A prosecutor told Old London's Bailey court Thursday that the now-defunct British tabloid, News of the World, hacked into Kate Middleton's phone at the time she was dating Prince William, CNN reports.
The prosecutor read the transcript from one of the voicemails that Prince William left Middleton at the time, in which he calls his future bride-to-be "Babykins" and tells her about how he was almost shot by blank rounds during a military training exercise. The date of the message is unclear, though it was left sometime before the royal couple were married in April 2011.
Former News of the World editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, as well as the tabloid's former managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, are all facing accusations of conspiring between October 2000 and and August 2006 "to intercept communications in the course of their transmission, without lawful authority," though they all deny such charges.
Back in 2006, Glenn Mulcaire, a former private investigator for News International, was convicted of phone hacking and has pled guilty to the phone hacking relevant in the current case. A police investigator has, according to CNN, testified that several hundred attempts were previously made by the tabloid and its employees to hack the cellphones of aides to Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry.
Others who have pled guilty in the case include Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck and James Weatherup. Others face charges of "conspiring to obstruct the police investigation into phone hacking," including Rebekah Brooks, her husband, Charlie Brooks, and her former personal assistant Cheryl Carter.
