Diana's butler took ring off her body - court

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Princess Diana's butler Paul Burrell took an engagement ring off her dead body, Burrell's former bodyguard told the inquest into her death on Monday.

Michael Faux also said that the former royal butler kept documents with a Buckingham Palace letterhead and then burnt them in his back garden.

"I was disgusted with him," Faux told the inquest investigating the deaths of Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed in a high-speed Paris car crash in August 1997.

Faux, who worked for Burrell for a year in 2003, said the butler told him that he had removed the ring: "He took it off the body in Paris."

Asked in court if Burrell had any way of demonstrating this was Diana's ring, Faux replied: "Yes, there was still blood on the ring and he could prove it was her by the DNA."

Faux said he thought it was not right that Burrell had taken it off her finger.

The former bodyguard also said of Burrell: "I saw him going to and from his house with bin bags full of paperwork that he was taking into his garden to burn and he was making sure that it was thoroughly burned."

Faux said he noticed some of the documents carried a Buckingham Palace letterhead.