Jill Dando was one of the most famous names on television when she was shot as she arrived home after running errands and 26 years on, her murder remains unsolved
It is more than half a century since the nation was left stunned when newsreader Jill Dando was gunned down outside of her home. The well-known star, who fronted hit shows including Crimewatch and Holiday, was shot on the doorstep of the house in Fulham, South-West London on Monday, April 26, 1999.
Jill, who was just 37 when she died, was one of the most famous journalists in the country at the time after rising through the ranks of local journalism to co-present the BBC Breakfast News in 1988. Her murder in cold blood remains one of Britain’s biggest unsolved crimes but today, The Mirror has spoken to another key witness in the case.
Last year, a female witness told us she was certain she had seen ruthless assassin Milorad Ulemek sprinting along the Fulham Palace Road, in South West London, 600 metres away from Jill’s home on Gowan Avenue. Now, a van driver who saw a man sprinting in front of his Ford Transit on the same stretch of road has said he looked like Ulemek.
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Ulemek, 57, led a unit of hitmen who targeted opponents of brutal dictator Slobadan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while being tried for war crimes. When Jill was shot, the Yugoslav war was raging and UK planes were bombing Serbia. Within hours of her murder, the BBC took a call claiming the death was in response to the attack.
On the day she died, Jill had woken up at the home of her fiancé Alan Farthing, where she had been spending the majority of her time in the run-up to their wedding in five months’ time. She made Alan breakfast in bed before he left for work and planned on heading out to a charity lunch at a Mayfair hotel.
Jill had met the consultant gynaecologist in November 1997, a year after the end of a seven-year relationship with BBC news executive Bob Wheaton. They announced their engagement in January 1999 with the wedding set for September 25 that year. “It was apparent to all of those who knew them that the couple were deeply in love,” said prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw QC at the retrial of Barry George, the man convicted of killing Jill before he was acquitted.
At around 10am on April 26, the star drove her blue BMW convertible to a garage on the A4, where she picked up petrol and milk. She then drove to Hammersmith in West London to visit the Kings Mall shopping centre. Jill visited three shops; Ryman’s, Dixons and The Link to pick up stationery items including fax paper, leaving the mall at 11am to head back towards her Fulham home.
Customs and Excise surveillance expert Sarah Pusey saw Jill enroute, telling the Daily Mail: “I was in a queue of traffic going towards Hammersmith. She was in a soft-top car coming the other way… I remember thinking ‘That’s Jill Dando’ and smiling across at her. She smiled back.”
Jill’s friendliness to a fan was no surprise to those who knew her. “Jill Dando is universally described as a genuinely warm, kind and generous woman,” Jonathan Laidlaw QC told jurors. “She was very popular with her colleagues and the public at large, easy to work with, and had none of the pretensions that are sometimes associated with those who achieve fame.”
Jill bought Dover sole at Copes fishmongers on Fulham Road, which she was planning to cook for her fiancé for dinner that night. Phone records showed she made four calls while she was out at the shops – the first three to a friend, 192 directory inquiries and her agent’s assistant.
The presenter also rang a West End theatre to confirm a booking for tickets to see Abba’s musical Mamma Mia!, which she’d bought for her partner as a birthday present. The last call Jill took is said to have been at 11.23am and from the background noise heard by the caller, it’s believed Jill was still in the fishmongers.
She would be killed less than ten minutes later. One of her neighbours, Richard Hughes, said he heard a car alarm bleep, footsteps and a ‘startled scream’. Vida Saunders, a resident of the quiet street in Fulham, saw Jill slumped on her doorstep in a pool of blood, still clutching her house keys in one hand.
Vida told Mail Online in 2019 that she was having tea at a neighbour’s home when another friend, Helen Doble, knocked at the door and begged her to come with her to an address in the next street. Ms Doble had walked past a disturbing scene and wanted someone else to see it too.
“I don’t think I fully grasped what I was going to see and it seems odd now, with hindsight, but I took my mug of tea with me,” she said. “She was in a pool of blood, and I noticed her lips were blue and there were some small drips of blood running from her nose. I think we knew immediately that she was critically injured.
“She was still clutching a set of keys in one hand, probably her door keys or possibly her car keys. The handles of her handbag were over the other arm and her mobile phone was inside, ringing constantly.” After calling 999 and running to a nearby GP’s surgery to get help, the receptionist warned Vida that Jill was almost certainly dead and told her not to touch anything.
The star was taken to Charing Cross Hospital around 12.30pm where resuscitation attempts continued until 1.05pm, when she was pronounced dead. Police later blamed the extensive attempts to save Jill’s life for possibly compromising any forensic evidence, with her clothing ripped off and the ground around her body trampled by emergency workers.
Barry George was arrested for Jill’s murder in 2000 and spent eight years in jail before being released in 2008 when he was unanimously acquitted following a retrial. The murder has still not been solved.
This year, a Mirror investigation prompted a crucial eye witness to identify Serbian hitman Milorad Ulemek as the man she saw “running for his life” from the direction of the crime just minutes after Jill was killed. She also identified him as the man she saw in CCTV footage from nearby Putney Bridge Tube station, which was shown to her by police weeks after the murder.
A report by a facial recognition expert found there were “no differences” between the man in the CCTV image, captured around 30 minutes after her death, and the Serb assassin. Former specialist CCTV officer at Essex Police, Emi Polito: “I could find no significant differences that would permit the elimination of [Ulemek] as a candidate for Man X.”
Jill’s brother Nigel Dando, who took part in the Netflix series about her unsolved murder in 2023, is unsure if he believes Mr George did it. In a new interview, he told The Independent : “I don’t know. Who knows? One jury thought he did. Another jury in a retrial acquitted him.”
Nigel still had a small ounce of hope that an eyewitness or perpetrator would come forward with new information and finally solve the cold case. “Even after 25 years, although I’m not holding out too much hope, they may just suffer a prick of conscience and put their hands up and say, ‘Yeah, it was me’,” he said.
