The gunman who shot police officers during a botched attempt to kidnap Princess Anne has claimed he is innocent, six years after being released from a psychiatric hospital.
Ian Ball, who uses the pseudonym Anthony Stewart, claimed he expected Queen Elizabeth II’s daughter to have been swapped for a double and the gunpowder removed from his bullets ahead of the attempt in March 1974.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Ball also said the queen had been the “ringleader” of a plot that led him to be wrongfully jailed.
“I’m an innocent, sane man,” the 77-year-old said.
Ball, then 26, chased Anne and her then-husband Captain Mark Phillips in their limousine through central London as they drove towards Buckingham Palace after a charity film screening more than five decades ago.
He eventually cornered the royal couple and their lady in waiting in the Mall, yards from the palace, forcing their car to stop.
In the attempt to drag Anne away, he shot her bodyguard, chauffeur, a police officer, and a journalist. The princess was said to have infamously retorted “not bloody likely” when he asked him to go with her.
A passing retired heavyweight boxer, Ronnie Russell, subdued Ball and punched him.
Anne’s bodyguard, former Metropolitan police inspector Jim Beaton, was awarded the George Cross after being shot three times as he protected Anne.
Ball said: “[Anne] wasn’t bothered on the night. I didn’t scare her. I was more scared than she was.”
Ball pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder, attempted kidnap and wounding at the Old Bailey months after the crime.
He was detained without time limit under the Mental Health Act, and spent 45 years in Broadmoor and Rampton psychiatric hospitals. He was released in 2019.
He was hoping to get a £3m ransom from the queen. However, he now claims the plot was always supposed to have failed and was an attempt to garner publicity to sell an autobiography. He said he was aided by an apparent local police officer, “Frank”, who was supposed to have swapped the bullets and the princess.
He told the Mail: “I had good reason to believe the gunpowder had been taken out of the bullets and another girl had been substituted for Princess Anne.”
He added: “The whole idea of performing the hoax was to get the publicity so I could write my autobiography and I expected to get £10,000 in royalties.”
He also denied Anne had uttered the famous line, instead telling her would-be kidnapper: “You just go away and nobody will think any more about it.”
Ball has written an self-published autobiographical novel on the incident, To Kidnap a Princess.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Restricted patients can be recalled back to hospital if their mental health deteriorates to such a level that the risk they pose becomes unmanageable in the community.”
Anne, who was 23 at the time of the attempted kidnapping, later said she was “furious at this man who was having a tug of war with me” and for ripping her favourite blue velvet dress.
Anne’s father, Prince Philip, later quipped of the attempted kidnapping: “If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time in captivity.”
