Jill Dando: TV presenter’s brother Nigel Dando gives his theory on star’s unsolved murder 24 years on
The brother of murdered TV presenter Jill Dando says despite the case remaining unsolved 24 years, he has a theory about who could be behind her death.
The execution style killing of one of Britain’s best-loved broadcasters in broad daylight on her own doorstep in April 1999 shocked the nation, leaving the press, public and police united in disbelief.
One of the biggest homicide investigations in British history – finally resulting in a conviction one year after her murder, only to be overturned seven years on – remains unsolved to this day.
Her brother, Nigel Dando, has told Sky News he believes it was “a random killing” carried out by a stranger, and that the presenter “was just in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Speaking ahead of a new Netflix documentary, looking into the murder and resulting police investigation, Mr Dando said that even all these years after his sister’s death, he is hopeful “the killer is out there watching” and could “come forward… to confess what they’ve done and get it off their chest”.
(R-L): Jill Dando, with her father Jack and brother Nigel
‘It’s a heck of a story’
Receiving news of the death of a loved one is hard – and all the more so when that death is sudden and violent.
Mr Dando says he hadn’t seen Jill for around three weeks before her death, but then received a phone call telling him his sister had been killed.
He says: “Within a couple of minutes, really, of hearing that Jill had died, half of my brain wanted to grieve for her loss and be close to my dad… He was in his eighties and not in the best of health. So, you had the family side of things.”
However, as a fellow journalist, Mr Dando also had a second part of his mind clicking into gear.
He goes on: “But, you know, one of the leading TV celebrities in this country gunned down on her own doorstep. It’s going to… It’s a heck of a story. And you kind of knew what was going to come down the line.
“I was trying to prepare myself to deal with that, knowing that you had to deal with the media. But trying to protect my dad from any excesses of it.”
It is of course that same power of the story that attracted true crime producer Emma Cooper to the case, and she would go on to spend over a year heading up the three-part documentary.
She explains: “An act that violent with a gun happening in an area of London, that would be outlandish now in 2023. So, to look back at that happening at that time is extraordinary.”
But she says it was also key to remember the person at the heart of the story: “It was very important to all of us that Jill was very present in the series and that we reminded people who knew her and remember her. And also [it was important] we brought it to a new audience of young people who don’t necessarily know about Jill and don’t necessarily know what happened to her and what a huge part she was in all of our lives.”
Pic: South Coast Press/Shutterstock
Who was Jill Dando?
Born in the seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, Dando’s first job was as a trainee with her local weekly newspaper, the Weston Mercury, where her father and brother also worked.
Quickly progressing from print journalism to television, her talent paired with a girl-next-door persona saw her rise through the ranks of regional shows to national TV, going on to present Holiday, the Six O’ Clock News and Crimewatch.
Just two years before her death, she was voted BBC personality of the year.
On 26 April 1999 she was shot dead outside her home in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, southwest London. She had been due to present the Six O’ Clock News the following evening.
Pic: Nick Scott Archive/Alamy
The many theories about Jill’s killer
One of the theories of a possible motive behind her killing, was that her presenting role on Crimewatch had made her vulnerable to criminals who might bear a grudge against her for her part in bringing them down.
Another was that a Serbian assassin could have killed her, in revenge for NATO bombing, after seeing her front an appeal for aid for Kosovar Albanian refugees.
However, Mr Dando doesn’t believe such theories stand up to robust investigation, calling them “interesting lines of inquiry” but which “never went anywhere”.
Of the Crimewatch connection he says “there was no evidence, it was just someone jumping on the bandwagon”.
And of the theory of links to Serbian mafia – Mr Dando says there was “no real evidence of a Serbian hitman”.
But he does have his own thoughts about who could have been behind his sister’s death.
“My theory before this happened and that’s been reinforced since by watching this documentary, is that Jill was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that somebody walking down the street, holding a gun for whatever reason, spotted her, either knowing her or not knowing who she was, and shot her dead.”
Mr Dando adds that some of the “theories would make great stories in fiction, but… There’s no line that really holds a huge amount of water apart from you know, a random killing, which I think it was.”
Barry George. Pic: Undated police handout
Who is Barry George, and how does he fit into the case?
Local man, Barry George, who had previous convictions and a history of stalking women, was arrested for Jill’s murder almost a year after her death, and later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mr George spent seven years in jail, but was later acquitted due to unreliable forensic evidence, leaving the case again unsolved.
Speaking about Mr George’s original conviction, Mr Dando says: “At the time I thought that the police had got the right person, and a jury agreed with that sentiment because he was obviously found guilty and jailed for life. But the legal system moves on.”
But Mr Dando does have one concern – that Mr George chose not to give evidence, at either his trial or re-trial.
Mr Dando says: “I would just liked to have seen him tell a jury exactly what he was doing on that day, because he’s never actually explained where he was. It’s all a bit jumbled up. It would have been interesting to have heard him explain where he was, and for him to have been cross-examined about his movements on that day.”
While the conviction against Mr George was quashed, he has been unsuccessful in his attempts to gain compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
Mr George is also a contributor to the Netflix documentary.
Executive producer Emma Cooper says she felt it was vital to have Mr George’s side of the story in the film, to present “as clear of a rounded picture of all the events as possible from as many different perspectives as possible”.
In the documentary, she asks Mr George outright, “Did you kill Jill Dando,” to which Mr George answers, “No”.
She says: “I thought it was important to ask, I thought that the audience would expect that of us to ask him a straight question. And so, we did.”
Pic: Michael Fresco/Evening Standard/Shutterstock
One of the biggest homicide investigations in British history
Mr Dando says he bears no anger towards the police over the lack of a conviction, calling the investigation “a difficult job” and adding: “I don’t have any negative feelings towards the police at all with their inquiries. I didn’t at the time, and as the years have gone on, I don’t.”
As the documentary shows, while Dando’s fame ensured that news of her murder travelled far and wide, it also played a part in hindering the investigation.
Mr Dando says officers were inundated with people trying to “do the right thing” by offering up information, and the result was an avalanche of tips “overwhelming all the potential lines of inquiry that came in”.
While the investigation was moved into “an inactive phase” nine years ago, Met Police told Sky News detectives “would consider any new information provided” in a bid “to determine whether it represented a new and realistic line of enquiry”.
Offering further information around the combined reward of £250,000 which was initially offered for information leading to an arrest, the Met told Sky News, “Any discussion about any reward would have to take place in the event that new information came to light.”
Jill’s legacy
Mr Dando says he is still approached in public – in the supermarket, at the carpet shop – by people “wanting to talk about Jill” and “how they remembered her”.
Jill was just 37 when she died, and five months away from getting married to her fiance, Alan Farthing.
Mr Dando says: “She was on an upward trajectory… Whether family life would have taken over from her broadcasting career or whether she could have juggled the two. Who knows what would have happened, where she would have been today.”
Jill with fellow Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross. Pic: ANL/Shutterstock
Will we ever get an answer?
Ms Cooper says: “It’s really important for a shared audience to look back at that and for new people to discover what happened. And for older people to be reminded about it and to be reminded of the fact that it is still unsolved.”
The film documents aspects of the investigation that most – including some of Jill’s family – have never heard about before.
Other contributors to the film include Dando’s ex-partner, television producer Bob Wheaton, her agent Jon Roseman, and former detective chief inspector Hamish Campbell who headed up the murder case.
Ms Cooper says: “If somebody could see something that could jog a memory that has been unclaimed for 20 years, that would be an amazing outcome for all of us.”
Mr Dando too, has hopes – even if they are vanishingly slim – that the documentary could lead to some sort of answer for himself, and all those who loved and knew Jill.
He says: “We’ve lived for 24 years not knowing who did it, but maybe more importantly, why they did it. Why would you go up to a stranger and do what you did? I just don’t know. So, it would be nice to have some closure from that point of view to know why that person pulled the trigger.”
He goes on: “Maybe even the killer is out there watching this documentary and their conscience, even after all these years may be pricked and it may just encourage them to come forward to confess what they’ve done and get it off their chest.”
Who Killed Jill Dando? is released on Netflix on Tuesday 26 September.
“The target was never particularly ambitious,” says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) about Labour’s plan to add two million extra NHS appointments during their first year in power.
In February, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced they had achieved the feat early. He recently described the now 3.6m additional appointments achieved in their first eight months as a “massive increase”.
PM signs Chagos deal – politics latest
But new data, obtained by independent fact checking charity Full Fact and shared exclusively with Sky News, reveals this figure actually signalled a slowing down in new NHS activity.
There was an even larger rise of 4.2m extra appointments over the same period the year before, under Rishi Sunak’s government.
The data also reveals how unambitious the target was in the first place.
We now know two million extra appointments over the course of a year represents a rise of less than 3% of the almost 70 million carried out in the year to June 2024.
In the last year under Mr Sunak, the rise was 10% – and the year before that it was 8%.
Responding to the findings, Sarah Scobie, deputy director of independent health and social care think tank the Nuffield Trust, told Sky News the two million target was “very modest”.
She said delivering that number of appointments “won’t come close to bringing the treatment waiting list back to pre-pandemic levels, or to meeting longer-term NHS targets”.
The IFS said it was smaller than the annual growth in demand pressures forecast by the government.
What exactly did Labour promise?
The Labour election manifesto said: “As a first step, in England we will deliver an extra two million NHS operations, scans, and appointments every year; that is 40,000 more appointments every week.”
We asked the government many times exactly how it would measure the pledge, as did policy experts from places like the IFS and Full Fact. But it repeatedly failed to explain how it was defined.
Leo Benedictus, a journalist and fact-checker at Full Fact, told Sky News: “We didn’t know how they were defining these appointments.
“When they said that there would be more of them, we didn’t know what there would be more of.”
Leo Benedictus
Even once in government, initially Labour did not specify their definition of “operations, scans, and appointments”, or what the baseline “extra” was being measured against.
This prevented us and others from measuring progress every month when NHS stats were published. Did it include, for instance, mental health and A&E appointments? And when is the two million extra comparison dating from?
Target met, promise kept?
Suddenly, in February, the government announced the target had already been met – and ever since, progress on appointments has been a key boast of ministers and Labour MPs.
At this point, they did release some information: the definition of procedures that allowed them to claim what had been achieved. They said the target involved is elective – non-emergency – operations excluding maternity and mental health services; outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Why has Starmer axed NHS England?
However, we still did not have a comprehensive baseline to measure the two million increase against.
The government data instead relied on a snapshot: comparing the number of appointments carried out from July to November 2024 with the number from July to November 2023, and adjusted them for the number of working days in each period.
This did not tell us if the NHS had already been adding appointments under the Conservatives, and at what pace, and therefore whether this target was a big impressive ramping up of activity or, as it turns out, actually a slowing down.
Since then, a number of organisations, like Full Fact, have been fighting with the government to release the data.
Mr Benedictus said: “We asked them for that information. They didn’t publish it. We didn’t have it.
“The only way we could get hold of it was by submitting an FOI request, which they had to answer. And when that came back about a month later, it was fascinating.”
This finally gives us the comparative data allowing us to see what the baseline is against which the government’s “success” is being measured.
Full Fact passed the data to Sky News because it had seen our reporting about how the information published by the NHS in February was not sufficient to be able to assess whether things were getting better or worse.
What the government says now
We put our findings to the government.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “On entering office last July, the secretary of state [Wes Streeting] was advised that the fiscal black hole meant elective appointments would have to be cut by 20,000 every week.
“Instead, this government provided the extra investment and has already delivered 3.6 million additional appointments – more than the manifesto commitment the British public voted for – while also getting more patients seen within 18 weeks.
“In the nine months since this government took office, the waiting list has dropped by over 200,000 – more than five times as much as it had over the same period the previous year – and also fell for six consecutive months in a row.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Pic: PA
We put this to Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak’s chancellor during his last two years as prime minister, and health secretary for six years under David Cameron and Theresa May.
He said: “What these numbers seem to show is that the rate of appointments was going up by more in the last government than it is by this government. That’s really disappointing when you look at the crisis in the NHS.
“All the evidence is that if you want to increase the number of people being treated, you need more capacity in the system, and you need the doctors and nurses that are there to be working more productively.
“Instead what we’ve had from this government is the vast majority of the extra funding for the NHS has gone into pay rises, without asking for productivity in return.”
Jeremy Hunt speaks to Sky’s Sam Coates
Edward Argar, shadow health secretary, accused the government of a “weak attempt […] to claim credit for something that was already happening”.
“We need to see real and meaningful reform that will genuinely move the dial for patients,” he added.
Is the NHS getting better or worse?
New polling carried out by YouGov on behalf of Sky News this week also reveals 39% of people think the NHS has got worse over the past year, compared with 12% who think it’s got better.
Six in 10 people say they do not trust Keir Starmer personally on the issue of the NHS, compared with three in 10 who say they do.
That is a better rating than some of his rivals, however. Just 21% of people say they trust Nigel Farage with the NHS, and only 16% trust Kemi Badenoch – compared with 64% and 60% who do not.
Ed Davey performs better, with 30% saying they trust him and 38% saying they do not.
Ms Scobie of the Nuffield Trust told Sky News “the government is right to make reducing long hospital treatment waits a key priority […] but much faster growth in activity is needed for the NHS to see a substantial improvement in waiting times for patients.”
The government is correct, however, to point out the waiting list having dropped by more than 200,000 since it’s been in office. This is the biggest decline between one July and the following February since current waiting list statistics were first published under Gordon Brown.
The percentage of people waiting less than 18 weeks for treatment is also falling for the first time, other than a brief period during the pandemic, for the first time in more than a decade.
There is still a long way to go, though. Figures released last week showed the total number of people waiting for NHS treatment in England had risen again in March, following six months of positive progress.
The latest figures show 6.25m people waiting for 7.42m treatments (some people are on the list for more than one issue). That means more than one in 10 people in England are currently waiting for NHS treatment.
There continues to be a fall in the number who have been waiting longer than a year. It’s now 180,242, down from almost 400,000 in August 2023 and over 300,000 in June 2024, the Conservatives’ last month in power.
But that number is still incredibly high by historical standards. It remains over 100 times higher than it was before the pandemic.
The government has a separate pledge that no more than 8% of patients will wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment, by the time of the next election. Despite improvements in recent months, currently more than 40% wait longer than this.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Sir Keir Starmer’s claim he is U-turning on cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners because he now has the money is not “credible”, Harriet Harman has said.
👉 Listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈
The Labour peer, speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, said the prime minister made the move as it was so unpopular with voters.
PM signs Chagos deal – politics latest
She also said Labour’s poor results at the local elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election were the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.
Sir Keir said on Wednesday he would ease the cut to the winter fuel payment, which has been removed from more than 10 million pensioners this winter after it became means-tested.
He and his ministers had insisted they would stick to their guns on the policy, even just hours before Sir Keir revealed his change of heart at PMQs
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Winter fuel payment cuts to be reversed
Baroness Harman said: “It’s always been contested and always been unpopular.
“But the final straw that broke the camel’s back was the elections. The council elections and the Runcorn by-election, where the voters were saying, ‘this is not the change we voted for’.
“At the end of the day, you cannot just keep flying in the face of what voters – particularly if they’re people who previously voted for you – wanted.”
Baroness Harman is unconvinced by Sir Keir’s claim he can U-turn because there is more money due to good economic management by the government.
“I don’t think that’s credible as an argument,” she said.
“It really is the fact that voters just said ‘this is not the change we voted for, we’re not going to have this’.”
The challenge for the government now, she said, is deciding who will get the allowance moving forward, when they’ll get it, and when it will all be announced.
Read more:
Ex-PM suggests who should miss out on winter fuel payments
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has committed to just one major fiscal event a year, meaning just one annual budget in the autumn.
Autumn budgets normally take place in October, with the last one at the end of the month.
If this year’s budget is around the same date, it will leave little time for the extra winter fuel payments to be made, as they are paid between November and December.
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Electoral Dysfunction podcast the economy will have to be “strong enough” for the government to U-turn on winter fuel payment cuts.
He also said the public would have to wait for the budget for any announcement.
Before the amps are even switched on in Brockwell Park, there’s been a lot of noise about who should or shouldn’t be performing.
It’s where Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap are set to play their first major show since band member Mo Chara was charged for allegedly displaying a flag in support of the terrorist group Hezbollah at one of their gigs.
Before that, there had been calls for festivals to reconsider booking the band over their political stances, and several have done, which prompted artists like Brian Eno, the Mystery Jets and CMAT to sign an open letter accusing Westminster and the British media of a campaign to “remove Kneecap from the public eye”.
They put their names to wording that said “in a democracy, no political figures… have the right to dictate who does and does not play at music festivals.”
The band have since claimed they’re the victims of “political policing” designed to silence their views on Gaza.
So what’s the reality like for artists who are outspoken at a time when the world is so divided?
As some of the biggest names in music gathered in London for the Ivors, an annual celebration of songwriting, Self-Esteem – aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor – said the level of scrutiny can be “terrifying”.
‘The problem with the internet’
She told Sky News: “The problem with the internet is you say one thing, which gets scrutinised, and then you shit yourself, you really do… then you’re advised not to. And then you’re like ‘don’t advise me not to!’
“You second-guess anything you want to say any more… but any time I do that, I think ‘well that’s why you’ve got to say it then’.”
She said it can be frustrating that focus turns on to pop stars’ opinions instead of “the people doing the bad things”.
Read more:
Why are Kneecap controversial?
Self-Esteem, aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor
‘Being a pop artist isn’t just about the music’
Former Little Mix singer Jade said: “To be a pop artist these days, it’s not just about music, it’s: ‘What’s your political stance?’
“I’ve always been quite vocal about those things, but in doing so you have even more of a scary spotlight on you, constantly assessing what your thoughts are as a human…it is scary.”
Trinidad-born London artist Berwyn, whose songs depict his struggles with UK immigration, says: “Silencing freedom of speech… is a road we don’t want to walk down.
“I’m not a politician, this is a very complicated issue, but I do absolutely believe in a human’s right to express themselves freely.”
But is that freedom of speech dependent on what side you’re coming from?
Berwyn speaking to Sky News
‘Unethical investments’
Soon, an event called Mighty Hoopla will take place at Brockwell Park as part of its programme of six festivals this summer.
Artists performing at that are coming under increased pressure from pro-Palestine groups to quit because it’s owned by a company called Superstruct, which has links to an American investment firm called KKR.
Critics argue that any KKR-affiliated events should be a red flag to artists as campaigners claim it “invests billions of pounds in companies” that do things like “develop Israeli underground data centres”, and they say it has shares in companies that “advertise property on illegally occupied land in the West Bank”.
👉 Listen to Sky News Daily on your podcast app 👈
Mighty Hoopla itself has said while it “cannot control investments made in our parent companies”, it wants to “state its clear opposition to KKR’s unethical investments”.
And Superstruct – which puts on over 80 festivals around the world – says while horrified by the crisis in Gaza: “We are aware that there is a significant amount of debate… around our festivals.
“Our owners, made up of our promoters and several investment firms, support us to achieve the highest standards… fans and artists rightly expect.”
They insist that operationally, Superstruct is independently run and all its “revenue and profits… remains entirely within our business… towards the ongoing development… of our festivals.”
Read more from Sky News:
Kid Cudi says Diddy ‘messed with his dog’
Bono calls for Israel to be ‘released from Netanyahu’
Chris Brown posts message as singer is bailed
Even deciding where to perform can have political connotations for musicians these days.
As Tom Gray, a founding member of the rock band Gomez, now chair of the Ivors, explains: “The amount of commercial interest required to get a young artist into the public eye means they have to keep their head down a lot and that’s a terrible shame.
“It’s not just artistic expression, but personal human expression is one of the fundamental things that allows people to feel they have agency.”
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway