Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly  link (Actress)
The Prince and Princess of Monaco arrive at the White House for a luncheon, 1961.
Born	November 12, 1929 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	September 14, 1982 Monaco Hospital, Monaco
Cause of death	"aneurism,car accident"
Victim of	assassination?
Nationality	US,Monegasque
Religion	Roman Catholic
Children	Princess Caroline of Monaco, Albert II Prince of Monaco,Princess Stéphanie of Monaco
Spouse	Rainier III
US actress who became Princess of Monaco. Suspicious death

Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, after starring in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s, became Princess of Monaco by marrying Prince Rainier III in April 1956.

Grace Kelly was by all accounts horrified by the tainted, corrupt atmosphere in Monaco. She tried repeatedly to convince Rainier they didn’t need mob money to make the Principality great. But the corruption was too ingrained for him to stop it. And Mafia investors who used Monaco – home to one of the world’s most famous casinos – to launder their illegal funds were furious with "goody two-shoes" Grace, who was determined to clean the place up.

Sudden death

The official Monaco Palace version is that on the sunny morning of September 13, 1982, Grace Kelly, 52 – who became a princess when she wed Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956 – decided to drive herself and daughter Stephanie, down from their weekend farm in the lower French Alps back to the palace. Halfway down the mountainside filled with treacherous hairpin curves, a truck following Grace’s car saw it suddenly swerve out of control, zigzagging across the tiny road. "I blew my horn,” said the driver. “The car seemed to pull back into control. But then I realized it was picking up speed, going faster and faster toward a hairpin bend a couple of hundred yards in front." The car never made any attempt to slow down around the bend. It simply shot off the edge, disappeared through trees and tumbled down the mountainside into farmer Sesto Lequio’s flower garden, perched on the hillside below.

"Princess Grace’s death was covered up," declared Jacques Bidalou, a former French judge, who spent more than two years and thousands of dollars of his own money investigating the case. "Her car was immediately covered with plastic sheets so no one could take close-up photos of it. Police photographers and crash experts never got a chance to examine the car and its crash path at the scene. The car was whisked away from the scene within half an hour...I uncovered evidence suggesting that the Mafia wanted Grace eliminated to stop her from interfering in their illegal business activities in Monaco and that they ordered their henchmen to kill Grace. Strangely, when I wrote to Prince Rainier alerting him to this, I received no reply. I even filed a civil suit in a Nice court, demanding an official investigation into Grace’s death. It was rejected."

No autopsy was ever carried out.

Order of the Solar Temple

According to a 1997 Channel 4 documentary, Kelly may have been initiated into a cult called the Order of the Solar Temple. The allegations centred on interviews with a man who worked for over a decade for Joseph di Mambro, a senior leader of the sect, and an acupuncturist who claimed she helped prepare the princess for the sexually charged initiation ceremony that is said to have taken place in the summer of 1982 in an ancient priory in Beaujolais.

The Order of the Solar Temple, claiming to be the revival of the Knights Templar, achieved worldwide notoriety in 1994-97 when 74 members in Europe and North America died in what appeared to be a planned series of mass suicides and murders.

According to the documentary makers, di Mambro's former security guard told him that, after the ceremony at the priory, Kelly was asked to donate 20 million Swiss francs to the order. She agreed to pay 12 million francs into a bank in Zurich, but shortly after began to have doubts and quarrelled with di Mambro. "They got greedy and asked for too much cash," he says. "Grace threatened to expose di Mambro's demands for money, and her attitude spooked him.