Reporter jailed for hacking into Princess Diana’s sons’ voicemail

British tabloid journalist, Clive Goodman, hacked into a royal officials voicemail and was sentenced Friday to four months in prison.

Have you ever wanted to check someone’s messages, but didn’t have the guts to try to crack into it? Well, a British tabloid journalist hacked into a royal officials voicemail and was sentenced Friday to four months in prison.

Judge Peter Henry Gross stated that he had no other choice but to give Clive Goodman, 49, a prison sentence who was the former royal editor of News of the World. As you may know, Goodman didn’t do this job alone. With the help of Glenn Mulcaire, a 36 year-old private investigator, the two (Peter Henry Gross and Glenn Mulcaire) succeeded in hacking in the messages of a number of people including Princess Diana’s sons Princes William and Harry.

“I have decided that the time has come for me to take ultimate responsibility for the events around the Clive Goodman case,” Andy Coulson said who announced the resignation of Goodman.

Mulcaire was stated to have got the mobile phone network operators into giving him the pin number to access the voicemail messages on the cellphone, which then he passed the information on to Goodman. The two were stated to made over 609 calls between November 2005 and June 2006 to the voicemail of several of the senior members of the royal household.

“Neither journalist or private security consultant are above the law,” the judge said, passing the sentence. Goodman was demoted from his job where he covered the royal family and was replaced by a younger reporter.

Mulcaire, who was once a semiprofessional soccer player pleaded guilty to five other charges to where he obtained messages of other well-known figures, including that of supermodel Elle Macpherson.

Because the two apologized to the royal household their sentence was shorten instead of receiving the maximum two years.

In 1989 Prince Charles was eavesdropped on with Camilla while he was still married to Princess Diana. The recording of the phone conversation was stated to have been very explicit.