Netflix has fast become the best streaming service for true crime afficianados, driven by ultra popular content in the genre like Tiger King, Dirty John, and Making a Murderer. They’re so synonymous with the genre that the most recent season of Black Mirror even made an episode about it. The global nature of the tech giant also means that crime documentary content isn’t just coming from the U.S., with shows and docuseries being based on crimes that occurred all over the world, like Who Killed Little Gregory?, which dives into one of France’s most infamous unsolved cases. And, now, the tech giant is releasing Who Killed Jill Dando? – which similarly focuses on the mysterious death of British television presenter Jill Dando, who was shot outside her West London home in 1999. But why was she targeted? And who was responsible for her death?
Who was Jill Dando?
Jill Dando was an English journalist, newsreader, and television presenter who spent the majority of her career at the national broadcaster – the BBC. She was a popular figure among the public and her fellow media professionals, and even won the BBC Personality of the Year award in 1997.
Dando was born in Somerset, West England. Journalism ran in the family, with her older brother also working for the BBC and in local newspapers. Her first job was at one such local paper, the Weston Mercury, alongside her sibling and father. After half a decade in print, she made the move to the BBC, firstly working as a newsreader at BBC Radio Devon, before transferring to the bigger BBC South West. By 1988 Dando had once again been moved up the totem pole, and became a presenter at BBC television news. She was a regular face on all the main news shows – including Breakfast Time, Breakfast News, and the Six O’Clock News.
In 1995 she also began presenting the television show Crimewatch – which shows reconstructions of major unsolved U.K. crimes in order to solicit information from the public. There are some theories that this job is linked to her murder, although these remain unsubstantiated and are seen as unlikely by keen observers of the case.
In April of 1999, Dando was in the midst of one of her most successful periods. She had been featured on the cover of the Radio Times, and was booked in to be hosting the British Academy Television Awards early in May. She had also secured another job, presenting a season of the show Antiques Inspectors.
What happened to Jill Dando?
On the morning of April 26, 1999, Dando left her fiancé’s house where she’d been living and returned to the house she owned. Both properties were in West London, and she journeyed so via her car. Dando was in the process of selling her house, and in subsequent investigations was said to be an infrequent visitor to the property. At 11:32, Dando was standing outside her front door and was shot once in the head. Her body was discovered by a neighbor around 14 minutes later, with police being called just after that. The presenter was taken to the nearby Charing Cross hospital and declared dead on arrival, which was 13:03. The way the incident went down was described later on in the Guardian as follows:
“As Dando was about to put her keys in the lock to open the front door of her home in Fulham, she was grabbed from behind. With his right arm, the assailant held her and forced her to the ground, so that her face was almost touching the tiled step of the porch. Then, with his left hand, he fired a single shot at her left temple, killing her instantly. The bullet entered her head just above her ear, parallel to the ground, and came out the right side of her head.”
A different Guardian article, published the day after her death, said the following of the assailant:
“A smartly-dressed, clean-shaven white man with dark hair had been seen running down the street in Fulham at around the time of the attack, apparently carrying a mobile phone although police now accept that this is likely to have been a handgun. He was described by witnesses as dark-haired and in his late thirties or early forties and about five foot eleven inches tall. The man was said to be wearing a suit. The man had been seen by neighbours walking away after the shooting before breaking into a run and disappearing.”
Dando’s former show Crimewatch did an episode where they reconstructed her murder in an attempt to help police find her killer. A man named Barry George — who lived nearby — was convicted of her murder despite shaky evidence. He was freed on appeal in 2008, and in 2009 won substantial damages from various papers from Rupert Murdoch’s group of tabloid rags after they continued to suggest he was guilty. Despite one of the largest police investigations in U.K. history, the murder remains unsolved to this day.
Who are the main suspects in the killing of Jill Dando?
Because of Dando’s high profile, the police involved in solving the crime opened up a huge number of lines of inquiry, speaking to over 2,000 people and taking more than a thousand statements. Many of the theories they looked into were revealed by The Times a few years after George was released:
- Given her work on Crimewatch, some posited that she had been targeted by a criminal who’d been caught after being featured as a criminal on the show, and was seeking revenge. Detectives working on the case eventually decided against this being realistic.
- A jealous lover or ex had murdered her in a fit of passion, or because of some perceived slight. However, the police in charge of the case decided to rule this out after they’d interviewed a number of her friends and acquaintances, as well as checking her phone calls.
- An obsessed or unstable fan attacked and killed her after she’d rebuffed them. Also ruled out by police.
After a year of investigation, police eventually focused on Barry George. He lived within a few miles of Dando and had a history of stalking and sexual offenses, and had once even broken into royal grounds in an attempt to give Prince Charles a poem he’d written. However, the evidence was mostly circumstantial, and even when he was first convicted many observers were uncomfortable with the decision. He was eventually retrialled and found not guilty.
Another theory claims that Dando was about to reveal information about a pedophile ring that involved several BBC personalities and potentially other high profile names, and was killed before she could. This is a bit of a stretch, although in the years following her murder several famous U.K.-based personalities were found to have been engaged in mass sexual abuse, including former BBC presenter and close personal friend of Margaret Thatcher – Jimmy Saville.
One final theory that has been gathering support is that Dando’s killing was ordered by Serbian/Yugoslavian groups as retaliation for U.K. and NATO support for Kosovo in the Yugoslav War. The presenter had taken part in an appeal for aid for the Kosovar Albanian refugees just weeks prior to her death. In an April 2019 show, the television network ITV reported that the British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) had told the police investigating Dando’s murder that it was a retaliation killing for a NATO/U.K. bombing, and had been ordered by a Serbian warlord named Arkan. A few days before her murder, a similar execution of a journalist who was critical of the Serbian regime had taken place in Belgrade, and it is now believed the two killings are linked.
When and where can I watch Who Killed Jill Dando?
Who Killed Jill Dando? will be available on Netflix from Sept. 26, 2023, and will be a three-part series.