A gunman who tried to kidnap Princess Anne is out of a high-security mental hospital – and waging a campaign to clear his name.
Ian Ball, then 26, ambushed Queen Elizabeth’s daughter in the Mall and tried to abduct her in March 1974, shooting four men who came to her aid.
The Princess Royal refused her assailant’s demands to go with her and pay £2 million, telling him ‘not bloody likely, and I haven’t got £2 million’.
Ball was quietly let out of Broadmoor in 2019 on probation and now spends his time flogging a disturbing self-published book trying to prove his innocence, the Daily Mail reports.
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The wanna-be kidnapper, now 77, told the newspaper: ‘I’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.’
Discussing the then 23-year-old Anne, Ball said: ‘She wasn’t bothered on the night.
‘I didn’t scare her. I was more scared than she was.’
When Ball appeared in court in May 1974, two months after the confrontation, he admitted attempted murder and attempted kidnap.
The gunman had skidded his car in front of Princess Anne’s car on the Mall, and threatened to shoot her.
Ball used two guns to shoot her police bodyguard, her chauffeur, a police constable and a journalist who tried to intervene.
A tug-of-war even broke out over the princess between Ball and her husband Captain Mark Phillips.
It was not until former heavyweight boxer Ronnie ‘The Geezer’ Russel stepped in to help subdue him that Anne was freed.
Anne later said she was ‘furious at this man’ for ripping her favourite blue velvet dress.
But since his release Ball has been selling an ‘autobiographical novel’, To Kidnap A Princess, while trying to clear his name.
The bizarre description of Ball’s book on Amazon describes how it ‘opens with the dramatic and thrilling attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne’ before detailing the author’s ‘eventful and turbulent 45-year stay in Rampton and Broadmoor criminal lunatic asylums’.
It adds: ‘The book is an emotive read and it will make you laugh, make you cry, shock you even, but ultimately it will leave you in wonder at the indomitability of the human spirit.’
Ball continues to parrot the excuse that the kidnapping was actually a hoax gone wrong, an explanation he first made six months after the incident.
His line of events claims the kidnap attempt was staged with the help of a policeman ‘friend’ called ‘Frank’.
This Frank was supposedly meant to have removed the gunpowder from the bullets in Ball’s guns and replaced another woman for Princess Anne.
The former Broadmoor detainee said: ‘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.
‘To prove my innocence I need to prove the existence of Frank. That will prove I had reason to believe it was all a hoax.’
He also claims he was wrongfully jailed by the ‘upper classes’, adding that the late Queen was the ‘ring-leader’.
The Daily Mail report claims Ball uses social media to appeal against his convictions and has leaflets distributed in his local west London area, encouraging people to meet him.
Thorough risk assessments are conducted on ‘restricted patients’ like Ball before they are let out. Doctors have the power to ‘manage the risk to the public’.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said of Ball’s release: ‘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’s bodyguard, former Metropolitan Police inspector Jim Beaton, was shot three times as he protected Anne and was later given the George Cross.
Former heavyweight boxer Ronnie Russell punched Ball twice in the head to stop the kidnapping after spotting the commotion.
Russell was awarded the George Medal by Queen Elizabeth II, who told him: ‘The medal is from the Queen, but I want to thank you as Anne’s mother.’
Anne’s father, Prince Philip, later joked of the attempted kidnapping: ‘If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time in captivity.’
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