There is no specific reason for the arrival of the three-part Netflix series Who Killed Jill Dando? It marks no anniversary. There is no new information to be shared, no new suspect in the frame. But perhaps that is the point. One of the most unexpected and inexplicable high-profile murders in living memory remains unsolved. It has been made with the approval of Jill’s brother, Nigel, who says he hopes it will encourage someone to come forward or shake loose some vital piece of evidence that will lead to the discovery of her killer.
Jill Dando was a television journalist and presenter who, on 26 April 1999, was shot in the head at point blank range at her front door in Fulham, west London, by an assailant who has never been identified. Everything about it was almost impossible. Shootings outside violent gangs (or those caught between them) are vanishingly rare in the UK. Murders of women by strangers are rare. Crime of any kind is low in the affluent environs of Fulham. The killing of an unprovocative, beloved celebrity in broad daylight for no apparent reason completely beggared belief.
The new, solidly made documentary assiduously covers all the ground, from Jill’s happy childhood in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, (“sand-blown lettuce sandwiches on the beach”, remembers Nigel) to her early days in journalism and her discovery by television executives. On it goes into plentiful archive footage of her years presenting the news, and shows such as Holiday and Crimewatch until her death at the age of 37.
The rest is a sombre recounting of the police investigation, which suffered from a dearth of witnesses and a surfeit of ultimately useless information from the public, whose eagerness to help proved to be a hindrance. And then there was “Mr James”, who rang up after a reconstruction of Dando’s murder was broadcast on Crimewatch with an initially plausible claim that she had been targeted by a drug gang. An examination of this theory revealed he was lying with the aim of framing his own enemies, diverting resources in the meantime.
Who Killed Jill Dando? does a good job of showing the power and influence the media had in shaping the story and its effects on the people managing the investigation. And not just the factual media, but the more insidious effects of drama, too. By the turn of the millennium we had been trained by police procedurals and US franchises to expect clear evidence, linear progression and a slam-dunk conviction at the end.
Instead – and perhaps partly because of the pressure to produce results – we got the arrest and conviction of Barry George. George was an oddball loner with a history of offences against women. He lived near Dando’s home and when the police raided his flat they found evidence of an interest in guns and a photo of him holding one that he insisted was a replica.
He served eight years in prison before a retrial was ordered on the grounds that some forensic evidence was unsafe. With that excluded, he was found not guilty. He is interviewed in the documentary, but the makers do not press him as much as you might expect. They also interview his sister, who ceaselessly campaigned for a retrial and hired the private investigator who found the problems with the forensic evidence – but they don’t question her on whether his history of violence against women had ever given her pause for thought.
All the theories the police entertained and the rumours that circulated are held up to the light and evaluated: it was a Serbian hitman ordered to take revenge for her appeal on behalf of Kosovan refugees; it was an enraged stalker; it was someone jailed because of a Crimewatch story. In a last-minute dip towards sensationalism, the Crimewatch theory was held up as the most likely by Noel “Razor” Smith – an ex-bank robber turned writer - who tells us that the name of the person who did it circulates in the criminal world, although he can’t tell us who for his own safety.
So. There we leave it, and on must Nigel Dando’s hopes go.
Who Killed Jill Dando? is on Netflix.
