UK UK - Jill Dando, 37, Fulham, London, 26 Apr 1999

[dotr]

Wondering how far the wedding dress designer's shop was from JD's home?
1999

Who would want to kill the BBC's golden girl?

For most people Monday is a day of work. For Jill Dando, the BBC's golden television presenter, last Monday, 26 April, was to have been a rare day off.

www.theguardian.com

'' When she left the next morning for her house in Fulham, just a couple of miles away, she had the day to herself.
After a bit of shopping, the only demand on her time was an appointment in south London with clothes designer Lindka Cierach for a wedding-dress fitting.''

 

[rvlvr]

There were two trials with two different verdicts. One, therefore, was wrong. It's unfortunate that some don't realise the importance of challenging verdicts. It's fortunate for BG that someone questioned the first one.

The original trial’s outcome was heavily dependent on the GSR evidence. That it was a majority rather than a unanimous verdict suggests some degree of doubt amongst the jury. As I’ve before, IMO BG’s defence team’s arguments were too convoluted. I believe the jury’s decision was reasonable based on the evidence presented to them at the time (this is why BG has never received compensation).

At the second trial the GSR evidence was obviously withdrawn and more circumstantial evidence around BG’s harassment of women was introduced. IMO this actually worked against the prosecution - it firmly established in the jury’s (and public’s) mind that BG had a particular MO, but BG wasn’t on trial for harassing women, and in any case no evidence that he’d harassed JD was produced. With no evidence of means or motive, and only very limited evidence of opportunity no jury in the land could’ve convicted him.

If new evidence comes to light I’d be very happy to see it, any positive developments in this case would be welcome news.

 

[Inspector Evans]

Agree with this. Let’s not forget that JD wasn’t discovered for around 15 minutes after the shooting, and had the person passing by her house not been her friend HD, who made a point of looking at her door to see if she was around to chat, it’s possible it might’ve taken even longer. By the time HD made her 999 call the killer was long gone.

This is all just theorising on my part.

IMO those car lined streets with the odd tree dotted about provided ample cover for a waiting shooter capable of not drawing attention to themselves, and the front of JD’s home in particular offered quite a lot of privacy. JMO, but just before lunchtime is often a time when the ebb and flow of a work day lulls somewhat - the many witness sightings of a man/men in/around Gowan Avenue that morning make it seem like the area was a hotbed of activity but these sightings were fairly spread out, both in terms of time and geography. The potential for someone to arrive and remain relatively inconspicuous was high IMO.

There’s a chance the neighbours misremembered what the killer was wearing, but if correct their descriptions of his jacket are markedly different to the descriptions given of clothing worn by the other man/men sighted by witnesses that morning. No one sees a man in a waxed jacket arrive, nor do they see him leaving once he’s out of sight of JD’s neighbours. IMO it’s just as likely our killer was as adept at making an inconspicuous escape as he was at murdering JD with minimal fuss.

Then of course he gets a stroke of luck - our undertaker, JS, running in and out of traffic on Fulham Palace Road. Naturally, eyes are drawn in that direction. And he becomes the focus of police attention. What are the odds? The chances that, apparently innocently enough, you find yourself running, like - as one witness put it - your life depends on it, at the same time that just up the road JD lies dead but undiscovered on her doorstep, must be slim to almost none? Yet it happened. Strange and coincidental things often do. In this case and others.

Gowan Avenue is more secluded but it's not quite a cul-de-sac in a housing estate in a rural setting.

Plenty use it as a side route to get down to Putney quicker.

The killer without question was lucky they approached and killed Jill without anyone walking right by. The house is only 20-30 yards from the junction with Munster road so someone could've just decided to walk down Gowan at the exact moment Jill was gunned down so they'd be pretty much level with 29 (if walking on the side her house is) and would've come right next to the gunman leaving.

O.k nothing suspicious until a quick glance and you see JD slumped on her doorway. I've walked past the house, the porch and doorway are right by the pavement so hardly anyone could miss it.

Or Helen Doble could've walked back from the shops a little earlier and seen it all and then she exactly knows what the gunman looks like instead of people peeking out of windows and it not really registering.

Watching the Crimewatch appeal and there is a postman, traffic warden and window cleaner all present right by her house that morning so that gives a good indication, typical London street in terms of activity.

That is a luck element without question as this was not 1am at the dead of night when Jill might've been coming back from BBC or presenting at awards ceremony, this was 11.30am on a Monday morning so you'd expect a flow of people walking up and down the road every few minutes. For some reason there was little activity for quarter of an hour and so we have this void which enabled the perp to escape on foot and then probably get a lift round the corner.

The Met certainly has my sympathies for that on top of the forensics being destroyed before they arrived so made a difficult case much harder to solve.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

Wondering how far the wedding dress designer's shop was from JD's home?
1999

Who would want to kill the BBC's golden girl?

For most people Monday is a day of work. For Jill Dando, the BBC's golden television presenter, last Monday, 26 April, was to have been a rare day off.

www.theguardian.com

'' When she left the next morning for her house in Fulham, just a couple of miles away, she had the day to herself.
After a bit of shopping, the only demand on her time was an appointment in south London with clothes designer Lindka Cierach for a wedding-dress fitting.''

The address that keeps coming up (though it's unclear if that was the address in 1999) is in Clareville Grove, South Kensington, a little over two miles away from Gowan Avenue:

https://www.yelp.com/biz/lindka-cierach-london

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

Wondering how far the wedding dress designer's shop was from JD's home?
1999

Who would want to kill the BBC's golden girl?

For most people Monday is a day of work. For Jill Dando, the BBC's golden television presenter, last Monday, 26 April, was to have been a rare day off.

www.theguardian.com

'' When she left the next morning for her house in Fulham, just a couple of miles away, she had the day to herself.
After a bit of shopping, the only demand on her time was an appointment in south London with clothes designer Lindka Cierach for a wedding-dress fitting.''

Thank you for posting this article, dotr. It contains a piece of information I'd forgotten about. Many subsequent articles mention Jill giving a brief shriek, but here, just days after the murder, RH is saying she screamed for *five seconds*!

At 11.32, her next-door neighbour, RH, who was upstairs, heard her prime her car alarm. Thirty to 40 seconds later he heard her scream. 'I will never forget it,' he said. 'It went on for about five seconds. It was one of those screams that happen when somebody has a very nasty shock. I ran to the window and saw a man walking briskly away.'

This is from when the memory was freshest in his mind. Obviously RH didn't know what had happened, but I'm not sure I could hear a scream of "nasty shock" lasting five seconds, see a man "walking briskly away," and not immediately go outside to check if everything was OK. Poor Jill was left lying alone on her doorstep until HD arrived some minutes later.

The damage to Jill's brainstem shown in the autopsy is believed to have killed her instantly (effectively an internal decapitation), so the scream realistically had to be before she was shot.

Five seconds is an eternity for an assassin to let someone scream, IMO; often they shoot before their victim is aware they're even there. But that kind of scream is the sort of thing that *might* make someone shoot Jill in anger simply because she wouldn't shut up.

 

[rvlvr]

Five seconds is an eternity for an assassin to let someone scream, IMO; often they shoot before their victim is aware they're even there. But that kind of scream is the sort of thing that *might* make someone shoot Jill in anger simply because she wouldn't shut up.

There’s potentially something strange about the period of time RH describes, definitely. It was suggested at the time that the killer could’ve been lying in wait inside the front garden - perhaps, after witnessing the postman leave, in a time before a succession of Amazon/DPD/Evri/Yodel/Deliveroo/Just Eat delivery guys could be up and down her front path, the killer assumes that no one but JD will come to the door now, so decides its relatively safe to seclude themselves and await her return.

When she does so, she catches sight of a man approaching her from within the confines and safety of her property, is manhandled and the gun is placed to her head - this would give her enough time to scream, but IMO still not much more. When she’s found, her keys are still in her hand and her handbag is over her arm. JMO, but this suggests to me the assumption made that the killing was swift was correct. HD deduced it wasn’t a robbery gone wrong because JD’s valuables were still present but I’d be interested to know if HD saw any signs of a struggle.

The problem with the concealment theory is the killer would’ve surely needed to know JD was returning home that day. The article @dotr helpfully linked to earlier provides another nugget of information that weakens the notion she ‘usually’ returned to GA on Mondays:

Monday was also not a day she normally had off

I’ve posted evidence before that suggests her visits to GA weren’t as routine as has often been assumed. As I and I think @Hexe have said before, it’s incredibly difficult to stalk someone you rarely, if ever, see. At least with the ‘returns to the house usually on a Monday’ theory we can imagine a situation where even a simple man like BG can deduce a pattern to her movements.

But if the pattern is infrequent and irregular, you’d either have to be incredibly committed to watching her house, hoping for a chance encounter, or incredibly lucky she just happens to walk across your path close to the time you’ve chosen to kill her. Neither are impossible, but - JMO - BG was a ‘busy’ man, he stalked prolifically but apparently randomly; repeatedly, patiently staking out a mostly empty property that offers close to zero returns doesn’t strike me as his idea of a good time. And, if he/the killer had been concealing themselves in that spot before, the chances become much higher that someone would’ve spotted them long before the day of the murder. The risk-reward ratio seems way off, to me.

 

[TheRockingRev]

That is a luck element without question as this was not 1am at the dead of night when Jill might've been coming back from BBC or presenting at awards ceremony, this was 11.30am on a Monday morning so you'd expect a flow of people walking up and down the road every few minutes. For some reason there was little activity for quarter of an hour and so we have this void which enabled the perp to escape on foot and then probably get a lift round the corner.

Which is one of the reasons I count out BG. The killer must have had some sort of transport in the area (either they drove or driven by someone else) to get out of the area as soon as possible without being seen by anyone - especially as at that time in the morning there would be no knowing how many people would be about. Whoever did it would risk being seen by a few people in the immediate vicinity, but then be long gone before being seen. BG would've been seen by numerous people had he fled back to his flat on the route he took.

 

[Hexe]

This is from when the memory was freshest in his mind. Obviously RH didn't know what had happened, but I'm not sure I could hear a scream of "nasty shock" lasting five seconds, see a man "walking briskly away," and not immediately go outside to check if everything was OK. Poor Jill was left lying alone on her doorstep until HD arrived some minutes later.

The damage to Jill's brainstem shown in the autopsy is believed to have killed her instantly (effectively an internal decapitation), so the scream realistically had to be before she was shot.

Five seconds is an eternity for an assassin to let someone scream, IMO; often they shoot before their victim is aware they're even there. But that kind of scream is the sort of thing that *might* make someone shoot Jill in anger simply because she wouldn't shut up.

Let's start with declaration that I do not believe it was an actual, trained assassin. Saying that, I have to point out the claim you made, about five sec scream.being an eternity for an assassin is not exactly true. Assassinations are committed in wide variety of ways, the ones with a man in black appearing out of nowhere and killing surprised victim with a gun with silencer before said victim utters any sound are definitely the rarest. Actually many of the assassinations are way more messy than JD killing.

I do not believe JD was killed by an assasin, but people who support this theory think the assassin might be Serbian, sent by Milosevic. Well, the slayings attributed to Slobo's men, like killings of Slavko Ćuruvija, Radovan Stojičić or Pavle Bulatović are far less discrete and swift than the murder of Jill, with masked kilkers approaching victims in public places (in front of multiple witnesses), showering them with bullets. Actually one of the reasons for which I do not think Jill was not killed by Serbians, is that her killing is way too fine for Slobo's boys.

​

 

[Hexe]

Gowan Avenue is more secluded but it's not quite a cul-de-sac in a housing estate in a rural setting.

Plenty use it as a side route to get down to Putney quicker.

The killer without question was lucky they approached and killed Jill without anyone walking right by. The house is only 20-30 yards from the junction with Munster road so someone could've just decided to walk down Gowan at the exact moment Jill was gunned down so they'd be pretty much level with 29 (if walking on the side her house is) and would've come right next to the gunman leaving.

O.k nothing suspicious until a quick glance and you see JD slumped on her doorway. I've walked past the house, the porch and doorway are right by the pavement so hardly anyone could miss it.

Or Helen Doble could've walked back from the shops a little earlier and seen it all and then she exactly knows what the gunman looks like instead of people peeking out of windows and it not really registering.

Watching the Crimewatch appeal and there is a postman, traffic warden and window cleaner all present right by her house that morning so that gives a good indication, typical London street in terms of activity.

That is a luck element without question as this was not 1am at the dead of night when Jill might've been coming back from BBC or presenting at awards ceremony, this was 11.30am on a Monday morning so you'd expect a flow of people walking up and down the road every few minutes. For some reason there was little activity for quarter of an hour and so we have this void which enabled the perp to escape on foot and then probably get a lift round the corner.

Well dressed man walking calmly would not get much of attention in this area, would he? There was no need for any complicated escape plans, it was enough for the killer to walk calmly to his car parked a couple of streets away. He was not bloodied, he did not look creepy or out of place, no person unaware of murder that just happened would notice him.

 

[tes1984]

I can't see a trained assassin going straight to a tube station, one of the only locations where he would have been captured on close up CCTV.

 

[Inspector Evans]

There’s potentially something strange about the period of time RH describes, definitely. It was suggested at the time that the killer could’ve been lying in wait inside the front garden - perhaps, after witnessing the postman leave, in a time before a succession of Amazon/DPD/Evri/Yodel/Deliveroo/Just Eat delivery guys could be up and down her front path, the killer assumes that no one but JD will come to the door now, so decides its relatively safe to seclude themselves and await her return.

When she does so, she catches sight of a man approaching her from within the confines and safety of her property, is manhandled and the gun is placed to her head - this would give her enough time to scream, but IMO still not much more. When she’s found, her keys are still in her hand and her handbag is over her arm. JMO, but this suggests to me the assumption made that the killing was swift was correct. HD deduced it wasn’t a robbery gone wrong because JD’s valuables were still present but I’d be interested to know if HD saw any signs of a struggle.

The problem with the concealment theory is the killer would’ve surely needed to know JD was returning home that day. The article @dotr helpfully linked to earlier provides another nugget of information that weakens the notion she ‘usually’ returned to GA on Mondays:



I’ve posted evidence before that suggests her visits to GA weren’t as routine as has often been assumed. As I and I think @Hexe have said before, it’s incredibly difficult to stalk someone you rarely, if ever, see. At least with the ‘returns to the house usually on a Monday’ theory we can imagine a situation where even a simple man like BG can deduce a pattern to her movements.

But if the pattern is infrequent and irregular, you’d either have to be incredibly committed to watching her house, hoping for a chance encounter, or incredibly lucky she just happens to walk across your path close to the time you’ve chosen to kill her. Neither are impossible, but - JMO - BG was a ‘busy’ man, he stalked prolifically but apparently randomly; repeatedly, patiently staking out a mostly empty property that offers close to zero returns doesn’t strike me as his idea of a good time. And, if he/the killer had been concealing themselves in that spot before, the chances become much higher that someone would’ve spotted them long before the day of the murder. The risk-reward ratio seems way off, to me.

From being in the area a couple of years ago I think the killer was just across the road (as all the eye witnesses placed potential suspects that day).

If you had the intel of the house number JD lived and the car she drove (which were probably covered by the press) it would be relatively straightforward to wait on the corner, spot her car and also ID inside the vehicle.

Then you start to walk briskly as he gets out and you're basically right behind her as she walks up to the door.

I know the patio/porch area has changed in the years as you can see a tree to the left in one of the press photos showing her being door stepped but I can't believe that would've shielded someone totally from view if they were crouching down, I'm sure she'd have spotted him getting out of the car.

More likely I guess she opened the gate (RH heard that aswell) and probably went to open the door first, put stuff down in the hallway and go back and close the gate and the person just walked through.

I think then the killer then closed the game and again RH heard that and looked out and saw the person leaving. I too can't believe he then just went about his morning's business rather than opening his front door and seeing what the scream was about. I presume the view from next door was obscured and you couldn't see doorway area of JD's house.

 

[Hexe]

I know the patio/porch area has changed in the years as you can see a tree to the left in one of the press photos showing her being door stepped but I can't believe that would've shielded someone totally from view if they were crouching down, I'm sure she'd have spotted him getting out of the car.

Crouching while not being entirely hidden would be very risky I'd say. Not only Jill could have seen him, but any person passing by. And a man crouched in someone's garden raises automatically suspicions.

Standing on the street, as you suggest, would be much better. Nobody gives much attention to a normal looking guy that does not do anything particularly suspicious.

More likely I guess she opened the gate (RH heard that aswell) and probably went to open the door first, put stuff down in the hallway and go back and close the gate and the person just walked through.

I do not think she would be bringing any stuff to the flat she did not live in, it is entirely possible though she just wanted to pop in quickly to pick the faxed documents up, so she did not bother with closing the gate when she entered.

I think then the killer then closed the game and again RH heard that and looked out and saw the person leaving. I too can't believe he then just went about his morning's business rather than opening his front door and seeing what the scream was about.

He described it as a short surprised exclamation, not a shriek of terror. In my opinion it is not weird he did not run to check it up.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

Which is one of the reasons I count out BG. The killer must have had some sort of transport in the area (either they drove or driven by someone else) to get out of the area as soon as possible without being seen by anyone - especially as at that time in the morning there would be no knowing how many people would be about. Whoever did it would risk being seen by a few people in the immediate vicinity, but then be long gone before being seen. BG would've been seen by numerous people had he fled back to his flat on the route he took.

The initial appeals were all for sightings in the Fulham Palace Rd and Bishop's Park Rd area, because that was the direction the killer was initially seen running.

BBC News | UK | Dando murder team calls on experts

The Times also has a much clearer copy of this same appeal poster, but I'm not sure I can post it directly because I think their article is behind a paywall:

Google Image Result for https://www.thetimes.com/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fb3fab5b7-b237-40c7-bac7-352545ba41b4.jpg?crop=1248%2C1776%2C0%2C0&resize=618

Even if BG was seen returning to his flat in Crookham Road, it's possible nobody reported it because the police seemingly weren't asking for sightings of anyone heading in that direction. The focus was on Fulham Palace Rd, which it's possible BG never would have reached if he turned left onto Kimbell Gardens and then looped back.

 

[Inspector Evans]

Well dressed man walking calmly would not get much of attention in this area, would he? There was no need for any complicated escape plans, it was enough for the killer to walk calmly to his car parked a couple of streets away. He was not bloodied, he did not look creepy or out of place, no person unaware of murder that just happened would notice him.

Agreed if you were coming up from Bishops Park way. Would be just another person passing. I meant more someone coming from the Munster road side. You walk down that side, see the killer coming out and then glance at the house he's come from (just to see if he's been talking to someone) and see JD lying there...I think that would produce a shout in their direction at the very least but Helen Doble 15 minutes later was the first person to notice JD prone on the ground and by then the killer was long gone from the immediate vicinity.

Probably best comparison is if you work in a city centre. How many times when you walk out of the entrance onto the street do you have people passing you in either direction? Naturally the pedestrian will divert their gaze to the building where the person has just emerged from.

That could've easily happened to the killer as he came out of 29 as for about 10 seconds he'd have all his focus on killing Jill so wouldn't be looking over his shoulder to see who was walking up/down Gowan Avenue at the time, that was the luck element on the day.

 

[Hexe]

The initial appeals were all for sightings in the Fulham Palace Rd and Bishop's Park Rd area, because that was the direction the killer was initially seen running.

Possible killer, actually.

 

[TheRockingRev]

Well dressed man walking calmly would not get much of attention in this area, would he? There was no need for any complicated escape plans, it was enough for the killer to walk calmly to his car parked a couple of streets away. He was not bloodied, he did not look creepy or out of place, no person unaware of murder that just happened would notice him.

And that's another reason I don't think it was BG. He would've been panicked and would've walked all the way back to his flat - and he was definitely shifty enough for people to notice him.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

Let's start with declaration that I do not believe it was an actual, trained assassin. Saying that, I have to point out the claim you made, about five sec scream.being an eternity for an assassin is not exactly true. Assassinations are committed in wide variety of ways, the ones with a man in black appearing out of nowhere and killing surprised victim with a gun with silencer before said victim utters any sound are definitely the rarest. Actually many of the assassinations are way more messy than JD killing.

I do not believe JD was killed by an assasin, but people who support this theory think the assassin might be Serbian, sent by Milosevic. Well, the slayings attributed to Slobo's men, like killings of Slavko Ćuruvija, Radovan Stojičić or Pavle Bulatović are far less discrete and swift than the murder of Jill, with masked kilkers approaching victims in public places (in front of multiple witnesses), showering them with bullets. Actually one of the reasons for which I do not think Jill was not killed by Serbians, is that her killing is way too fine for Slobo's boys.

You've pretty much made my point for me. A messy hitman could have stood at the gate and showered Jill with bullets without any concern for being noticed. The garden and path from the gate are *tiny*; shooting her from that distance would pose no issue.

Most people argue that Jill's murder was calculated and professional, quick and clean, far too polished to have been committed by someone like BG--almost exactly the kind of killing you claim is the rarest. The idea that such a killer would allow their victim to scream and draw attention for five seconds seems to be a complete contradiction.

He described it as a short surprised exclamation, not a shriek of terror. In my opinion it is not weird he did not run to check it up.

RSBM. In later interviews RH described it as a surprised exclamation. In his first interviews, as clearly noted in the article dotr posted, he said she gave a scream of "nasty shock" lasting five seconds. It seems he later changed his story to minimise what he heard. We can only speculate as to why he would do that.

Possible killer, actually.

Virtually everyone agrees--and always has agreed--that the man seen leaving Jill's property seconds after she was shot, and heading in the direction of Fulham Palace Rd, was the killer. For the past 26 years the only thing most people have disagreed on is who that man actually was.

 

[rvlvr]

BG would've been seen by numerous people had he fled back to his flat on the route he took.

Yeah, I think if his intention was to get back to his flat asap to change his clothes and begin trying to establish an alibi then he’d have simply turned right, instead of left which took him a) further away from his flat and b) increased the chances of him being seen.

I also don’t think a panicked killer closes the gate after them, the adrenaline would surely already be pumping but if the murder wasn’t planned for then now you’re in a world of trouble you didn’t see coming - IMO you’d want to be getting away from the scene asap and wouldn’t be thinking of much else. Closing the gate seems to me like a very deliberate act, one designed to make the scene from street level look as normal as possible. Also, if anyone has seen you leaving the scene, they might be assuaged by the normal-ness of that action - indeed it seems it might have had that effect on RH.

 

[rvlvr]

I can't see a trained assassin going straight to a tube station, one of the only locations where he would have been captured on close up CCTV.

I’m inclined to agree.

I think the theory - and it’s not one I’m necessarily for or against - goes that the killer is supposed to rendezvous with a vehicle but there’s some sort of mix up so he leaves on foot and eventually makes his way to the bus stop. He lets two (I think?) buses go by, perhaps in the hope his ride turns up, or maybe because he doesn’t understand London’s buses well, but eventually catches one to Putney Bridge - maybe he’s more familiar with the tube? I know the tube fairly well myself but can’t ever recall catching a bus in London. He enters the tube station but immediately clocks the CCTV cameras - obviously this is in the days before dash cams and ring doorbells and a lot of CCTV at that time was of poor quality, but perhaps he assumes (probably rightly imo) that the cameras on the underground will be too high quality and plentiful, and that its less risky and far easier to disappear on foot, so he turns around quickly and leaves.

It’s probably nothing but imo it’s a shame this lead wasn’t pursued with more vigour at the time.

 

[Hexe]

Most people argue that Jill's murder was calculated and professional, quick and clean, far too polished to have been committed by someone like BG--almost exactly the kind of killing you claim is the rarest. The idea that such a killer would allow their victim to scream and draw attention for five seconds seems to be a complete contradiction.

As much as I do not think it was a movie-style stealth assassin, I do think it was to swift and too well planned to be BG. He would be even louder and messier than Slobo's boys. This guy turned attention wherever he went.

RSBM. In later interviews RH described it as a surprised exclamation. In his first interviews, as clearly noted in the article dotr posted, he said she gave a scream of "nasty shock" lasting five seconds. It seems he later changed his story to minimise what he heard. We can only speculate as to why he would do that.

People can have a nasty shock from many fairly innocent reasons. Suddenly loosing their balance, seeing a spider, finding unexpectedly a hideous stain on their garments, dropping something... It was a short, not very loud (not heard by anyone else than RH) scream/exclamation, not exactly a reason in itself to run out of the house.

Virtually everyone agrees--and always has agreed--that the man seen leaving Jill's property seconds after she was shot, and heading in the direction of Fulham Palace Rd, was the killer.

RH saw a killer, that's agreed upon. Other people saw a man that might be the killer but until he is caught we cannot be sure.