that night said Diana was in a "Class-1 coma," drifting in and out of consciousness and at one point saying she was "six weeks pregnant" while making a rubbing gesture on her belly. Queried about such pregnancy stories, a spokesman from the office of the British coroner charged with her autopsy provided a snippy but unhelpful "no comment. That's part of the investigation."
What seems almost certain from the doctors at the scene is that Diana was beyond the point of rescue when help reached her. Some still wonder, pointlessly, whether a seat belt would have made a difference for her as it did for Rees-Jones. He alone survives, recuperating slowly and painfully in the same Paris hospital at which the princess died. His story will be well worth hearing--when he regains consciousness and, more important, if he can recall what happened.
--With reporting by Helen Gibson/London and Scott MacLeod and Robert Weiner (CNN)/Paris