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For several years I have been
funding a scientific research program into paranormal
phenomena, namely "miracles" and the divination and prophecy
techniques described in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. My
interest in this field was sparked off by a personal
experience of the paranormal in 1987. During the last few
decades, a large body of respectable scientific opinion has
arisen, supported by experimental evidence, suggesting the
possibility that these phenomena, which were previously known
only through ancient religious writings, may actually be
real. If so, as I have come to believe, then they are
physical manifestations of the complex ethereal universe that
we are only just beginning to glimpse.
Few scientist today would deny
that the "experience" we call consciousness is deeply rooted
somewhere in the twilight zone between the rational, physical
universe of our normal perceptions and the unfathomable
mysteries of its underlying principles. Amongst those,
quantum electro-dynamics (QED), gravity and relativity
interact, according to an as-yet-undiscovered formula, to
create the very fabric of our universe.
Human consciousness operates at
the "quantum" level of the universe. It is here that we have
to look for the answers to our most searching philosophical
and religious questions. Over the last couple of months, one
of my colleagues and I have observed a strange manifestation
of psychic energy which I present here as accurately as we
can recall in the hope that we can establish contact with
others who have had similar experiences.
A colleague and I occasionally
rendezvous at Yilmaz, a Turkish restaurant in Dulwich, south
London. We know the owner and staff quite well and are always
assured of their best attentions. Saturday night is our
favourite venue, when Layla, a petite, vivacious bellydancer
from Egypt provides a much-needed respite from our everyday
tribulations.
So it was that my colleague and I
arrived at Yilmaz a few minutes before midnight. We ordered
our steaks just as Layla had begun her act, dancing to the
music of a Turkish folk ensemble. At the end of the meal, I
ordered a Turkish coffee, as usual. In the midst of the
revelry, while two blondes were supplementing the evening's
entertainment with an impromptu floorshow, our research stole
away our attention.
For some months, it had been our
custom to conduct an informal experiment in divination using
an empty coffee cup. It had started off as a mild amusement,
when, on the first occasion, I had demonstrated a traditional
divination technique described by my mother, who is from
Cyprus, and which I had encountered during my travels
throughout the Middle East.
The fortune-teller is usually one
of those ubiquitous old women dressed in black that pervade
the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. The seer claims to
"read" a person's future in the grounds left at the bottom of
a cup of Turkish coffee.
Turkish coffee,
(kajeV TourkikoV), is served hot,
thick and black in a tiny cup. It is brewed by quickly boiling
a mixture of ground coffee, sugar and water in a special,
long-handled coffee-pot (kajetiera).
The mixture is teased to the boil and withdrawn from the flame
repeatedly until just the right thickness and texture of foam
(kaimaki) forms on the surface.
A moment too soon or too late and the crucial separation of
grounds, coffee and foam is lost.
The coffee served by Yilmaz on
Sunday morning was perfect for our purposes. I was careful to
leave a few drops of black liquid over the grounds that had
settled to the bottom, then, after a gentle swirl, I upturned
the cup into its saucer and left it to drain. The waiter
tried to clear it away but soon realised what I was doing and
left it on the table.
About five minutes later, I
lifted the cup from the saucer, breaking the tenuous vacuum
that had formed as it cooled. A wide, heavily patterned trail
of dark grounds covered one third of the cup's inner surface.
It must have been 12:45 am in London, give or take ten
minutes, on the last day of August 1997, a day whose events
will be etched on the hearts and minds of the British nation
for many years to come.
Our after-dinner experiments had
started as a bit of a laugh, certainly not with any serious
intent. I did the "divining" while my colleague observed,
recording my thoughts and interpretations. On the first
occasion, on 12-13 July, I saw, or rather, "felt" what I
described as "a towering inferno," which I interpreted as a
fire in a tall building. We later learned of the fire at the
16-storey Royal Jomtien hotel, Pattaya that had taken place
on Friday. I only heard about the fire a few days later when
dramatic film of a helicopter rescue was shown on British
cable television, although the story,
78 are killed in hotel fire at Thai resort,
had been reported in the British press on Saturday. This was
hardly a "prediction" in any real sense and we paid little
attention to it at the time.
But I also saw something that we
had both found quite worrying. We were, as members of a
voluntary organisation that helps wrongfully convicted
prisoners, corresponding with John, a new client, who was
serving 14 years at HMP Wakefield. He had recently written an
emotional letter pleading for our help. His letter conveyed a
sense of desolation and despair that was all too familiar.
When I looked into the swirling
pattern left by the grounds, an impression formed of a
prisoner, a sense of despair and the name "John". The only
recognisable images in the cup were a thin, braided trail
that looked like a rope and a horse's head. I showed these to
my colleague. He was not completely convinced by the horse, but he
saw the rope clearly.
Naturally, we both became very
concerned about our new client. So much so that on Monday
morning I telephoned HMP Wakefield and spoke to Sheila Wills,
the probation officer. She did not know John but suggested I
speak to Andy Croft, John's personal officer on C wing, who
was away that day. The next day I called repeatedly until I
was put through to Croft. I explained who I was and asked
specifically about John's state of mind. Croft told me that
John was fine, quite cheerful and certainly not considered a
risk. My colleague and I breathed a sigh of relief. John later
wrote to thank me for taking an interest in his welfare,
Croft having relayed the message.
I suppose that would have been
the end of the matter, however, on Wednesday evening, while
reading through the previous day's Daily Telegraph (15 July
1997), I came across this story,
John Steed, the M4 rapist and killer, has been found hanged in his prison cell.
Steed had been found dead on Sunday morning. A chill swept
through me. I knew this was the prison suicide I had seen
in the cup. I showed the news clip to my colleague, who recognised
it immediately. We were somewhat shocked, to say the least,
especially as I had foreseen another (albeit minor) event,
which had already come to pass on Monday morning. Two of
the three hits had involved people dying in violent
circumstances.
Our second experiment, late on
the evening of Saturday 2 August, revealed an unmistakable
image of what I had described as a volcano with a huge
billowing plume of smoke rising above it. On Sunday, a
volcano on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat began a major
eruption that buried Plymouth, the capital, under a huge flow
of red-hot ash, killing many people in its path. The plume of
dust and smoke rose to a height of several thousand feet: Montserrat volcano sets homes on fire.
On both occasions I had seen a
heart-shaped object hanging from what looked like a tangle of
veins and arteries, which I had not been able to match with
anything that had happened later. Also, on both occasions, I
had asked the proprietor's wife for permission to take my
coffee cup home for further study under a stronger light. She
was only too pleased to oblige and the incidents became the
object of humorous exchanges between us. On the second occasion,
she had jokingly remarked, "What, again? Be sure you bring it
back!" She also asked me to read her fortune, as had a
customer who had found me staring into a cup under a
spotlight in the cloakroom.
That was the background to our
meal at Yilmaz just after midnight on Sunday, 31 August. The
pattern in the cup was as dramatic as it was clear. On the
left-hand side, I saw a ghostly faint image of a blonde woman
in a crouching position with her head to one side. The shape
of her face was distorted and her whole body looked as if it
had been squeezed from the sides. I remarked that she looked
like a "pixy". I saw the same heart-like object again, my colleague
thought it looked like an octopus, its undulating arms
trailed from the woman's abdomen. Her left arm was held away
from the body at an awkward angle. She was naked.
There was a thin, sharp channel,
like forked lightning, to her right, cutting through the
pattern from top to bottom. Within the intricate branches of
the right-hand side of this pattern was a much smaller
three-quarter-length image of a blonde facing left and looking
over her shoulder towards me. She looked very familiar, although
I did not recognise her immediately.
I had the impression of "flames"
and a "key". I "felt" an explosion. On the far right was what
looked like a woman’s breast in profile, the nipple facing
left. An object was protruding from it, the end was hanging
downwards at an angle, as if broken. I saw three small white
dots arranged in a triangle. I described them as stones
or gems, although a fleeting impression of tablets had passed
through my mind.
My colleague was able to
see most, if not all, the images I was seeing. This was
unusual and quite unexpected. Whatever was going on, a
recognisable image had formed in the coffee grounds. This was
not a case of me seeing something that only I could see. The
images were real, unless, of course, we were both caught up
in the same spell. I told him that I thought we were going to
hear news of a woman we both knew, perhaps one of our wives
(we are both separated).
Before we could discuss these
revelations, the head chef joined us. He asked the waiter to
bring us a glass of aniseed-flavoured Arak, the
Turkish version of a Greek spirit called Uzo. The
potent drink was on the house.
"Do you do that?" He asked,
pointing to the coffee cup with the telltale stream of
dried grounds running up the inside.
"Yes," I replied, "but my mother
is the expert."
"You must read mine one day," he
pleaded.
"Ok, anytime," I said. "It's the
future".
"Yes, I know. Please, do it for me
next time."
For my part, having consumed more
than half a bottle of Matheus Rosé and a large
measure of Arak, I had filed away the patterns in the
coffee grounds for later analysis. The cup was cleared away.
We chatted for a while then paid our bill and left. If only I
had taken the cup with me...
Some two hours later, my
colleague, who was chatting on IRC, told me he had heard that
Dodi Fayed and Diana had been involved in a car crash, Dodi
was dead and Diana had been injured. I switched on the
television. Sky News confirmed what had happened. We realised
that the news unfolding was linked to the "vision". We both
knew that Diana would not survive. I believe Diana had
already died by then, although efforts to revive her appear
to have continued for a while longer.
Premonition and clairvoyance are
nothing new to me. I have had many similar experiences since
late 1986, when I was a patient of a bogus doctor who almost
killed me with negligent over-prescriptions of powerful
psychotropic drugs. These types of drug are close cousins of
the substances used in religious ceremonies by shamans to
induce spiritual and prophetic visions, hence my motive for
funding scientific research into this field. The extent of
my own pharmacological nightmare was investigated by a leading
psycho-pharmacologist, Dr. Crystal Heather Ashton of
Newcastle University,
whose report
is archived on the web. Despite my familiarity with these
phenomena, Sunday's events left me feeling shocked and
emotionally drained. Since then, I have had many lucid dreams
and awful nightmares.
Later on Sunday, when daylight
had broken, I watched the news coverage from the Place de
l'Alma by the Seine in Paris. Right above the place where the
Ritz Hotel’s Mercedes had crashed, there was a small,
circular green with a white plinth at its centre. Golden
flames, cast in metal and frozen in time, sprang from the top
of the column. A silent witness to the tragedy that had
befallen Diana and Dodi in the tunnel below.
The small monument looked like a
candle blowing in the wind. It was then that I recognised the
other woman staring back at me from the cup. It was a girl I
had known in 1987 called Kay Kent, who, I believe, was killed
in 1989 by the British or Greek Cypriot security services to
stop her from giving evidence at my criminal trial at the Old
Bailey. Kay Kent was Europe's leading Marilyn Monroe
look-alike model. For over a year, Scandals in
Justice has featured the report of her mysterious
death on their website with Elton John's Candle in the
Wind playing in the background.
After the initial shock had
passed, I wondered why I had received this vision? I thought
at first it might be because I had written an unfinished
letter to the Princess asking for her support in our
voluntary work with wrongfully convicted prisoners. But,
soon, I became aware of many other coincidences. I had
written to Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods, a few
years ago when he was threatened with prosecution for
blackmailing the British Government. I had been (falsely, I
say) accused in 1987 and convicted in 1989 of
blackmailing the Government of the Republic of Cyprus
by the British authorities in what became known as the
"Nemo Case". I wrote to him because such charges are so
rare, I was hoping to establish an empathy between us.
Alas, his response had been polite and brief, thanks,
but no thanks!
Nevertheless, al-Fayed had
financially supported Scallywag Magazine,
which was the only British news journal to defy the "D" notice
and feature my case amongst its series on Classic Miscarriages
of Justice. But it did not end there, Angus Wilson, the co-editor,
left Scallywag to found the ill-fated Spiked Magazine
with al-Fayed's backing. He later died in a
mysterious
car crash after a secret meeting with Asil Nadir in the Turkish Republic
of Northern Cyprus. The meeting was brokered by one of al-Fayed's publicists
in connection with allegedly compromising photographs of a British
Cabinet Minister. I had given Wilson al-Fayed's address as a likely
source of finance for his new venture.
Dodi Fayed has been photographed
with an acquaintance of mine, Vivian Ventura, a wild-child of
the jet-set era and one-time girlfriend of ("magic") Alexis Mardas, of
The
Beatles and Apple fame. He and I had collaborated
in the sale of armoured Mercedes limousines and related
security products to various Heads of State and Royal
Families in the late seventies and early eighties. Mardas was
a confidant of Ex-King Constantine of Greece, through whom he had become
personally acquainted with Her Majesty the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Charles and Diana.
Mardas
and his secretary, Ania Majszczyk, became prosecution witnesses in my case. Ania's
statement
confirms that I was calling myself Miller at the time of my arrest.
That was the name of Marilyn Monroe's husband.
I was arrested by the
anti-terrorist branch outside the Cyprus High Commission in Mayfair
as I was about to climb into the passenger seat of a Mercedes
limousine driven by Mardas' former chauffeur, Peter O'Neill. He was
also detained but released later that day without charge and became a
witness for the prosecution. O'Neill was the only non-police witness to
have seen me and Kay Kent together. In his
first statement,
O'Niell describes driving Kay and I to an Italian restaurant in St.
John's Wood. On the way to that meeting, I had asked him to stop at
a record shop where I purchased a tape of Candle in the Wind, which
was played throughout the rest of the journey. In his
second statement,
he confirms that I was carrying photographs of
Marilyn and Kay on the day I was arrested. The tape of Elton's greatest
hit was also in my briefcase and became a police exhibit.
But, after a week of searching
for possible links to the Princess of Wales that might
explain this strange vision, I have come to the conclusion
that the answer must lie in my previous spiritual contact
with Marilyn Monroe. It happened in the period before my arrest
when I was in a drug-induced, altered state of consciousness.
Marilyn's spirit had guided me to seek out Kay, who had
chosen to model her life on the legend. During my trial, just
days before she was due to give evidence establishing my innocence,
Kay died in bizarre circumstances, an exact copy of Marilyn's death.
I think Marilyn was trying to tell me that she had been murdered and
warn Kay that a similar fate awaited her!
Was it through the collective
spirit of those two, whom Diana's spirit was about to join
via the common theme of Candle in the Wind, that I had
received the vision? Perhaps it was because my mind was already
tuned in to the right frequency and switched on, ready to
receive a spiritual message at exactly the right time?
Perhaps we shall never know.
More Nemo Case links to Kay Kent and Marilyn Monroe:
Andrew Koupparis: affidavit, testimony
Barnabas Kindersley: testimony
Justice Macpherson: summing-up
© Copyright P Koupparis 1997
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