LONDON — A court trying former British newspaper editors over alleged phone-hacking on Thursday heard that one newspaper had hacked into the phone of Kate Middleton, Prince William’s then girlfriend and now his wife.
In one voice message William, who was then training at the Sandhurst military academy, called her “babykins,” while in another he revealed that he had almost been shot with blanks while on an army exercise.
“Hi baby,” he said in one message. “I had a busy day today again. I’ve been running around the woods of Aldershot chasing shadows and getting terribly lost, and I walked into some other regiment’s ambush, which was slightly embarrassing because I nearly got shot.
“Not by live rounds but by blank rounds, which would be very embarrassing though,” he said in the message, details of which had been published in the now defunct tabloid News of the World.
Prince Harry’s phone was also hacked, the court heard. Prosecutor Andrew Edis read out a message to William’s brother from an “unknown male” in which the caller put on a high-pitched voice and pretended to be Harry’s then girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
“Hi, it’s Chelsy here,” said the man, whom media reported was William playing a joke on his brother. “I just want to say I miss you so much and I think you are the best-looking ginger I have ever seen.”
Andy Coulson, Prime Minister David Cameron’s ex-press secretary, and Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, are among the eight defendants facing a range of charges related to the scandal over phone-hacking.
Coulson and Brooks are former editors of News of the World, which shut in 2011 after revelations that its journalists had hacked the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, as well as politicians, celebrities and other crime victims.
The voicemails revealed on Thursday were discovered at the home of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. He was already convicted of phone-hacking offences in 2006 and has pleaded guilty to another set of charges in relation to the current trial.
