NEED TO KNOW<\/p>\n
Ian Ball, who attempted to kidnap Princess Anne<\/a> more than five decades ago, injuring several people in the process, claims he is \u201cinnocent.\u201d\n<\/p>\n On March 20, 1974, Anne\u2019s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce was forced to stop by a vehicle blocking the route. The driver of the vehicle, Ball, began firing shots \u2014 injuring both Anne\u2019s chauffeur, Alex Callender, and private detective, James Beaton \u2014 before climbing in the front seat and ordering the princess to get out before he was stopped by a passerby.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Ball \u2014 who had intended to kidnap Anne, then 23 years old, to hold her ransom for almost $4 million, a letter he wrote for Queen Elizabeth<\/a> later revealed \u2014 was prosecuted for the attempted murder of Beaton and sentenced to life imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital. But he was quietly released in 2019, according to the Daily Mail<\/a>, whom he recently told he is \u201cinnocent.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cI’m an innocent, sane man because I had good reason to believe the gunpowder had been taken out of the bullets and another girl had been substituted for Princess Anne,” Ball claimed in the new interview, published on Aug. 1.\n<\/p>\n Princess Anne (right) visits James Beaton (left) in the hospital.<\/p>\n PA Images via Getty<\/p>\n In the Daily Mail interview, Ball not only maintained his innocence, but also doubled down on a claim he first raised after pleading guilty decades ago: The attempted kidnapping was meant to be a \u201choax\u201d staged with the help of a \u201cfriend\u201d on the police force whom he only knew as \u201cFrank.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole idea of performing the hoax was to get the publicity so I could write my autobiography, and I expected to get \u00a310,000 in royalties,\u201d Ball told the outlet.\n<\/p>\n \u201cTo prove my innocence I need to prove the existence of Frank,\u201d he added. \u201cThat will prove I had reason to believe it was all a hoax.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Ball also claimed in the new interview that Anne, now 74, was not scared of him. The royal \u2014 who had refused to budge, even as Ball grabbed her arm and tackled her to the floor of the car \u2014 \u201cwasn’t bothered on the night,\u201d he told the outlet. \u201cI didn’t scare her. I was more scared than she was.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Princess Anne. He also told the Daily Mail that it would be a \u201cwaste of time\u201d to apologize to the men that he shot during the alleged \u201choax\u201d \u2014 and denied that Anne said “Not bloody likely,\u201d her now-iconic alleged reply to his attempts to remove her from the car.\n<\/p>\n Rather, Ball claimed, \u201cShe said, \u2018You just go away and nobody will think any more about it’, which fuelled the belief that I thought it was a hoax.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \u201cAt the time I thought it wasn’t Princess Anne in the car,\u201d he said. \u201cShe looked nothing like Princess Anne. The personality was nothing like Princess Anne.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nHulton-Deutsch Collection\/CORBIS\/Corbis via Getty<\/p>\n