RedHanded - Episode 348 - The Murder of Jill Dando

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Shot dead in broad daylight outside her house in West London – the killing of Jill Dando is one of Britain’s most high-profile murders. As one of the BBC’s best-known TV presenters through the 90s, Jill was in the living rooms of the British public every night, presenting the news, travel shows, and most famously, Crimewatch – in which she publicly campaigned to bring real criminals to justice. Yet despite enormous publicity and one of the UK’s most extensive police investigations to date, the identity of her killer is still mired in controversy.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of Britain's most bizarre and high-profile murders in living memory. At 11.32am on Monday 26th April 1999, BBC news presenter Jill Dando was shot once in the head at point-blank range on the doorstep of her own home in Fulham, West London. She died instantly. It was in many ways an impossible crime. Jill was a beloved household name, a bona fide celebrity. Her murder also took place in broad daylight in one of London's most affluent neighbourhoods. And the fact that she had been shot, gun crime in this country is exceedingly rare. Yet, nobody saw or heard basically anything.

Despite this, or perhaps because of this, the case exploded, with theories about Serbian hitmen, paedophile gangs, the IRA, jealous exes and crazed individuals all explored. But today, almost 25 years later, who killed Jill Dando and why is still a total mystery. I'd also say probably one of our most requested ones of all time. Can you believe it's been 25 years though? No. I feel like I remember this happening.

I don't know whether I remember it happening or whether, because it's so famous and so British, it's one that like my auntie will suggest to me at Christmas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely that. And when we got requests for it all the time, I was like, I don't know if it's it is interesting it's fucking mad and also just to put it into context because there'll be a lot of diana comparisons made today it was two years after diana was shot

um after diana was killed after the queen murdered diana the queen murdered diana um so you know it's definitely within our memory of things happening. Jill Wendy Dando was born on the 9th of November 1961. She grew up in Western Superman, a seaside town in the south of the UK, famous for its beach, riddled with quicksand, a helicopter museum, and, of course, having been the home of T4 on the Beach. And I read that i was like fuck me remember t4 on the beach i know because i was like i was like what is western

supermare famous for t4 on the beach when i say western supermare i just immediately say t4 on the beach and i think you have to be a certain age and british to remember what that was oh my god i saw a headline this morning that thoroughly depressed me about gen alpha we're past gen z now oh do you know what gen alpha is no it's the generation who have always since very early childhood had ipads netflix um and there was one other marker. Oh, Zoom classrooms. Oh. I know. Oh, they're fucked.

They're so fucked. Oh my God, I hate it. Yeah, so we're Gen Alpha. Oh, I don't like it. No, I don't like it at all either. But just to come back to Western Supermare, when you actually see it written down as a name and you say it out loud,

this is the first time I realized what a weird name of a place it is western super mare so i did look up the origins of the name do you have any idea hannah what it could mean it's not that exciting but i just wanted to let the people know is it to do with mare being the french word for sea? Yes, Latin. So it is the western part comes from Anglo-Saxon. Okay. And then the super mare comes from Latin. And you are correct with mare meaning sea. Okay.

Super means above. So it's basically the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Western above the sea. So there you go. Now we all know. Jill's father, Jack, and her older brother, Nigel, both worked in local journalism. And so it was no surprise that Jill wanted to follow the same route. As a child, she did well at her local community school

and was even named head girl in sixth form. What a loser. Don't be jealous. During her free time, Jill was part of the Amateur Dramatics Club and volunteered at the local hospital radio station. Once she finished school, Jill went off to Cardiff to study journalism at university. After graduating, Jill came home to Weston-Super-Mare

where she got a job at the local paper, the Weston Mercury. But it was clear early on that Jill was set for bigger things. She was a talented journalist and quickly gained a reputation for being popular with the general public. So after five years at the local paper, now in her mid-twenties, Jill landed a job at BBC Radio Devon in 1985. It was at this point that Jill Dando really proved what she could do. And after less than a year working on local radio, Jill got snapped up for TV. She started out working behind the scenes, but soon Jill got promoted to BBC Spotlight. Now for those of you who aren't

familiar with Spotlight, it's basically the BBC's like regional news show that comes on after the main news and is specific to your particular area. So they cover big local news items and then generally some fun tidbits like a local farmyard animal that's learned to play the drums or something. Do you remember, I think it was for our first ever tour and we did a BBC Radio Birmingham interview. Yes. And I can't remember the woman's name, but she asked us the same question three times. Oh my God. And I was like, oh wow, this is local radio, isn't it?

I think definitely local radio in the state it's in now, probably. Anyway, BBC Spotlight itself may not sound like that much of a big deal, but it really was, because it meant that Jill Dando was now the face of local news for millions of people in the southwest of the UK. And again, it was a role in which Jill Dando excelled. She was clever, but also unassuming, funny, but inoffensive. In other words, she was perfect for the BBC. So it was no surprise at all in 1988 when Jill moved to London to join the really big leagues, presenting both of the UK's biggest news broadcasts, the 2 o'clock and the 6 o'clock news on BBC One. And it really didn't get much bigger than that then.

Jill Dando spent over an hour a day on the screens of millions of homes in the UK. And it's not like it is now, with the BBC absolutely hemorrhaging viewers to independent news channels and the internet. Back then, everyone in the UK watched the BBC for their news. So Jill had made it. Though it hadn't been easy. Apparently when Jill first arrived in London, she was told that she needed to look less provincial. I hate it here. It just, oh my God. She was told that she needed new hair, new clothes,

basically a whole new look. And soon Jill transformed into the glamorous version of her that most of us remember today. And yeah, it's really harsh when they're talking about it in some of the documentaries about Jill. Like when she comes, she's sort of like, you know, fresh faced and like all sun kissed and weather beaten from growing up down the southwest. And they're like, um, no. And I hate to say it, though, but after they're done with her, she does look fucking great. Yeah, it's like when you see really early interviews of Claudia Winkleman without the fringe and it's like a dog on its hind legs.

It's like, what are you doing, Claudia? Yeah. So harsh transformation was forced upon Jill, which she arrived to London and in place Jill appeared on our screens with her iconic short blonde cut. If you don't know what Jill Dando looked like now would be a really good time to give her a google or jump on over to our instagram where no doubt there will be a picture of her there because you might notice that she bears a resemblance with none other than the people's princess Diana. In fact and I love this bit the hairdresser who did Jill's like iconic blonde haircut also did princess Diana's hair and there's long been speculation about which of the

two women rocked the look first. And he does confirm, in one of the documentaries I watched, that it was indeed Jill who had the cut first. Even if you weren't a national celebrity, that is such a claim to fame. Ah, she had the Diana cut first. Soon, Jill started a relationship with BBC executive Bob Wheatonaton who she would stay with for the next seven years. In 1993 Jill landed another dream gig as well as presenting the news. She also now hosted Holiday. Guess what that's about? It's about travel. Surprise. The BBC, because they didn't have any competition back then just phoning in they're just like holiday food music what else we got sport

so laugh we may but the gig really was the dream jill filmed 131 episodes from every corner of the world reviewing the most amazing travel experiences out there that that it's the best job isn't it yeah there was who who was it i think you really like her i think she's a master chef person and then she just did this travel show where she was just went to the best hotels in the world for no reason other than she wanted to monica galetti yes yeah so her and giles corinne who i've gone but the two of them do like the world's most amazing hotels yeah i want to do that yeah and they just go and review like the best hotels in the world and it's pretty cool

that's pretty cool if anyone wants to call our agent hotels starring hannah and sruti from a true crime podcast hotels Hotels what are good? Maybe we could do amazing hotels in which people were murdered. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody? Anybody? Sure.

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Now, I was going to play a little intro to Crime Watch because I thought it would be more iconic than it was, but I played it. I was like, I don't remember that. I don't remember that theme tune. I mean, I'll play it for you. You tell me if I am just misremembering the importance of this particular theme tune. That sounds wrong. It sounds like it's a fucking game show.

I also think that I confuse Crime Watch with Watchdog. Sure, sure, sure sure that i actually think would be a better theme tune for watchdog i feel like maybe the watchdog one was better let's have a listen watchdog theme so 90s though isn't it yeah this i remember they sound very similar now when you play them back to back actually again the bb BBC really fucking excelling itself creatively there. But anyway, we're not here to talk about Watchdog, we're here to talk about Crime Watch. Now most UK listeners, theme or no theme, will need no explanation of what Crime Watch was. But for everyone else, if you cannot guess, again from the incredibly creatively titled name for this show,

Crime Watch was a bi-monthly TV show broadcast on primetime BBC One, in which they would report on and recreate major unsolved crimes from around the UK. The hosts would then implore the watching British public to come forward with any potential evidence or theories that could help law enforcement. Now despite early scepticism by British police forces, the show actually proved to be a massive success, both in terms of viewing figures and in actually helping to solve crimes. Over the show's lifespan, roughly one in three of their appeals led to an arrest and one in five led to a conviction. In total, 57 murderers, 53 sex offenders,

and 18 paedophiles were convicted as a direct result of Crimewatch. Now, during Jill's time co-presenting the show alongside Nick Ross, Crimewatch covered and led to the convictions of some of the UK's most high-profile offenders. And every episode ended with the hosts telling the public don't have nightmares do sleep well and maybe i've not hit the tone right there they're not kind of being like

don't know it was very serious they were very they were genuinely like look this has happened but don't be freaked out and the clip i'm about to play you is just such a fucking horribly tragic clip of Jill being interviewed by some kids about her job at Crimewatch. Do you ever get worried about some of the things you see on Crimewatch? Oh, yes, you do. But the crimes that we show are so rare. You know, it's not something that you walk out into the street and say, oh, my gosh, the same thing's going to happen to me.

So, yeah, that clip is pretty dark with foreshadowing i ran into my friend yesterday well he was running i was walking and he just launched into this story out of nowhere he was i had a really dramatic weekend actually and i was like oh what's happened and he was like i was in alley pally at a gig and i walked outside the pub and there was a man on the floor who had been stabbed and i had to call the ambulance and i like stopped the bleeding with my shirt and the guy spoke no English and then so Will's on the phone to turn on his ambulance is there in four minutes so he was like yeah you just hear all these stories about like London and knife crime and blah blah but I've seen it now yeah in alley pally like and then he was like but the thing is it was my favorite shirt

and he was like but i couldn't be like oh do any of you guys oh god yeah so he's like now we have to go to the dry cleaner to get all the blood out and they're gonna think i'm a murderer now that is rough that is rough you're gonna have problems that mate but yeah i think that clip as well it's quite dark obviously because of everything that's about to happen in this episode but also because it's like a question we get asked quite often like oh how do you cope with researching all the horrible things you research and like doesn't it make you feel scared and i'm like i'm always like no it's really rare it's like not really it's not likely to happen to you. It's like, blah, blah, blah. But I don't walk past white vans. Yeah, but I don't walk past white vans.

And when Jill gave that comment in that interview, little did she know that on the 18th of May 1999, just four years after joining Crimewatch, they would run an episode dedicated entirely to reconstructing her own murder. On the 26th of April 1999, 37-year-old Jill Dando was heading home to Gowan Avenue in Fulham. By this point, she and the BBC exec Bob Wheaton

had been separated for about three years. And after a short fling with a National Park warden named Simon Basil, Jill had started a relationship with gynaecologist Alan Farthing. Fun fact, Alan Farthing would actually later go on to be the personal physician to the late Queen and deliver all of Kate Middleton's babies. Isn't that fun? That is fun. Imagine being the gynaecologist to the Queen. That's so weird. I know, I just...

I don't know why that's so, it's so weird. He gave the Queen smear tests.'s bonkers i i still i know this is very immature of me but let's go there i don't trust me or gynecologists i'm like why have you chosen this i mean look it's a question i've wondered because my gynecologist is male though i feel like i've set aside any trepidation because the first gynecologist is male though i feel like i've set aside any trepidation because the first gynecologist i had really fucked me up and she was a woman and then i went to him and like he saved me and now i'm okay so i'm all right but yes it's just it's just an interesting job the only the only thing i heard that made it make sense was um what's his name um this is going to her who's he oh i don't

jonathan k have i made that up adam k close yeah so he says in his book which was based on the edinburgh show and then it was a book and that was tv he said that he chose obstetrics and gynecology because the odds are better because people get born rather than die. So I was like, okay. That's nice. That I understand. He's also gay, so. But all the straight ones, they're just there perving on your vag.

I just think it's weird. I just think it's rude. Oh, my God. But yeah. But I'm also aware that that's me being immature the queen had a male gynecologist just rootling around let's move on let's move on i know alan davis has got a joke about how when the queen visits like a whatever um she has to have an allocated toilet that only she uses right sure, sure, sure.

And the Queen went to like fucking Beaconscott or something. And Alan Davis's friend was like managing the site. So he had to dedicate this toilet where only the Queen could go. And then she went and after she left, there was a pube on the seat and he kept it in a matchbox. Oh my God. Oh my God. You would. You would. I would you would i would one would one would the royal we would keep queen elizabeth's pube in a matchbox i thought all your pubes fell out after menopause

maybe she's playing a trick on her it's like a fucking horrible pube she got from she found on the floor and she just left it on the seat she was like ha bet that fucking dick will put this in a matchbox and keep it forever okay right i can't i didn't think i'd be thinking about the queen's vagina we've derailed ourselves let's get back on track alan farthing the gynecologist and and Jill had been set up by a mutual friend when his relationship with his then-wife had broken down. The couple hit it off and just a few months after Farthing's divorce came through, he and Jill announced their engagement,

with a wedding set for the 25th of September, 1999. And so the fact that Jill was at her house in Fulham at all that day was unusual. Because she'd been living with Farthing in Chiswick and rarely came back to her place on Gowan Avenue anymore. It turned out that the only reason Jill went there on the day she died was because her agent had faxed over some paperwork to her own house rather than to her fiancé's. It was 1999 after all. And this point becomes important later on when we start discussing suspects, so keep it in your brains. But sticking with the day in question, after running some errands, Jill arrived at her house at around 11.30am. Then, at around 11.32am,

a neighbour called Richard Hughes heard Jill scream. But he thought nothing of it. He just assumed that somebody had been surprised by a friend or was screaming with excitement. Now that might sound odd, but normality bias or normalcy bias is a very real thing. It's basically a form of cognitive bias which leads us to minimise something that perhaps should be a red flag. Like me not really believing that the road is closed if there's a road closed sign exactly it's like the idea of like if you come into your room and you're sure you didn't leave the pillow in that position but

you won't immediately think oh it must be because somebody's in the house and moving pillows around you're just going to think oh i must have done it and yeah i'm just not remembering it's because your brain doesn't want to constantly be on high alert. But it can also lead you to ignoring things that are quite important. And no doubt also the fact that Richard Hughes is like, that's probably nothing, was exacerbated by the fact that this all went down in Fulham. Not a place one might expect the worst.

So it would be another 10 minutes before Jill's other neighbour, Helen Doble, was walking home when she noticed a body lying on the doorstep of Jill's house, surrounded by a pool of blood. Thank you, ambulance service, hello. Hello, ambulance, I'm walking Longowan Avenue. It looks like there's somebody collapsed. Confidentially, it looks like it's Jill Dando, and she's collapsed in her door.

There's a lot of blood. Can you just approach and check that the lady's breathing for me? She doesn't look as if she's breathing. She's got blood coming from her nose. Her arms are blue. I just need to find out if she's breathing. Is the lady's chest going up and down? Oh, my God, no.

I don't think she's alive.'t worry i'm gonna get some help and i do think it's telling just to hammer home for everybody how famous jill dando was that in that call you hear helen say confidentially speaking it's jill dando like there are very few people that i think i would call 999 and feel confident enough to be like, it's this person, you must know who they are. Like, she's top tier celebrity at this point. So Jill was rushed to the hospital with a gunshot wound to her head. But there was little to be done. And at 1.03 in the afternoon, Jill Dando was declared dead.

Jenny Bond, Jill's shocked colleague, broke the news live on the afternoon. Jill Dando was declared dead. Jenny Bond, Jill's shocked colleague, broke the news live on the BBC. Within the past few minutes, police have confirmed that the BBC television presenter Jill Dando has been stabbed to death outside her West London home. She died in the ambulance on her way to hospital. There are no more details at the moment. The next scheduled bulletin is at 2.40. And I have to confess that when I think of Jill Dando, my brain presents me with an image of Jenny Bond. Oh, really? Yes. Maybe you've merged that news bulletin with Jill. Jill was the golden girl of TV. She was Britain's newsy sweetheart. The outpouring was unbelievable.

Even the Queen commented on the shock and grief of the nation. I did originally write in this, which is more than she did when Diana died, but she did comment, was it just that people didn't think she said enough when Diana died? Or did she not comment at all for ages? I can't remember.

That feels like something I should know. Yeah. Because she obviously got a lot of backlash after Diana died. Yeah, because she killed her. There was obviously the people who were like, you killed her. And then there was a lot of people who were like, in the tier below, who were like, I don't think you look sad enough. You haven't said enough.

You haven't been like publicly grieving enough. But it just puts into perspective that when Jill Dando died, the Queen commented. And it was the biggest news story for the BBC But it just puts into perspective that when Jill Dando died, the Queen commented. And it was the biggest news story for the BBC, after the death of Princess Diana two years before. Of course, the press flooded Gowan Avenue and an enormous investigation was launched, with both the papers and the police asking the same question. Who on earth would want to kill Jill Dando? And why? Now, despite how loved Jill was,

there were actually quite a few possibilities of who could have done this. It could have been a stalker or crazy fan. It could have been someone Jill knew personally, like an ex. Or it could have been linked to her work on Crimewatch. Maybe she'd helped put the wrong person away. Or possibly had she reported on something that had made her a target. Over the years, all of these possibilities would be explored by the police, making it at the time Britain's biggest police probe after the

Yorkshire Ripper. The investigation into Jill's death was named Operation Oxburgh, and it was headed up by senior investigating officer from the London Metropolitan Police, Hamish Campbell. In the BBC Panorama episode looking into Jill's death, Campbell talks about several of the challenges that they faced as investigators. Firstly, there was a very limited amount of forensic evidence available at the scene of the crime.

Which is putting it mildly. There's, like like literally so little. And that's because efforts to save Jill's life from the paramedics had contaminated the area and all the police were left with was a single ejected bullet casing and the gunshot residue left on the side of Jill's head from where she'd been shot. This was not a lot to go on

and the nature of the murder itself only made things more difficult because things just didn't quite fit. For example, on the one hand, killing Jill Dando, a high-profile TV presenter in broad daylight on a Monday morning in a very wealthy part of London, was about as high risk a murder as you could get. Surely anyone with a sense of self-preservation or common sense would have carried out the killing at a less conspicuous location and at a far less conspicuous time. Yet, on the other hand, the lack of forensic evidence and the efficiency of the crime pointed to a killer who was a. potentially quite well organised and b. not particularly emotionally attached. The quick act of grabbing somebody and shooting them in the side of the

head before running away is hardly intimate or particularly personal. And as Campbell and the investigators dug further into the case, the more inconsistencies appeared. A spent bullet casing was found at the scene. The bullet had clearly been tampered with. It had distinct markings around the front of the casing which looked as though it had been held in a vice. Analysis of the casing suggested that the tampering had been done so that the round contained less powder and therefore had a less explosive charge. Reducing the charge of a round is a common tactic when you want to reduce the noise that a gun produces when it's fired. A round with less powder not only produces a less

potent bang when it fires but it also means the bullet itself travels at a slower speed. This slower speed stops the bullet from passing a sound barrier when fired and it stops producing the characteristic whip crack noise that you normally hear. In fact, this is such a common way of reducing the noise that a bullet can make that you can actually buy subsonic rounds pre-made. But this person hadn't got theirs from a shop. They'd made it themselves. And what's interesting is that a subsonic round is usually used in tandem with a suppressor, but the scorch marks on Jill's head ruled that out.

Further analysis of the bullet casing also found that it had been modified to be fired from a replica or decommissioned pistol, a pistol that more than likely was never designed to fire a live round and may only have had the capacity, therefore, to fire a single bullet. So, this person doesn't seem to have had access to exactly what they needed to carry out the quietest killing possible using a gun. It seems that they used a replica or decommissioned gun, they didn't have a suppressor, and they didn't have subsonic bullets, they'd made it themselves.

And this tells us that they knew enough to tamper with the bullet to achieve what they wanted anyway. But then, what kind of killer goes to such effort to carry out a quiet kill, but then take such a huge risk by committing the act with just a single-shot pistol in broad daylight with no suppressor? This was the question bothering the Met. And at first, the official police statement on the inquiry was that the killing looked like a professional hit. And there are several factors that lead to this conclusion. First and foremost, shortly after Jill's murder, the BBC switchboard received several troubling phone calls from people claiming responsibility for the murder and suggesting that others might be next. Some of these calls claim to be from groups linked with

Serbian groups fighting in the Kosovo War. Obviously, we don't have time to sum up the entirety of the Kosovo War, so instead we've got a very, very brief red-handed rundown. The Kosovo War was fought between the ethically Albanian Muslim population of Kosovo and the Christian populations of Serbia and Yugoslavia. If you've listened to our episode on Rasputin, you will already know that literally everything to do with global politics is to do with Serbia. The Serbian police and the Yugoslavian military had committed to ethnically cleansing the Yugoslavian-controlled Kosovo, killing thousands and displacing millions of Kosovo Muslims. In February 1998, war broke out between the two sides and NATO stepped in to back Kosovo. The war eventually ended in 1999 after a peace agreement. 1.5 million Albanians who were displaced were allowed to return, while most Serbs left Kosovo. However, the conflict continued with the Kosovars, then attempting their own ethnic cleansing of the remaining Serbs left Kosovo. However, the conflict continued with the Kosovars, then attempting their own ethnic cleansing of the remaining Serbs from Kosovo.

What does any of this have to do with Jill Dando? Good question. Three weeks before her murder, Jill presented a televised appeal for aid on behalf of Kosovo refugees displaced by the fighting. On top of that, not long before this appeal, NATO forces bombed the Serbian national TV station as part of an airstrike campaign. According to the callers, who phoned the BBC to say that they had killed Jill, they were from pro-Serbian groups and that Jill Dando's murder was in response to these two incidents. Naturally, these claims were taken

incredibly seriously by the Met, especially given the fact that another journalist had been murdered less than two weeks before Jill in Belgrade because of the same issue. However, according to the Met, neither they nor any of the UK's intelligence agencies could find any link between Jill's murder and the Kosovo war, other than the phone calls. So in lieu of any actual other evidence, these calls were eventually concluded to be a hoax. However, the police still believed that evidence pointed towards a professional killing, or at least an experienced killer, and so they started looking at other motives, the most obvious of which was Jill's work on Crimewatch.

Given how many serious criminals had been convicted directly off the back of Crimewatch appeals, there seemed to be a compelling argument that one of them may have targeted Jill as revenge. The trouble with this line of inquiry was that there was no CCTV evidence that Jill was followed before she arrived at her house on the 26th of April. And Jill was so rarely at her house, since she lived in Chiswick with her fiancé Alan Farthing, that the idea that a killer had just waited for her outside her home to shoot her and managed it on the day that she just so happened to go home because of those papers which had been faxed there,

seems like quite a big leap. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I

came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come.

This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. This lack of evidence that Jill had been followed made Hamish Campbell and the rest of the Mets' job a lot more difficult. Having initially concluded that Jill Dando's killing brought all the hallmarks of a contract killing, they were now struggling to find any further

evidence to back that up. And I do think like, I can kind of see it from both perspectives with the contract killing. The idea that this person didn't seem to have access to the gun that would have just been most efficient to do it kind of makes me feel like what sort of contract killer doesn't but then on the other hand i'm like maybe that's the kind of killer who knew exactly how to sort of put together an ad hoc gun that would do the job just as well and would be almost impossible to trace because it's a decommissioned gun that just had one bullet in it you're not going to even be able to say it's this specific gun that we're looking for so i don't know i can see why they think it is a hit. But like I said, with no further evidence, they're forced to look at the only two other options.

The killer was either somebody who knew Jill personally, or a quote-unquote crazed individual, as they put it. As for the first option, Jill's ex-partners and colleagues were all thoroughly interviewed. The only person of note was Bob Wheaton, her BBC exec ex. And there is something interesting here, because Jill Dando had transferred Wheaton £35,000 at the end of their relationship. When asked about this, Wheaton described this huge sum of money as, quote, a gift, not a loan. Now, why exactly Jill gave her ex this much money is still kind of unclear. In one of the documentaries I watched, he said it was because they had bought and shared a house together.

And although the house was to be bought in his name and he didn't ask Jill for any money, she had wanted to contribute. But then I'm like, why did she give it to you after you had broken up I don't know I think that's like a clearing the decks thing maybe you know maybe maybe it was it was just like look I've met a new guy I'm happy oh I guess it would have been before that yeah maybe it was just like I don't want anything hanging over my head from this relationship. Here you go. And I guess the one thing that makes people question the money situation, but I totally take your point that it's clearing the decks, is because Wheaton, by his own admission, was hardly strapped for cash.

So people were like, so why did she give you $35,000? I don't know. But regardless, after looking into him, the police were convinced that Wheaton had nothing to do with the murder. Then the police turned their attention to John Roseman, Jill's agent. He had been one of the few people who knew Jill was going to her house on Gowan Avenue on the day that she was killed, because he was the one who had faxed those papers there for her. It turned out that Roseman had a bit of a temper. He threatened someone with a baseball bat once.

And he'd also written a fictional book about an agent whose clients get mysteriously killed. And one of them was even shot. The information on why exactly Wheaton and Roseman were ruled out was never publicly released. But it does look like they just didn't have anything to tie either man to the murder. And also, Alan Farthing, he would have been the man I would have looked at first because he was Jill's fiancé. We know most people are killed by somebody that they know.

So they look at the exes, they look at the agent. There is really no mention of an investigation into Alan Farthing. I'm not saying he should be or he is a viable suspect and they ignored it for xyz reason but there's no explanation. He must just have had a rock-solid alibi that it's not even worth mentioning. So this left the police with no other option but to start searching for a quote-unquote raised individual. Now with Jill being a legit celebrity watched every day by millions of people around the UK, the list of people who might have a crazed obsession with her

was absolutely enormous. Jill's fan mail was sifted through and several concerning letters were found with at least one particular fan described as being obsessed with her. However, this did nothing to narrow down the pool, with around 2,000 people initially considered to be potential suspects. So everything the police had was sent to the National Crime Faculty to try and come up with a potential profile for the killer. And based on the fact the case was so high profile, and yet not a single person had come forward with a shred of evidence, they concluded that Jill Dando's killer was a loner who had difficulty maintaining friendships and relationships,

which seems vague and also seems like we've heard it a hundred million times. But this new information was released to the public and a few new pieces of evidence did actually show up. Yeah, it's a weird one, because they're literally just like, probably just a loner. And I'm like, why does that turn up any information? I think it's just, every time you do an appeal, you'll get more leads, you'll get more information, and I think that's what's happened here.

So mainly these new bits of evidence that turned up, or I should say new tips that came in, consisted of people claiming to have spotted suspicious-looking men in and around the area of Fulham the day that Jill was murdered. The postman who delivered mail to Jill's house on Gowan Avenue claimed that on the 26th of April he noticed he was being watched by a mysterious dark-haired man. Someone else came forward to say that at 11.40, so around 10 minutes after the shooting, they'd spotted a man crouching by some railings in a nearby park, having what appeared to be a

hushed conversation on his mobile phone. Then a driver reported that at 11.50am that day, he had to brake suddenly when a man ran out into the road, seemingly running away from Gowan Avenue. These sightings were sort of lumped together, and an e-fit was produced of a generic dark-haired man. He was nicknamed the Sweating Man, because several witnesses mentioned that he was indeed very sweaty. The police released this e-fit to the public, and as you can imagine, it turned up a whole bunch of leads but again nothing solid.

Until, that was, a man called James Shackleton turned himself in saying that he was the fit man but he hadn't killed Jill. James Shackleton was a strange man. He was an undertaker in Shepherd's Bush and he claimed that he was in that area in Fulham that day because he was collecting wood to make coffins with. Like from the park? Is that how people make coffins? I don't like that. No don't think that sounds correct. I saw a tweet the other day someone had like a really gnarled overgrown tree in their garden and their neighbour had put a note through the the letterbox saying please can you cut down your tree of horrors because it whispers to me at night. I thought you were going to say they started leaving notes in the gnarled tree. That's even worse. Stop whispering to me.

So he says that he's collecting wood to make coffins. And then after his wood collecting trip he started to run because he was being chased by some other man yeah maybe he wanted his wood yeah that's his explanation for why he was sweating and running but he later said that he was sweaty because he'd also just run a half marathon it's a busy day police, obviously aware of how suspicious this all sounded, arrested Shackleton and searched his house. But, again, there was no evidence linking him to the crime. Shackleton was an eccentric weirdo who pretended to be an aristocrat

and had, in fact, previously inserted himself into criminal cases. And this was as high-profile a case as you could get in the UK. So he probably was just wasting police time for attention. Soon after this, the police fell down yet another rabbit hole. A parking warden claimed to have seen a blue Range Rover parked illegally on Gowan Avenue on the day of the murder. She said she was going up to the vehicle to give it a ticket. But the driver inside suddenly sped away before she could finish writing it up a blue range rover was also spotted on cctv driving at high

speed away from the scene just minutes after the murder the frustrating thing however was that the blue range rover's license plate number was nowhere to be seen and while they tried desperately to find this car without the plate it was impossible, like just looking for a blue Range Rover in London, like good fucking luck. But the problem was also that they didn't actually have any evidence that the Range Rover was in fact linked to Jill's death anyway. It could have just sped away to avoid the ticket.

Eventually the police knew that they were running out of options and in a morbidly ironic twist, Crimewatch ran an appeal for Jill's murder. And after this went out, the police were swamped with more tips, and one seemed to stand out. It was from a man known only as Mr James. He told the police that a high-level, mafia-style group of people were behind Jill's murder.

They were angry at her for having helped bring down one of their organisation through Crimewatch. But after a lengthy investigation, it turned out that Mr James was lying. He was just trying to get rid of some people that he was in debt to. It's quite an elaborate plan, isn't it? It is. He is up to his fucking neck in debt to this gang. And he's like, they they did it they definitely did it but aside from this little botched side quest in total the police collected around 15 new eyewitness accounts of men hanging around gowan avenue on the days leading up to jill's murder as well as

on the day itself now these accounts did not fit together perfectly, and the description of the man or men all did vary quite a lot, some even contradicting the e-fit, but some matching it. However, the one that seemed the most consistent was of a man with dark hair, wearing a suit or smart jacket, and a three-quarter length trench coat. This description even roughly matched the man that Richard Hughes, who was of course Jill's neighbour who heard her scream, said he saw walking away from the property seconds after he heard the noise. So it was on this that the police focused

their efforts, looking for a dark-haired man who could be considered a loner who might own a three-quarter length trench coat. It was hardly that much to go on, especially at this stage of the investigation. But believe it or not, it did lead the police to their best suspect to date, Barry George. Barry's name, or one of his names, I should say, appeared on the police's radar within just two days of Jill's murder. On the 28th of April, a local taxi firm had phoned the police to report that on the day of Jill's murder, a man had come to their rank, not far from Gowan Avenue, desperately asking for a lift out of the area. The taxi company had even phoned back the next day on the 29th of April to say that the man had come back and asked for any CCTV footage that they might have had to prove his whereabouts

at the time of the shooting, even though no one was looking into him yet. This is literally days, like the day of the murder and days after the murder, and the taxi rank does the right thing and calls the police two times to tell them, you might really want to fucking look at this guy

because he's been here twice and he's asking a lot of weird questions. It's so alarming. And somehow, even though these calls were logged by the Met, they weren't picked up by the system being used to investigate Jill's death. Obviously, this is quite far from top-notch policing, because at first glance, Barry George should have been at the top of the list. So who is Barry George?

Well, he's a complicated character. He was born in London on the 15th of April 1960, making him 39 years old when he popped up in the police system. And over those 39 years, Barry George had had quite a life. He grew up in Hammersmith in West London and from what we can gather, had some kind of undiagnosed mental disability. As a result, aged 14, he was sent to Heathermount Boarding School for Children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. At school, Barry got a reputation as a bit of a fibber and compulsive impersonator. Apparently, Barry George loved nothing more than to take on the identity of famous people or their relatives.

Throughout school, he went by the name Paul Gad, the real name of then pop sensation and soon-to-be-convicted super mega serial pedo Gary Glitter. When he left school, Barry attempted to join the police, but he had no qualifications and he was rejected. Not that that stopped Barry. He used his rejection letter and the official police letterhead that it had been printed onto to fashion himself a fake search warrant. In 1980, he was arrested for impersonating a police officer using this fake warrant. Barry arrived in court wearing a Gary Glitter style glam rock outfit and gave his name as Paul Gad. He was convicted and fined £25, which is quite a lot is going on there. Yeah, there is a lot that you just said. But it's really important. Like, I feel like,

yeah, you've said a lot. And I think we are at risk of burying some of that information, particularly the fake warrant thing. I want us all to remember because a lot is made in Barry George's defence that he's just not smart enough to have committed a crime like the murder of Jill Dando and got away with it. I think we can argue that whoever killed Jill Dando may or may not have been smart, but they got away with it

because there was just a dearth of evidence there to point them in any direction. And because of how famous she was, there was so much noise that the police couldn't cut through. And Barry George and the fake warrant, I don't think he's quite as stupid as people,

or he'd make himself out to be. Now, that same year, Barry joined the Territorial Army, but was discharged after less than a year. After this, he started using the identity of Tom Palmer, who was a British Special Forces operative who'd been in the papers at the time for the siege on the Iranian embassy that same year. A few months later, George was arrested and charged with two counts

of indecent assault. He was convicted of one count and given a three-month sentence, suspended for two years. A year later, Barry George was injured after convincing a local stadium to employ him as Steve Major, a stuntman. And then Barry George attempted to jump over four double-decker buses on roller skates. It didn't end well for him, that particular escapade. Later that year, Barry George was arrested on the grounds of Kensington Palace with a knife wearing a balaclava. Depending on the reports you read, some say that he just had a handwritten poem with him for Prince Charles, but there are also allegations that he was absolutely obsessed with Princess Diana

and that he was there to kill her. And then things got darker still. Barry was convicted again for sexual assault and sentenced to 33 months in prison. He served 18. After a slightly quieter five years, he was then arrested again

for assaulting his new 35-year-old Japanese bride, Itsuko Tiyode, in October 1989. Just on the subject of Japan. Shogun on Disney+, top tier. I keep seeing adverts for it

and I'm like, okay, I'm going to watch it. Top tier Japanese nonsense. It's wonderful. Great. I've watched it all. I'm so in. I'm going to watch it.

That and also the new Netflix show that also looks quite good, Mr. Ridley or Ridley. I think it's just called Ridley. Oh, it's called... Oh, Ripley. Ripley, yeah. Ripley. So I think it's a serialised retelling of the talented Mr Ripley.

Yeah. And it looks very good. So Barry had managed to marry this Japanese lady because it was a marriage of convenience, an experience which Tia did describe as violent and terrifying. Eventually she dropped the charges against him, but Barry was arrested again in 1990 and 1992, both times for indecent assault but neither of

them went to court by the time Barry George was connected to the Jill Dando case a year after the shooting happened he was living in Hammersmith and going by the name Barry Bulsara and claiming to be the cousin of Freddie Mercury there are so are so many diana links well you know diana and freddie mercury were like really good mates no but did you not know this there's so many links so freddie mercury once very famously took princess diana to the voxel tavern in drag oh my god the links don't end and the police actually even only realise this because they're like, they see that he had been living under the name Barry Balsara, and that's a really not common name.

But apparently that was Freddie Mercury's real surname. And they were like, as in Freddie Mercury, and then realised, yes, he's actually pretending to be the cousin of Freddie Mercury. Like, this guy is fucking on one for years. And again, I just don't think because he acts crazy that he is therefore stupid. I mean we'll go on to talk about it but given his reputation as a mentally unstable sex offender and the fact that he lived just a few streets away from Gowan Avenue when Barry George did eventually pop up on the Met's radar in connection to Jill's murder, they brought him in for a chat pretty quickly. Which, like, it takes them a year before he appears on their radar, even though the calls from the taxi company

come in the day of Jill's murder. It is so bad. But from the off, it seems that the Met were convinced that Barry George was their man. He was exactly the mentally unwell loner that their criminal profile had described. And a search warrant was immediately issued for his home address. Now, the house itself was a mess, to put it mildly. It was absolutely packed with rubbish, half-eaten food, dirty plates and clothes, boxes upon boxes and stacks and stacks of newspaper. There was filth encrusted on every surface and piles of actual excrement in the rooms. Sweeping aside the rubbish and literal shit in Barry George's house, the police found a goldmine of very suspicious, but not very convictable evidence.

They found countless magazines about guns and newspapers, all detailing Jill's death. And they also found several camera rolls. The images were developed, and they turned out to be hundreds of candid shots of women from around the local area. Several of these photos were taken on Gowan Avenue itself. On top of this, George had noted down the addresses and licence plates of several local women. They also found a weapons holster in his house,

as well as the business card of an arms dealer, who... what... why... I know. There's so many questions. Just even having, like, name arms dealer on a business card seems completely bizarre to me. Maybe it said something else and the police are just like, that's that arms dealer we know. Right, right.

There was also a picture of George wearing a gas mask and a balaclava in the style of the British Special Forces and holding a semi-automatic pistol. A pistol that could conceivably have been modified to fire the round that killed Jill Dando. The nail in the coffin, though, was that when they searched Barry George's wardrobe, they found a three-quarter length trench coat

that appeared to match the description of several of the key witnesses. This coat was sent away for testing and inside the chest pocket, they found a single particle of the key witnesses. This coat was sent away for testing and inside the chest pocket they found a single particle of gunshot residue. This residue appeared to match the residue found in Jill Dando's hair and head wound. But, and there is a big but,

there are several issues with this piece of evidence. Firstly, matching gunshot residue is a bit like matching blood before we discovered DNA, and we only had blood types to go off. There are roughly five different types of gunshot residue that can be differentiated from one another. That means there is a one in five chance that any residue will be a match for another, and so it's far from conclusive. On top of this, a single particle of residue is incredibly small. In fact, it doesn't get any smaller,

and it isn't really enough to prove that somebody handled or even fired a weapon. A point to which we will come back later. For Hamish Campbell, all of this circumstantial evidence was more than enough to arrest Barry George, who was taken into custody a whole year after Jill's murder. During a long interrogation that followed, in which George just repeatedly insisted that he'd never owned or handled a gun even though they had a picture of it, he actually even denied that it was him in the picture that was found in his house. And he repeatedly changed his story as to where he was on the 26th of April 1999.

But he was eventually charged with Jill Dando's murder. This arrest and charge did not land particularly well with the press or with Jill's family. Both parties seemed to be of the opinion that Barry George was a very convenient local ne'er-do-well with a history of mental instability. In other words, he was an easy conviction and an easy way to wrap up the case that was putting a lot of pressure on the Met, and they do be doing that sometimes. This accusation, however, was vehemently denied

by Hamish Campbell and the Metropolitan Police, but they would say that, wouldn't they? And the case eventually went to trial in February 2001 and went on for almost four months. Barry George's legal team was led by legal royalty, Michael Mansfield. And they maintained throughout the entire trial that Barry George was a man with an incredibly low intellect and mental disabilities. And Mansfield told the court that Barry had an IQ of just 75.

So they argued that he was not capable of such a well-planned attack. They also pointed to the links with Serbia and the groups who had actually taken responsibility for the murder, suggesting that Barry George was simply a more convenient defendant. Eventually, in the final week of June 2001, the trial was adjourned and the jury spent five days making their decision. They returned to a tense courtroom. Some of them were actually in tears and they gave a verdict of guilty. Barry George was convicted of the murder of Jill Dando and sentenced to life in prison. However, the story

doesn't end there. Given the nature of the evidence used to prosecute Barry George, his legal team were pretty keen to appeal. The first of these appeals was just a year after he was convicted, and it was rejected. But four years later, they tried again, this time stating that there had been a change in policy around the use of single particles of evidence. In short, it had been decided that legally a piece of gunshot residue could not be used to directly link someone to a crime, only that it could be considered a possible source of the residue. On top of that, forensic policy by this point also stated that around one in a hundred people picked up a single particle of gunshot residue every day via public transport

due to hobby shooters and armed police officers. So you know, quite often in airports i get swabbed my you get stopped because you're brown i get stopped because they think i'm making bombs and when they swap because i thought when they swab your hands they're looking for drug residue it's not that's explosives and our tour manager once was working on a pantomime where there was gunpowder involved and his job was to extinguish, I think it was Donny Osmond or Cliff Richard or someone like that. So Cliff Richard gets set on fire. They come off stage. It was Ben's job to put him out. Oh, my God.

So he was covered in explosives and he went skiing over the new year or something. And he was like, I didn't know whether I should just approach them and tell them. Because if they swabbed me, I would definitely come up positive for explosives. Oh, my God. But yeah, no, it's a really good point, though. There can be so many other explanations for how this gunshot residue could be on a person. I think that the idea of one in a hundred is quite stark. I've probably got some on right now. Also, the fact that barry george did have

guns he had guns in his house so again the gunshot residue it was not definitive enough for them to say that it linked to gil dando and so with this change in official policy taken into account the criminal cases review commission decided that an undue amount of significance had been put on the single particle of gunshot residue found in Barry George's trench coat. The conviction was therefore quashed and a retrial was ordered, this time with the gunshot residue deemed inadmissible in court. Following the second trial on the 1st of August 2008, Barry George was found not guilty of murder and released after having spent eight years in prison. The Met Police's official statement on the day of his release was that

they were, quote, disappointed by the verdict and especially disappointed for Jill's family and friends. To this day, Hamish Campbell, who led the investigation, maintains that Operation Oxborough was a success and they fulfilled their responsibility to bring the person they believed was responsible to court he says that once the person is in court it is out of the police's hands which to an extent is true but it is also the police's responsibility to build the strongest possible case against anyone that they're trying to convict and i don't think they did that this time no i, the very fact that once the gunshot residue evidence is deemed inadmissible, the whole case falls down at the second trial. Now, look, a lot of people out there have very, very strong opinions about who they think killed

Jill Dando. And I am not going to say that Barry George didn't do it. There was a hell of a lot of circumstantial evidence that makes him look like an incredibly viable candidate. His obsession with guns, the desire for authority, because remember he wants to be a police officer, he gets turned down. How many times have we seen that before with a killer? The stalking of women and the sexual assaults. He had a history of sexual assault and he had all those pictures of women. And remember, he lives just streets away from Gildando. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence but then again the murder of joel dando doesn't exactly scream sexually motivated i'm not saying it wasn't but it isn't immediately apparent and if barry george was the culprit his motive

would probably have been sexual there was no evidence evidence of Jill's body having been messed around with and the fact that she was just shot once. It's not really that type of killing. And also, I think an important thing to say here is despite the fact that Barry George had all those pictures of local women that police found at his house, there was no evidence of him having stalked Jill or having been obsessed with her specifically. None of those pictures showed Jill Dando having been obsessed with her specifically none of those

pictures showed Jill Dando and also the police are kind of like oh well look he must have been obsessed with her his house was filled with newspapers all about Jill's murder every newspaper in the country that's all they were talking about so it's kind of like there wasn't enough there's not like one bit of evidence that makes him look definitively guilty. Also, how did Barry George know that Jill Dander was going to be there that day, if it was a premeditated attack on her? Like the police said, when they scour all the CCTV of Jill leading up to her coming home, they can't find anything of her being followed. So I don't know, I'm not saying he didn't do it.

I think he is a really good suspect, but the police did not do a good job in building a case against him. The three-part Netflix documentary on this case that came out in 2023 features Hamish Campbell. And it does explore different theories as to what could have happened to Jill, but it does in the end very much land on Barry George. He's interviewed in it and I don't know it the net the documentary is called Who Killed

Jill Dando and I think it could have been done in one episode they obviously do the classic Netflix thing and drag it out for three and he is interviewed in it Barry George and look if he's innocent it was a travesty if he's not then he's out and free. And he's a weird guy, but that doesn't mean he did it. After all, the police investigation into Jill's death never started back up again in any real sense after Barry was acquitted, because investigators were confident that they had got their man. But in the 25 years since Jill Dando was murdered, more and more theories have come out of the woodwork. So let's have a look at a few that were worth mentioning, not that they've come to anything. So one of them is that it was an IRA revenge killing. So this theory is that the IRA targeted

Jill Dando because of her links to policing through her work presenting Crimewatch. Seems a bit ropey, but IRA member Wayne Aird, who was sentenced to life for killing a man two months after Jill was shot, wrote a letter from his cell claiming that senior members within the organisation had ordered the hit. His letter claimed that he had been part of a four-man IRA hit squad that had shot Jill with a 9 millimeter bullet before escaping in Land Rovers and he alleged that the truth behind the killing was known to the police but that it was being covered up over concerns that it might have jeopardized the Northern Ireland peace process.

So he's like they know they're setting Barry George up as a patsy they know we did it they just don't want to talk about that. Another theory is the paedophile ring. In 2014, an anonymous source who is believed to have worked with Jill at the home of all paedos, the BBC, and this anonymous tipper revealed that Jill was trying to expose a VIP paedophile ring in the months before her death. This anonymous friend told papers, I don't recall the names of all the stars now and don't want to implicate anyone, but Jill said they were surprisingly big names.

However, as with much of this case, there's been no evidence brought forward to prove this theory, but maybe she was trying to uterine them all all the way back then. We just don't know. There is zero evidence and Jill did work closely with the police but there's nobody in the police that have even said, oh, now that you mention it, she was working with me on

this massive fucking pedo ring. Like, I don't know if I really buy this one. I think Jill was a great journalist, but she had really moved into the realm of like being a presenter. I don't think she was really doing investigative work like this. She may well have, but there's no evidence. Next theory, Joe the barman. A report by the now abolished National Criminal Intelligence Service alleged that Joel's murder could be traced back to a hitman called Joe, who worked in a bar in Spain and had links to murderer Kenneth Noy. Noy was jailed for life in 1996 following a road rage killing, and this conviction came off the back of a crime watch appeal.

So what's the connection to Joe the barman? Well, the report said that Joe runs a bar in Tenerife, which is frequented by leading expat criminals. He's described as a frustrated gangster reputed to owe money to Kenneth Noy and this is a quote there's been talk that Joe has been keen to rehabilitate his reputation with gangster creditors so essentially the theory is that Joe came to the UK to carry out the hit on Jill to get in with the gangbangers who use his Tenerife bar so that they don't kill him because he seems to owe them some money or owe them some favors and also so he can get more work. But again

there's no proof and no trace of who Joe is. Tenerife uh origin of flirty fishing. That's where they started doing it. Oh, there you go. An intelligent report later also identified two potential suspects from a known London crime family, suggesting again that the murder could have been in retaliation for a Crimewatch investigation,

but alas, nothing more in terms of evidence. Although maybe the professional hit angle does make sense. As Barry George's appeal review suggested, the hard contact execution, which involves pressing the gun against the head to silence the shot and minimise the blood on the killer's clothes, is often indicative of a hit. It does feel quite cold. I don't know if somebody is shooting someone for the first time or in a fit of passion you would get close

enough to that person to put the gun against their head and to fire and then in 2012 a serbian warlord called arkan was actually named as a suspect in the case but he'd actually died in 2000 so again what evidence anybody had about that is not really clear then in, in June 2022, we had the latest twist in this story. Could Jill Dando have been killed due to mistaken identity? Lisa Brinkworth, another BBC journalist, accused fashion mogul and ex-husband of Linda Evangelista, Gérald Marie, of sexually abusing her in 1998, when she had gone undercover to expose crimes in the fashion industry. Lisa claimed that Marie had hired the Russian mafia to kill her in order to shut her up, but that the assassins had mistakenly killed Jill, thinking that she was Lisa.

And yeah, maybe, because you might be thinking that sounds completely unbelievable, but Lisa and Jill were both blonde. They were both of a similar height and build. They do look kind of similar. And they were both BBC presenters. And they both lived in Fulham. And Jill's fiancé, Alan Farthing, was even Lisa's doctor. This is the theory you hear about the most.

It's the most recent one and it is the one that got a lot of attention because Lisa Brinkworth did take Gérald Marie to court. And in court, Gérald Marie claimed that the accusations were fanciful nonsense and that the allegations made by Brinkworth were completely false. His team pointed to the fact that there's no mention of the abuse made in the undercover journals that she kept, and they probably would be in there, wouldn't they? Yeah, that's the thing.

His big thing is that in France there's like a statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases and sexual assault cases, and because she claims it happened in 1998 and it goes to court in 2022 the statute of limitations is up so he says that lisa brinkworth is only bringing up this connection to jill dando and an alleged murder to get the statute of limitations sort of swept aside because now they can try him for this and he says why did you not write down anything about the alleged sexual abuse in any of your undercover journals, etc, etc. Like, we don't know what happened,

but that's his defence. Although others have made similar claims about him. And it's also said that his people created a culture of fear and intimidation around any of the accusations after they did so. But no charges have ever been brought and he remains a free man. And so that's it. As of today, 2024, Jill Dando's murder remains officially unsolved. In honour of Jill's memory, Nick Ross, her Crimewatch co-host, and her fiancé Alan Farthing launched the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science at UCL. I actually had to check that. I was like, is it criminal science? No, it's actually called crime science at UCL. And crime science is actually a new discipline. It's a discipline conceived by

Ross himself, which focuses on crime prevention rather than investigation and punishment. In Jill's memory, the BBC also set up a bursary award, which enables one student a year to attend University College Falmouth to study broadcast journalism. The first recipient of the bursary was Sophie Long, a Western Supermare local, who now regularly presents the BBC News. That's nice. That's a nice legacy, I think. So yeah, that's it, guys. 25 years this year since the murder of Joel Dando. And yeah, I don't know. I could be convinced of a lot of the different theories.

Barry George just seems so likely. But they did not have enough to convict him. And the courts did the right thing. So there you go. There you go. Don't have nightmares. Sleep tight. And we will see you next time for a different episode. Goodbye. Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal.

We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors

that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983. There were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.