Journalist Jill Dando was at the height of her career as a BBC presenter and preparing for a fast-approaching wedding when she was gunned down on her doorstep in 1999.
Warning: This story contains content which may be distressing for some readers.
The years that followed have brought multiple appeals, trials, an acquittal — but very few answers.
‘Wholesome’ image of Crimewatch host
Jill Dando started out as one of the first female reporters at her local paper, later taking a job as a breakfast presenter at BBC Radio.
She would go on to become a host of multiple programs including Breakfast Time, Breakfast News, the Six O’Clock News, a travel show and the BBC’s Crimewatch.
Her roles made her quickly one of the highest profile on-screen BBC staff, and earned her the 1997 BBC Personality of the Year award.
By 1999, the 37-year-old was engaged to gynaecologist Alan Farthing, with the wedding scheduled for September 25.
She was scaling back her on-screen work to make time for wedding preparation.
Journalist and author David James Smith, who later penned a book on the case with the cooperation of Ms Dando’s family, told the ABC: “She was such a hugely popular public figure.
“She had a very wholesome image, she looked a bit like Princess Diana. She was actually at the crest of her popularity.
“Back then we didn’t have the proliferation that we do now with streaming, it was just the BBC, ITV, and she dominated the BBC. She was right there as one of the predominant figures of the BBC.
“You can’t begin to overestimate the shock that people felt when they found out she’d been assassinated on her doorstep in broad daylight.”
‘I think it’s Jill Dando … there’s a lot of blood’
On the morning of April 26, 1999, Ms Dando left her fiance’s home on a private estate in Chiswick and began the drive back to her home in Fulham.
She was in the process of selling the home, 29 Gowan Avenue, and spent most of her time with Mr Farthing.
Security footage from the day showed her first going into a petrol station, stopping at a west London shopping centre.
A photo released by police showed her at 10:55am entering a shop wearing a beige raincoat, red jacket, black trousers and boots.
Investigators said the full security video did not suggest she was being followed.
On the drive home she took a back street, dodging a bottle neck in the main road, and may have stopped at another shop to buy groceries.
Shortly after 11:30am she parked her car and walked up the front path to her door.
She was shot once in the head on the doorstep.
A neighbour called emergency services a short time later.
“I’m walking along Gowan Avenue, it looks like there’s somebody collapsed, confidentially I think it’s Jill Dando … there’s a lot of blood,” they said.
Jill Dando was taken to a nearby hospital. She was confirmed dead at 1.03pm.
The scream, the gun, and the man seen fleeing
Minutes after her death was confirmed her former colleagues and friends at the BBC announced the news live on air, unleashing an outpouring of grief and speculation across the country.
Detectives who had previously worked with Ms Dando as a reporter were now investigating her murder.
A neighbour later told the BBC he had heard the sound of Ms Dando’s car alarm being set, followed by a scream moments later.
“I heard her scream, it was a distinctive scream, she sounded quite surprised,” he said.
There was no gunshot heard, which investigators have said indicated a silencer was likely used.
A man with dark hair was seen by witnesses running down the street around the same time as the attack.
He was wearing a suit, and potentially carrying a handgun.
As the news of Ms Dando’s murder began to spread, Alan Farthing was calling the police station after calls from friends telling him there had been an accident.
He was told officers were coming to collect him from the hospital’s emergency department, located across the road from the cancer clinic.
Not wanting to wait, he hung up the phone and ran there himself.
‘The vacuum is filled by speculation’
Because of her popularity and her role as the host of Crimewatch, theories of a possible obsessed fan, a contract killing or retaliation by a criminal circulated.
Another theory was that Ms Dando had been “executed” by a Serbian hit-man, in response to media coverage of the Yugoslav Wars.
In the weeks following her death police released CCTV footage of Ms Dando in the hours before her death and a facial composite of the suspect.
Media at the time reported the suspect had been seen “sweating heavily” at a bus stop a short distance from Ms Dando’s home.
“The suspect stood at the bus stop for several minutes until the 220 arrived,” wrote the Evening Standard on May 4.
“Everyone at the stop boarded the bus except him.
“Police are also appealing for information about a metallic-blue Range Rover … [they] believe it may have been involved and used as a possible get away car which for some reason did not pick up the killer.”
The first episode of Crimewatch following Ms Dando’s death went to air on May 18, 1999, led by her former co-host Nick Ross, and drew in hundreds of calls from the public.
Mr Smith said: “Wherever there’s a lack of answer, then the vacuum is filled by speculation.”
An inquest and a £250,000 ($479,170) reward would bring no answers for more than a year.
A key piece of evidence found ‘unsafe’
On May 29, police charged an unemployed musician called Barry George with the murder of Jill Dando.
Mr George had been previously convicted for attempted rape and indecent assault, had been discharged from the Territorial Army and failed to join the police force.
He was found to have stalked women and taken thousands of photos of them.
Barry George was found guilty but later released.
This undated photo of Barry George was provided by the police at the time.
Another police photo showed the interior of Barry George’s home.
The key piece of evidence linking him to the case was a microscopic particle found in his coat pocket, which a forensic scientist said could have come from a gun.
Mr George pleaded not guilty, but was sentenced to life imprisonment by jury majority of 10 to one.
His defence lawyer William Clegg had argued that the 48-year-old lacked the skills, ability, motive and expertise to have committed such a crime.
The firearm evidence, he said, carried “zero or neutral evidential weight”, and meant the verdict was “unsafe”.
After an initial unsuccessful appeal, Mr George was granted a retrial in 2007, and was cleared of the murder in August 2008.
He later received damages from media outlets and settled defamation claims with others, but lost a 2013 bid for compensation for wrongful incarceration.
The former lead detective on the case, Hamish Campbell, has since said he does not believe the murder will ever be solved.
“Sometimes I felt we were a day away from solving it and other times, I thought, ‘no, we’re a long way away’,” he said.
“We had over 2,000 people named as potential suspects or responsible.
“Some actions to trace and eliminate one person might take a day. One action might take two weeks. But there’s thousands of them and that’s the issue of managing stranger homicides.”
The Jill Dando case became one of the biggest investigations by Metropolitan police.
It remains unsolved.
‘There’s a sense that she’s just slowly being forgotten’
In the years since her death, the case has been the subject of books, podcasts and documentaries.
A 2023 three-part series Who Killed Jill Dando was released with the approval of her brother, Nigel Dando, who said he hoped it would encourage someone to come forward with new information.
Mr Smith said he reconnected with people close to the case several years ago to mark the 20th anniversary of Ms Dando’s death.
“There was a kind of memorial service there somewhere in central London, and I went and there were all these people there, Jill’s close friends and colleagues who I hadn’t seen for many years,” he said.
“Alan Farthing was there and I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He’s now married … he’s living the life he would have been living with Jill Dando, and I think that’s sad and poignant.
“There he is in this other life that he was on the cusp of living with her.”
In 2001, the University College London opened the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, the first university institute in the world donated to crime science.
The institute is focused on finding new ways to tackle security and crime.
Its logo is the forget-me-not flower.
Jill Dando’s father, Jack Dando, died in 2009, aged 91.
Nigel Dando, himself a journalist until his retirement in 2017, said at the time that the opening of Jill’s Garden, a memorial erected in Somerset’s Grove Park was one of the highlights of his father’s life.
For those close to the case, “what might have been” has remained a “strange” thought.
“She would have turned 60 by now … and she might still have been on TV, there in the public eye,” Mr Smith said.
“[The institute] is still there, that’s something that’s lasting, but there’s a sense that she’s just slowly being forgotten.
“It’s only newspapers covering the anniversary that bring her back into the public mind.
“For the younger generation who didn’t know about her, other people have come along to fill that space that she occupied. And it is like she’s been erased.”