UK UK - Jill Dando, 37, Fulham, London, 26 Apr 1999

[Interested_But_Confused]

If it turns out to have been a Serbian hitman, I'll happily admit I'm wrong. But so far it's just The Daily Mirror writing a story for the 25th anniversary of Jill's death:

Jill Dando murder revelation over Man X’s resemblance to secret service assassin

Killer Milorad Ulemek bears similarities to a man in CCTV images from the scene in Fulham, South-West London

www.mirror.co.uk

This is The Mirror's comparison photo of "Man X" (who was seen on CCTV) to a known Serbian hitman. To me there are similarities but the ear and nose don't match:



This article also seems to conflate "Man X" with the "Sweating Man" who was seen boarding a bus. But in the recent Netflix documentary the "sweating man" was identified as a local undertaker; Police concluded the famous e-fit was of him, not of Jill's killer.

Sadly, I feel The Mirror is just being click-baity again.

 

[tes1984]

Im sure how Barry George expects this guy to be questioned. Ludovic is already in prison and Serbia don't extrodite legal residents of Serbia to the UK.

 

[RichardKimble]

Im sure how Barry George expects this guy to be questioned. Ludovic is already in prison and Serbia don't extrodite legal residents of Serbia to the UK.

The way I understand it, a suspect arrested on a EAW can't be questioned, he has to be charged, like it's said, Serbia has no extradition agreement nor are they part of the eu, a non story really.

 

[JennieM]

If it turns out to have been a Serbian hitman, I'll happily admit I'm wrong. But so far it's just The Daily Mirror writing a story for the 25th anniversary of Jill's death:

Jill Dando murder revelation over Man X’s resemblance to secret service assassin

Killer Milorad Ulemek bears similarities to a man in CCTV images from the scene in Fulham, South-West London

www.mirror.co.uk

This is The Mirror's comparison photo of "Man X" (who was seen on CCTV) to a known Serbian hitman. To me there are similarities but the ear and nose don't match:

View attachment 498844

This article also seems to conflate "Man X" with the "Sweating Man" who was seen boarding a bus. But in the recent Netflix documentary the "sweating man" was identified as a local undertaker; Police concluded the famous e-fit was of him, not of Jill's killer.

Sadly, I feel The Mirror is just being click-baity again.

It doesn’t look like the same man IMO.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

It doesn’t look like the same man IMO.

It might just be due to the poor quality of the CCTV, but to me "Man X" looks like he could have a cauliflower ear and a busted boxer's nose. Neither of which the Serbian hitman has.

 

[WestLondoner]

It might just be due to the poor quality of the CCTV, but to me "Man X" looks like he could have a cauliflower ear and a busted boxer's nose. Neither of which the Serbian hitman has.

Yes, the nose and lips look different to me - thinner on the blurry CCTV picture.

This is all a bit cart before the horse though. Before even getting into the question of how much of a lookalike this guy is, you'd need to establish that he was even in London at the time. If he wasn't, then it's case closed. The Bristol newspaper report linked above quotes BG's lawyer as noting that this hasn't been done.

It also tries to connect this person with the speeding blue Range Rover, which is a total red herring, as that car was identified and eliminated long since.

 

[JennieM]

T

Yes, the nose and lips look different to me - thinner on the blurry CCTV picture.

This is all a bit cart before the horse though. Before even getting into the question of how much of a lookalike this guy is, you'd need to establish that he was even in London at the time. If he wasn't, then it's case closed. The Bristol newspaper report linked above quotes BG's lawyer as noting that this hasn't been done.

It also tries to connect this person with the speeding blue Range Rover, which is a total red herring, as that car was identified and eliminated long since.

The mouth, chin and brow look different.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

Yes, the nose and lips look different to me - thinner on the blurry CCTV picture.

This is all a bit cart before the horse though. Before even getting into the question of how much of a lookalike this guy is, you'd need to establish that he was even in London at the time. If he wasn't, then it's case closed. The Bristol newspaper report linked above quotes BG's lawyer as noting that this hasn't been done.

It also tries to connect this person with the speeding blue Range Rover, which is a total red herring, as that car was identified and eliminated long since.

Couldn't agree more, but this is fairly typical for The Mirror.

The "journalist" who wrote the article wants Jill to have been killed in some kind of big conspiracy, so they set out to make the evidence fit their theory rather than forming a theory based on the evidence.

To be honest, this "Man X" resembles BG (as he looked in 1999) as much as he resembles the Serbian hitman. But for the record, I *don't* think "Man X" is BG.

 

[WestLondoner]

More from BG in the Times today:

The only person convicted of murdering Jill Dando insists he can “prove” his innocence and wants Scotland Yard to reopen the investigation.

The shooting of the BBC newsreader, host of Crimewatch and presenter of Songs of Praise on April 26, 1999, remains one of the UK most high-profile unsolved crimes.

Barry George was convicted of her murder in 2001 but he was freed from prison in 2008 after a second Old Bailey jury unanimously found him not guilty. Despite the acquittal, his claim for compensation for the eight years he spent in jail has been dismissed.

Before the 25th anniversary of the murder on Friday, George told The Times: “I can prove my innocence. I just need to go back to the Supreme Court and say this is the proof I did not do this so I deserve compensation.”

Dando, 37, was shot in the back of the head as she arrived at her home in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, west London. The case is surrounded by rumours that the presenter was the target of London gangsters, murdered on the orders of a model agency boss or a victim of mistaken identity.

Milorad Ulemek, a convicted Serbian assassin, was named by the Daily Mirror this week as a possible suspect, after a former police expert said he could not be ruled out as a mystery man recorded on CCTV at a train station close to Dando’s home.

George, 64, now lives a reclusive lifestyle on the outskirts of Cork in the Republic of Ireland.

His sister, Michelle Diskin Bates, campaigned to overturn his conviction and now highlights the plight of other victims of miscarriage of justice.

Barry George and his sister Michelle Diskin Bates want to be able to present evidence proving his innocence in court

“There is no court Barry can use in this land to say ‘I can prove I did not kill Jill’,” she said. “We need a court where people like Barry can go to prove his innocence and say ‘Here is the evidence that I am not guilty’. He has irrefutable proof that he was somewhere else at the time she was murdered.

“Barry is trapped. Although the money from compensation would be nice, the importance would be an acknowledgement of his innocence. He needs the police to reopen the investigation.”

Diskin Bates, 69, said that because of her brother’s learning difficulties he does not fully understand the legal principle of being innocent unless proven guilty when on trial, but when seeking compensation being considered guilty unless you can prove your innocence.
She said her brother can prove he could not have shot Dando, returned home to change his clothes and then appeared at a disability advice centre within 20 minutes as claimed by police. The assassin was left-handed while George is right-handed and his autism and a learning disability means he is incapable of carrying out such an attack, added Diskin Bates.

Diskin Bates said her brother could not have moved between Dando’s home and a disability advice centre in the timeframe suggested by police

The key forensic evidence in George’s conviction was the discovery in his coat pocket of a single particle of gunshot residue. The Court of Appeal ordered a retrial after hearing evidence that the particle was just as likely to have come from an extraneous source as it was to have come from a gun fired by George.

Diskin Bates believes detectives were under such enormous pressure to catch Dando’s killer that they became “obsessed” with clues they believed pointed to her brother while overlooking evidence which proved his innocence.

She claims that potentially crucial evidence may have been covered-up after they discovered prosecutors obtained a “public interest immunity [PII]” certificate preventing information being disclosed on the grounds of national security.

Detectives identified more than 1,300 potential suspects before focusing on George, who lived 500 metres from Dando’s home. He was arrested in May 2000 following surveillance of his flat.

“What has happened is the police put on blinkers, not following evidence that did not match the theory that Barry was guilty,” said Diskin Bates, from Northampton. “They lost their objectivity.”

She says her brother was an “easy target” for police as he was considered a “local weirdo” with no relatives able to defend him. She acknowledges he was “no angel” with convictions for two sex attacks.

She believes her brother was failed by a criminal justice system like other more recent victims of miscarriages of justice include the wrongful prosecution of 900 sub-postmasters and Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in jail for a rape he did not commit.

“We must not keep covering the cracks, we need to improve the system,” said Diskin Bates, who has written a book about her brother’s case, Stand Against Injustice.

Following Dando’s murder, the BBC received a call saying she was killed in revenge for a recent Nato attack on a Belgrade television station in which 17 people died. Weeks earlier the presenter hosted a television appeal which raised £54 million for Kosovan refugees who fled Serbian paramilitaries during the Yugoslavia civil war.

Ulemek, a former member of the French Foreign Legion, was a part of a hit squad acting on the orders of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslavian president . He was convicted of the murders of Ivan Stambolic, the former Serbian president, who was shot in the back of the neck in 2000, and Zoran Djindjic, the prime minister, who was shot in 2003.

Ulemek has also given evidence that he was told about the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija, 49, newspaper owner, who was shot outside his home in Belgrade 15 days before Dando was targeted. Aleksander Kovacevic, Ulemek’s lawyer, said Ulemek, who is serving a 40-year jail sentence, did not want to comment about the possible links to Dando’s murder.

Hamish Campbell, the now retired detective chief superintendent who led the investigation into Dando’s murder, said inquiries were made with the intelligence services about the possibility of Serbian involvement but has said: “I didn’t ever subscribe to it”.

He said that the new focus on Ulemek as a suspect risks “picking out single, discrete pieces of material from a vast case and running with a theory at the expense of the wider picture”.

“All the sightings and witnesses were drawn up in detailed analysis charts, showing timings, clothing and people descriptions, and the differences and discrepancies,” he said.

Campbell investigated a string of high-profile cases before retiring from Scotland Yard. He is now assistant commissioner of Jamaica’s Independent Commission of Investigations, the island’s police complaints watchdog.

He said that e-fit images of four potential suspects were produced, but only a picture of a “sweating man” seen running across Fulham Palace Road to a bus stop was released. By November 1999 the inquiry dismissed that e-fit as it was not the man seen by Dando’s neighbours following the shooting.

Campbell said the “sweating man” e-fit is a different person from the “running man” briefly seen by a woman as she drove down Fulham Palace Road. The driver said this week that she was sure the man she saw running was Ulemek.

The investigator said Dando’s neighbours described the suspect they saw close to her house as “chunky” and “medium build”, while the woman driver said the running man was of “slim build” and wearing different clothes.

Police never traced a metallic blue Range Rover seen leaving the road opposite Gowan Avenue before speeding through red traffic lights towards Putney Bridge, leading to speculation the gunman had an accomplice.

A month after Dando’s murder, the woman driver matched the “running man” to CCTV footage from the Putney Bridge Tube station. Campbell said the video was timed about noon — at least 27 minutes after Dando was shot when the gunman would be expected to be far away.

Campbell said the finding by a police CCTV analyst that there is “limited support” for a link between the man in the image and Ulemek would apply to numerous people. He said that the circulation of the CCTV still in the Police Gazette in 2000 did not lead to any new information.

The suggestion that the gunman escaped by catching a bus and then a train does not match the claims that it has the “hallmarks of a well thought out military operation”, he added.

Scotland Yard said in a statement: “The investigation is now in an inactive phase, which means that it is not currently subject to routine reviews. However, no unsolved murder is ever closed and detectives would consider any new information provided to assess whether it represented a new and realistic line of inquiry.”

George was diagnosed with personality disorders as a child and has used assumed names including Steve Majors, Paul Gadd and Barry Bulsara

George does not naturally fit the profile of a hitman. He was diagnosed with severe epilepsy and personality disorders as a child. After initially being educated at a school for pupils with educational and behavioural problems he was moved to residential special school in Sunningdale, Berkshire, where he told other children there to call him Paul Gadd, the real name of the pop singer Gary Glitter.

When he left school he returned to west London and had a short-lived job as a messenger at the BBC’s White City television studios.

George spent 11 months with the 10th Battalion Parachute Regiment of the Territorial Army which included training with assault rifles and machine guns. He used the name Steve Majors — inspired by the actor Lee Major who played Steve Austin in the television series The Six Million Dollar Man. He was also a probationary member of the Kensington and Chelsea Pistol Club during 1982.

George later claimed to be Tom Palmer, one of the SAS soldiers who took part in the 1980 Iranian embassy siege and boasted of serving in the Falkland Islands.

In 1981 he received a suspended jail sentence for indecent assault after grabbing a woman’s breasts in a car park. The following year he admitted attempting to rape a young mother at the door to her home and was jailed for 33 months.

Soon after his release, George was found by police hiding in the grounds of Kensington Palace — then the home of the then Prince and Princess of Wales — carrying a 12-inch hunting knife and 50 ft of rope. He was not charged with a crime.

George changed his name to Barry Bulsara and claimed to be the cousin of Queen singer Freddie Mercury. He left a card in his assumed name at Kensington Palace after Diana’s death.

At the time of Dando’s murder she was engaged to Alan Farthing, the surgeon-gynaecologist to Queen Elizabeth who went on to help deliver the two oldest children of the current Princess of Wales.

When police searched George’s flat they found rolls of undeveloped film containing photographs of members of the public including 2,248 images of 419 young women, most taken on the streets of west London or from television screens. After George’s arrest, 98 women claimed they were harassed by him.

None of the undeveloped photographs featured Dando but police found four copies of the BBC’s Ariel magazine published the day after her murder, with the presenter’s photograph on the cover.

They also discovered a holster for a pistol — which George claimed was a prop for his work as a stunt man — along with handwritten lists of blank-firing weapons and military and gun-devoted magazines. He admitted to having possessed replica weapons.

By the time of George’s arrest, his father, Alfred, a former special police constable, was living in Australia; his mother, Margaret, a cleaner originally from Ireland, had recently suffered a stroke; one sister was dead and Diskin Bates was living in the Republic of Ireland.

Nigel Dando, Jill’s brother, was working as a journalist at the time of her murder and said he is “not surprised” by the continued interest in the case.

“She was a major TV celebrity whose murder has never been solved,” he said. “Given the people involved and the nature of what happened, and the fact it still hasn’t been solved, this is still going to go on and on until someone is put behind bars.”

He believes it is “very unlikely” someone will now be convicted of the killing “but you can never say never and we live in hope”.

When considering the possibility that Ulemek was the killer, he said the “biggest question mark is if this guy was in the country at the time”.

Dando’s brother said her family are not marking the 25th anniversary of her murder, adding. “We remember Jill everyday, we still miss her and always will do.”

The police appealed widely for information on the murder

A timeline of the murder of Jill Dando​

April 26, 1999
7.25am Dando’s fiancé left his home where she was staying in Bedford Close, Chiswick, west London.
10am Dando left the house in her dark blue BMW convertible.
Unknown Barry George left his home in Crookham Road, Fulham, west London.
11.20am and 11.25am Dando visited Cope’s fishmongers on Fulham Road, Fulham, where she took a telephone call at 11.23am.
11.31am A second telephone call went unanswered by Dando. Richard Hughes, a neighbour in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, hears bleeps from a BMW car alarm, footsteps and a scream before seeing a man walking away “wearing a dark waxed coat”.
11.42am Helen Doble saw Dando’s body slumped against her front door and called 999.
11.50am Staff at the Hammersmith & Fulham Action for Disability advice centre in Greswell Street note George’s arrival appearing agitated carrying a plastic bag of paperwork.

Milorad Ulemek is the latest proposed perpetrator. Now in jail in Serbia he was previously a part of a hit squad acting on the orders of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic
AP

The suspects and the theories that surrounded the case​

Barry George: The obsessive stalker and convicted sex offender with an interest in firearms who worked briefly for the BBC and lived 500 yards away from Dando’s home.
A Serbian hitman: Dando, who had recently hosted a fundraiser for Kosovan refugees, was killed in revenge for a Nato attack on a Belgrade television station in which 17 people died.
Fashion attacker: A hitman mistook her for another BBC journalist, Lisa Brinkworth, who also lived in Fulham, a Paris court heard in 2022. Brinkworth, 56, had gone undercover for a documentary exposing sex abuse at a Paris model agency.
Underworld hit: Murdered by a London underworld gang in revenge after Dando reported about them for Crimewatch.
IRA target: The Metropolitan Police were contacted by a woman claiming the IRA were responsible for the murder.
Russian mafia: Dando was killed on the orders of a Russian gang boss because she rejected his advances while filming a holiday show in Cyprus.
Kenneth Noye: Dando interviewed Danielle Cable, then 19, for a Crimewatch appeal after her boyfriend Stephen Cameron, 21, was stabbed to death in a road rage attack on the M25 in 1996. Noye was awaiting extradition from Spain at the time of Dando’s murder and was later convicted of killing Cameron.

 

[Inspector Evans]

Richard Hughes said in the court trial in 2001 that she would often come back to her house on a Monday so there was a relative pattern there if not clockwork to pick up post and do some admin.

If you watch the Crimewatch from May 1999 there were loads of sightings from builders, postman and a traffic warden of a couple of well dressed people hovering around her property on the morning of April 29th in Gowan Avenue so don't think it was a case of a random passer by just seeing her get out of her car and deciding to murder her there and then, area was quietly being stalked out.

Been to that part of London many times but never actually walked down Gowan Avenue so no idea how busy or not it is at 11am on a weekday morning. Does seem incredible to me the killer could just jog down the street and fade into general life but of course in 1999 CCTV wasn't as advanced as it is today. You'd have thought the police would've done checks on everyone passing into range in the nearest cameras around the area in the hours after unless it was just too grainy?

Nearly two years since I posted this. Seems this thread moved on considerably with the recent Netflix documentary series.

Anyway I went to a Fulham match two months ago so noting it's ten minutes walk to the ground from there I got off at Fulham Broadway tube and found 29 Gowan Avenue....

Of course over two decades had passed and from reading this thread seems Jill's house had a tree and a hedge. Neither were there anymore so the patio and door were very visible from the other side of the road which may not have been as apparent in 1999 (given the 10 minute delay between the shooting and Helen Doble dialling 999).

Jill's house was very close to a busy main road. Munster Road a typical London cut through. A primary school across the road which would've been there in 1999. From what I remember there were shops aswell right by entrance to Gowan Avenue (which possibly may not have been there in 1999).

I visited at 2.15pm on a Saturday afternoon so ultimately that's a different experience to half 11 on a Monday morning. From looking at the house I would conclude someone could linger around if they kept moving about rather than just standing in a fixed spot.

It's very possible someone could've been across Munster Road looking towards 29 Gowan Avenue, seen a car pulled up and park right outside, cross the road, cross Gowan Avenue and catch up with Jill Dando just as she was opening the gate.

Feels more credible to me than someone standing right outside her house as it's an incredibly tight and narrow space and she'd have noted the individual's presence as soon as she got out of the car. She clearly didn't feel in any danger actually getting out of the car so clearly didn't note anyone of significance in her eyeline at that point.

It was quite interesting visiting the actual scene to get a bit more perspective of it compared to just watching endless footage. The road I actually live on is far wider and there's an alleyway across the street that leads to a little pond area so hypothetically someone could commit a murder round here (hopefully not) and then in 5 minutes be the other side of the estate and not really be seen/linked to the scene.

This is a very typical boxed in London residential street. Very tight. If you were walking down or up the street as same time as the killer was leaving the scene you wouldn't be able to avoid them on the pavement, someone would have to step into the road. Same as you'd have to be driving pretty slowly turning into Munster avenue so no more than 20mph and probably less with the parked cars.

I walked down Gowan Avenue and within 2 minutes you come to another junction. Can do a loop and end up walking up another street up to Munster Road again so possible some sort of escape vehicle was there. More a ten minute walk to get down to Bishop's Park. If the killer did dispose of the weapon in the Thames then they'd have been in the vicinity of the area for a good twenty minutes.

So that's all I can really add. If I had to decide either way I've always leaned on professional hit but who/why not sure. Don't think it was Crimewatch link. She did that for years and nothing. She did the Kosovo appeal and was dead within two weeks....

With Barry George the issue I always have is he goes in the disability centre at 11.50am according to the above timeline and starts requesting alibi assurance. This was 1999. How on earth did he know something had happened to Jill Dando at that point? The newsflash on BBC wasn't until 2pm I think? (Going on the archive footage it wasn't included in the main lunchtime bulletin). It would've been cleverer of George to go into the centre in the afternoon as then he could've just said he'd seen the media reports given his lack of employment. Or just gone in the morning and not mentioned it.

What did he know at that time compared to everyone else? This incident didn't happen in a big open space where a crowd could gather and start gossiping. Jill Dando wasn't discovered for another 10 minutes after the stabbing so only a few people knew at that point her fate. The killer, neighbours on that street and seemingly Barry George if he's asking for an alibi approx 10 minutes later. The Dando family hadn't been informed at that point.

Just one of those cases where everyone interested will still be speculating in 25 years time sadly.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

More from BG in the Times today:

The only person convicted of murdering Jill Dando insists he can “prove” his innocence and wants Scotland Yard to reopen the investigation.

The shooting of the BBC newsreader, host of Crimewatch and presenter of Songs of Praise on April 26, 1999, remains one of the UK most high-profile unsolved crimes.

Barry George was convicted of her murder in 2001 but he was freed from prison in 2008 after a second Old Bailey jury unanimously found him not guilty. Despite the acquittal, his claim for compensation for the eight years he spent in jail has been dismissed.

Before the 25th anniversary of the murder on Friday, George told The Times: “I can prove my innocence. I just need to go back to the Supreme Court and say this is the proof I did not do this so I deserve compensation.”

Dando, 37, was shot in the back of the head as she arrived at her home in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, west London. The case is surrounded by rumours that the presenter was the target of London gangsters, murdered on the orders of a model agency boss or a victim of mistaken identity.

Milorad Ulemek, a convicted Serbian assassin, was named by the Daily Mirror this week as a possible suspect, after a former police expert said he could not be ruled out as a mystery man recorded on CCTV at a train station close to Dando’s home.

George, 64, now lives a reclusive lifestyle on the outskirts of Cork in the Republic of Ireland.

His sister, Michelle Diskin Bates, campaigned to overturn his conviction and now highlights the plight of other victims of miscarriage of justice.

Barry George and his sister Michelle Diskin Bates want to be able to present evidence proving his innocence in court

“There is no court Barry can use in this land to say ‘I can prove I did not kill Jill’,” she said. “We need a court where people like Barry can go to prove his innocence and say ‘Here is the evidence that I am not guilty’. He has irrefutable proof that he was somewhere else at the time she was murdered.

“Barry is trapped. Although the money from compensation would be nice, the importance would be an acknowledgement of his innocence. He needs the police to reopen the investigation.”

Diskin Bates, 69, said that because of her brother’s learning difficulties he does not fully understand the legal principle of being innocent unless proven guilty when on trial, but when seeking compensation being considered guilty unless you can prove your innocence.
She said her brother can prove he could not have shot Dando, returned home to change his clothes and then appeared at a disability advice centre within 20 minutes as claimed by police. The assassin was left-handed while George is right-handed and his autism and a learning disability means he is incapable of carrying out such an attack, added Diskin Bates.

Diskin Bates said her brother could not have moved between Dando’s home and a disability advice centre in the timeframe suggested by police

The key forensic evidence in George’s conviction was the discovery in his coat pocket of a single particle of gunshot residue. The Court of Appeal ordered a retrial after hearing evidence that the particle was just as likely to have come from an extraneous source as it was to have come from a gun fired by George.

Diskin Bates believes detectives were under such enormous pressure to catch Dando’s killer that they became “obsessed” with clues they believed pointed to her brother while overlooking evidence which proved his innocence.

She claims that potentially crucial evidence may have been covered-up after they discovered prosecutors obtained a “public interest immunity [PII]” certificate preventing information being disclosed on the grounds of national security.

Detectives identified more than 1,300 potential suspects before focusing on George, who lived 500 metres from Dando’s home. He was arrested in May 2000 following surveillance of his flat.

“What has happened is the police put on blinkers, not following evidence that did not match the theory that Barry was guilty,” said Diskin Bates, from Northampton. “They lost their objectivity.”

She says her brother was an “easy target” for police as he was considered a “local weirdo” with no relatives able to defend him. She acknowledges he was “no angel” with convictions for two sex attacks.

She believes her brother was failed by a criminal justice system like other more recent victims of miscarriages of justice include the wrongful prosecution of 900 sub-postmasters and Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in jail for a rape he did not commit.

“We must not keep covering the cracks, we need to improve the system,” said Diskin Bates, who has written a book about her brother’s case, Stand Against Injustice.

Following Dando’s murder, the BBC received a call saying she was killed in revenge for a recent Nato attack on a Belgrade television station in which 17 people died. Weeks earlier the presenter hosted a television appeal which raised £54 million for Kosovan refugees who fled Serbian paramilitaries during the Yugoslavia civil war.

Ulemek, a former member of the French Foreign Legion, was a part of a hit squad acting on the orders of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslavian president . He was convicted of the murders of Ivan Stambolic, the former Serbian president, who was shot in the back of the neck in 2000, and Zoran Djindjic, the prime minister, who was shot in 2003.

Ulemek has also given evidence that he was told about the murder of Slavko Ćuruvija, 49, newspaper owner, who was shot outside his home in Belgrade 15 days before Dando was targeted. Aleksander Kovacevic, Ulemek’s lawyer, said Ulemek, who is serving a 40-year jail sentence, did not want to comment about the possible links to Dando’s murder.

Hamish Campbell, the now retired detective chief superintendent who led the investigation into Dando’s murder, said inquiries were made with the intelligence services about the possibility of Serbian involvement but has said: “I didn’t ever subscribe to it”.

He said that the new focus on Ulemek as a suspect risks “picking out single, discrete pieces of material from a vast case and running with a theory at the expense of the wider picture”.

“All the sightings and witnesses were drawn up in detailed analysis charts, showing timings, clothing and people descriptions, and the differences and discrepancies,” he said.

Campbell investigated a string of high-profile cases before retiring from Scotland Yard. He is now assistant commissioner of Jamaica’s Independent Commission of Investigations, the island’s police complaints watchdog.

He said that e-fit images of four potential suspects were produced, but only a picture of a “sweating man” seen running across Fulham Palace Road to a bus stop was released. By November 1999 the inquiry dismissed that e-fit as it was not the man seen by Dando’s neighbours following the shooting.

Campbell said the “sweating man” e-fit is a different person from the “running man” briefly seen by a woman as she drove down Fulham Palace Road. The driver said this week that she was sure the man she saw running was Ulemek.

The investigator said Dando’s neighbours described the suspect they saw close to her house as “chunky” and “medium build”, while the woman driver said the running man was of “slim build” and wearing different clothes.

Police never traced a metallic blue Range Rover seen leaving the road opposite Gowan Avenue before speeding through red traffic lights towards Putney Bridge, leading to speculation the gunman had an accomplice.

A month after Dando’s murder, the woman driver matched the “running man” to CCTV footage from the Putney Bridge Tube station. Campbell said the video was timed about noon — at least 27 minutes after Dando was shot when the gunman would be expected to be far away.

Campbell said the finding by a police CCTV analyst that there is “limited support” for a link between the man in the image and Ulemek would apply to numerous people. He said that the circulation of the CCTV still in the Police Gazette in 2000 did not lead to any new information.

The suggestion that the gunman escaped by catching a bus and then a train does not match the claims that it has the “hallmarks of a well thought out military operation”, he added.

Scotland Yard said in a statement: “The investigation is now in an inactive phase, which means that it is not currently subject to routine reviews. However, no unsolved murder is ever closed and detectives would consider any new information provided to assess whether it represented a new and realistic line of inquiry.”

George was diagnosed with personality disorders as a child and has used assumed names including Steve Majors, Paul Gadd and Barry Bulsara

George does not naturally fit the profile of a hitman. He was diagnosed with severe epilepsy and personality disorders as a child. After initially being educated at a school for pupils with educational and behavioural problems he was moved to residential special school in Sunningdale, Berkshire, where he told other children there to call him Paul Gadd, the real name of the pop singer Gary Glitter.

When he left school he returned to west London and had a short-lived job as a messenger at the BBC’s White City television studios.

George spent 11 months with the 10th Battalion Parachute Regiment of the Territorial Army which included training with assault rifles and machine guns. He used the name Steve Majors — inspired by the actor Lee Major who played Steve Austin in the television series The Six Million Dollar Man. He was also a probationary member of the Kensington and Chelsea Pistol Club during 1982.

George later claimed to be Tom Palmer, one of the SAS soldiers who took part in the 1980 Iranian embassy siege and boasted of serving in the Falkland Islands.

In 1981 he received a suspended jail sentence for indecent assault after grabbing a woman’s breasts in a car park. The following year he admitted attempting to rape a young mother at the door to her home and was jailed for 33 months.

Soon after his release, George was found by police hiding in the grounds of Kensington Palace — then the home of the then Prince and Princess of Wales — carrying a 12-inch hunting knife and 50 ft of rope. He was not charged with a crime.

George changed his name to Barry Bulsara and claimed to be the cousin of Queen singer Freddie Mercury. He left a card in his assumed name at Kensington Palace after Diana’s death.

At the time of Dando’s murder she was engaged to Alan Farthing, the surgeon-gynaecologist to Queen Elizabeth who went on to help deliver the two oldest children of the current Princess of Wales.

When police searched George’s flat they found rolls of undeveloped film containing photographs of members of the public including 2,248 images of 419 young women, most taken on the streets of west London or from television screens. After George’s arrest, 98 women claimed they were harassed by him.

None of the undeveloped photographs featured Dando but police found four copies of the BBC’s Ariel magazine published the day after her murder, with the presenter’s photograph on the cover.

They also discovered a holster for a pistol — which George claimed was a prop for his work as a stunt man — along with handwritten lists of blank-firing weapons and military and gun-devoted magazines. He admitted to having possessed replica weapons.

By the time of George’s arrest, his father, Alfred, a former special police constable, was living in Australia; his mother, Margaret, a cleaner originally from Ireland, had recently suffered a stroke; one sister was dead and Diskin Bates was living in the Republic of Ireland.

Nigel Dando, Jill’s brother, was working as a journalist at the time of her murder and said he is “not surprised” by the continued interest in the case.

“She was a major TV celebrity whose murder has never been solved,” he said. “Given the people involved and the nature of what happened, and the fact it still hasn’t been solved, this is still going to go on and on until someone is put behind bars.”

He believes it is “very unlikely” someone will now be convicted of the killing “but you can never say never and we live in hope”.

When considering the possibility that Ulemek was the killer, he said the “biggest question mark is if this guy was in the country at the time”.

Dando’s brother said her family are not marking the 25th anniversary of her murder, adding. “We remember Jill everyday, we still miss her and always will do.”

The police appealed widely for information on the murder

A timeline of the murder of Jill Dando​

April 26, 1999
7.25am Dando’s fiancé left his home where she was staying in Bedford Close, Chiswick, west London.
10am Dando left the house in her dark blue BMW convertible.
Unknown Barry George left his home in Crookham Road, Fulham, west London.
11.20am and 11.25am Dando visited Cope’s fishmongers on Fulham Road, Fulham, where she took a telephone call at 11.23am.
11.31am A second telephone call went unanswered by Dando. Richard Hughes, a neighbour in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, hears bleeps from a BMW car alarm, footsteps and a scream before seeing a man walking away “wearing a dark waxed coat”.
11.42am Helen Doble saw Dando’s body slumped against her front door and called 999.
11.50am Staff at the Hammersmith & Fulham Action for Disability advice centre in Greswell Street note George’s arrival appearing agitated carrying a plastic bag of paperwork.

Milorad Ulemek is the latest proposed perpetrator. Now in jail in Serbia he was previously a part of a hit squad acting on the orders of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic
AP

The suspects and the theories that surrounded the case​

Barry George: The obsessive stalker and convicted sex offender with an interest in firearms who worked briefly for the BBC and lived 500 yards away from Dando’s home.
A Serbian hitman: Dando, who had recently hosted a fundraiser for Kosovan refugees, was killed in revenge for a Nato attack on a Belgrade television station in which 17 people died.
Fashion attacker: A hitman mistook her for another BBC journalist, Lisa Brinkworth, who also lived in Fulham, a Paris court heard in 2022. Brinkworth, 56, had gone undercover for a documentary exposing sex abuse at a Paris model agency.
Underworld hit: Murdered by a London underworld gang in revenge after Dando reported about them for Crimewatch.
IRA target: The Metropolitan Police were contacted by a woman claiming the IRA were responsible for the murder.
Russian mafia: Dando was killed on the orders of a Russian gang boss because she rejected his advances while filming a holiday show in Cyprus.
Kenneth Noye: Dando interviewed Danielle Cable, then 19, for a Crimewatch appeal after her boyfriend Stephen Cameron, 21, was stabbed to death in a road rage attack on the M25 in 1996. Noye was awaiting extradition from Spain at the time of Dando’s murder and was later convicted of killing Cameron.

Oh boy. If BG had such evidence of his innocence, why not use it in two prior trials or a previous compensation hearing? Doesn't pass the smell test 25 years later.

Also, the whole left hand or right hand thing. Jill was shot in the left side of the head and the bullet passed through almost straight into the front door. Her head must have been turned sideways, almost parallel to the door. From that position you could shoot with the left OR the right hand and IMO the wound and trajectory would be virtually identical.

This GIF is a small sequence from the Netflix documentary, where BG (inadvertently) proves he could have controlled Jill with his left hand and shot with his right. The female model even begins to twist around to her left in the exact way it's believed Jill did. This shows exactly how BG could have done it and IMO did do it: