Mirrorpix / MEGA In 1974, Ian Ball attempted to kidnap Princess Anne and her then-husband, Mark Phillips. In the failed abduction, Ball shot four men while trying to get to the Princess Royal. But according to the New York Post, he recently said he was "more scared" of her than she was of him. Ball, who was released from a psychiatric facility six years ago, recently opened up about the incident in an interview. "I had good reason to believe the gunpowder had been taken out of the bullets and another girl had been substituted for Princess Anne," he told DailyMail.com. He went on to insist that the kidnapping was meant to be a "hoax" staged with a friend on the police force. "The whole idea of performing the hoax was to get the publicity so I could write my autobiography and I expected to get £10,000 in royalties," he said. "I'm an innocent, sane man." Ball continued to assert that the princess was never in danger, in spite of the fact that he shot multiple people. "[Anne] wasn't bothered on the night. I didn't scare her. I was more scared than she was," he said. Princess Anne, for her part, has said that she was "furious at this man who was having a tug of war with me." Her father, Prince Phillip, remarked of the failed kidnapping, "If the man had succeeded in abducting Anne, she would have given him a hell of a time in captivity." The post Princess Anne's would-be kidnapper speaks out after release from psychiatric facility appeared first on Wonderwall.com.