Why Did Palace Intruder Michael Fagan Trap Queen Elizabeth In Her Bedroom?
Barely dressed in a skimpy nightie, terrified Queen Elizabeth courageously kept her cool when a love-crazed intruder broke into fortress-like Buckingham Palace and trapped her in her bedroom.
Smitten Michael Fagan gushed to the 56-year-old Royal how he "desperately longed to make love to her" before he died.
Then in a chilling moment, the obsessed married father-of-four held up the jagged edge of a broken glass ashtray and told her: "If I cannot have the one I love — then I don't want anybody. I will kill myself now!"
Elizabeth's nightmare ordeal with the deranged 31-year-old stalker went on for 20 terrifying minutes.
His break-in would shock all of England when the news of it leaked out.
Incredibly, it was Fagan's second invasion of the Palace in just one month! Somehow, he'd managed to slip through the massive security net covering the Royal family twice!
His first raid came after dark on June 7, 1982. He shimmied up a Palace drainpipe and scampered through the open bedroom window of housemaid Sarah Carter.
She shrieked and ran into a corridor, where she told two other servants and together they alerted the security police.
About that time, President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were finishing dinner with the Queen Mother at Windsor Castle and were scheduled to board a helicopter and fly to Buckingham Palace.
Even though Scotland Yard security officials knew someone had penetrated the Palace, they covered up the intrusion and let the scheduled presidential visit go on.
Luckily, Fagan was not an assassin armed with a sniper's rifle.
As cops organized search parties, Fagan slipped into a room where pregnant Princess Diana was hiding presents for her first child and guzzled a bottle of wine he'd grabbed.
He planned to wait for Prince Philip, saying: "I waited and waited. But no one came in and I got rather bored. I opened the door and saw a policeman with a dog walk down the corridor."
Finally, he "slipped down some stairs, climbed through a window and went home," he said.
Thirty-two days later, Fagan again crawled through a Palace window and found his way into the Queen's bedroom.
Barefoot, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, he was armed with the broken ashtray he'd smashed in an outside room.
"The Queen was lying on her left side facing the door when I walked in," he said. "I tiptoed over and knelt by her bedside."
"'I am here, Elizabeth,' I whispered." When he sat down on the bed, "she turned her head and her eyes opened wide as she sat up," said Fagan. "'You are very beautiful and I love you very much,' I told her."
A source later revealed: "The Queen was terrified. But she never showed it."
The monarch steeled herself and asked Fagan "why he was there," said the source.
"I am here because I love you," he replied.
Elizabeth let him babble on. At one point, he threatened to slash his wrists because she wouldn't return his love.
"This was the most dangerous moment for her," said the source. "Would he turn his anger against her?"
She calmed him by asking him about his family and saying if he killed himself, his children would be without a father.
She asked if he'd like to smoke, then got out of bed and went to the phone and called her chambermaid to fetch cigarettes.
"I gasped," said Fagan. "She was wearing only a very short, very sheer, cream-colored nightdress. She had the figure of a girl of 16."
Luckily, the chambermaid realized something was wrong because the Queen didn't smoke. She raised the alarm and a hulking footman burst into the bedroom, grabbed Fagan and led him out to security.
Afterward, the Queen "was shaking," said the source. "But she was also furious that security had been so lax."
Fagan's wife, Christine, 33, later revealed her husband's obsession with Elizabeth. "He used to write his name and the Queen's name on paper and surround them with hearts," she said.
"He was telling me every day of his love for her. I got so mad I said, 'If you love her so much, then go be with her.'"
Fagan was never charged with invading the Queen's room. Security officials feared admitting that someone could get so close to her.
He was charged with stealing the Palace wine, but acquitted.
However, after confession to a car theft, he was sent to a mental hospital.
He was released and back on the streets just six months later.
In the years that followed, Fagan had a number of run-ins with cops, and his marriage broke up. He was jailed for four years in 1997 for possessing heroin and went on to father at least six children. He was last known to be living in a small north London apartment with his girlfriend.
