Kate Middleton's phone hacked

GlobalPost

Voicemails left for Kate Middleton by her then-boyfriend Prince William were hacked by the News of the World and read on Thursday at the UK phone hacking trial.

The three recorded messaged from 2006, five years before the couple married, were left by William during the time he was attending Sandhurst military academy.

They were found among the belongings of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who has been convicted of hacking the phones of aides to both William and Prince Harry.

In one of the messages, William calls Middleton by the pet name "babykins," and in another he tells her he was almost shot with blanks during training.

"Hi baby. Um, sorry, I've just got back in off my night navigation exercise," he said in the message.

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"I had a busy day today again. I've been running around the woods of Aldershot chasing shadows and getting horribly 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 have been very embarrassing, though."

He then says he might send her "a cheeky text message" before saying goodbye: "Alright baby, lots of love, um, speak to you soon. Bye bye."

The story of the near shooting appeared in the News of the World under the headline "William shot in ambush" in January 2006.

The voicemail messages have been linked by the phone hacking trial prosecution to emails sent at the News of the World and stories alleged to relate to their content.

The court was told that reporter Clive Goodman, 56, emailed editor Andy Coulson, 45, with results from Mulcaire's investigations, including the shooting story, which ended up published in Goodman's column in the paper.

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