Princess Anne’s dramatic kidnapping attempt explained
Princess Anne
Serge Lemoine/Getty ImagesPrincess Anne is widely known as the hardest working royal, but she also proved she has nerves of steel during a kidnapping attempt.
On the evening of March 20, 1974, Anne and her then husband, Mark Phillipswere on their way back to Buckingham Palace after a charity event when a Ford Escort overtook their car and forced them to a halt.
The escort driver, Ian Balljumped out of the vehicle and started shooting a gun. James BeatonAnne’s personal police officer at the time, was shot three times during the altercation.
“It went boom and he shot me in the chest,” Beaton recalled in a March 2024 statement. the BBC. “I tried to shoot back at him with my gun. I missed the first shot and then the gun jammed.”
Born in 1950 to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Princess Anne has enamored royal watchers for more than 70 years. Anne married British Army Captain Mark Phillips in 1973. The following year, the newlyweds were shocked when an attempt was made to kidnap the princess. Anne is known for it […]
Beaton was also shot in the hand and abdomen while trying to protect the princess.
Princess Anne
Matthew Horwood/Getty Images“I still have a piece of bullet in my hand,” the now retired inspector told the BBC.
When Ball, who also shot Anne’s driver, Alex CallenderAnd Brian McConnellone nearby Daily email journalist who tried to intervene and order the princess to leave the vehicle, Anne famously replied: “[Not] damn probably.”
According to Smithsonian MagazineAnne later told police she had “a very annoying conversation” with her attempted kidnapper.
“I kept saying I didn’t want to get out of the car, and I didn’t intend to get out of the car,” she reportedly explained to police.
Cop Michael Hills, who was patrolling in the area at the time of the attack, was the first on the scene. Ball shot him in the stomach, but Hills still managed to call for reinforcements before collapsing.
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Former boxer Ron Russel was also in the area at the time and witnessed Hill being shot.
“I stopped and heard a lot of banging and banging, which I thought was the general commotion. But then Ball shot a police officer, and I thought, ‘That’s a liberty, he needs to be sorted,'” Russell told police. Eastern Daily Press in 2006.
Russell said he then hit Ball once in the back of the head and once “fairly” on the chin.
“He went downstairs and there were police everywhere,” he remembers.
Ball was subsequently arrested. He pleaded guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping and was sentenced to life in a mental health institution. He is currently being held at Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital.
After the attempted kidnapping, police found two pairs of handcuffs and a ransom note addressed to Queen Elizabeth II in Ball’s rental car. According to The guardBall’s plan was to hold Anne to ransom of £3 million and give the money to the National Health Service for the treatment of mental patients.
During a 1980 appearance on the British talk show Parkinson’sAnne recalled being “scrupulously polite” to Ball until he tore her dress.
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“I thought it was stupid to be too rude at that moment,” she explained. “The back of my dress tore and that was his most dangerous moment. At that moment I lost my lap.”
Beaton, Hills, Callendar and McConnell were all hospitalized after the ordeal and all recovered from their wounds. For Beaton’s defense of Anne, the Queen awarded him the George Cross, which recognizes acts of extreme courage performed by civilians and military personnel when not in the presence of an enemy.
Hills and Russell received the George Medal, while Callender and McConnell received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.
Anne went to visit Beaton in hospital shortly after the attack.
“When Princess Anne came to see me at the hospital, it was quite funny because the staff said, ‘Come on, you have to wear something.’ Cover your chest and all the wounds and stuff,” Beaton told the BBC in March 2024. “I said, ‘Oh, stop it.’ We just said, you know, ‘[We’re] I’m glad we’re all still alive and kicking, so to speak.’”