Joining Websleuths last month has rekindled my interest in True Crime so I ordered a few books and a couple touched on the Jill Dando case.
Jonathan Levi and Emma French's new book
Inside Belmarsh has a brief chapter on Barry George.
They assume he is innocent but a fellow (anonymous) prisoner had some interesting observations. They were in the same escort to the Central Criminal Court when BG's conviction was overturned:
""The public perception of him is that he is a slow individual, a simplistic man with mental health issues, not very articulate and with no academic skills. This however is wrong."
This former Belmarsh inmate was impressed by George's intellect and recalled that "his cell was full of law books. Books that are complex to read and understand for the average person."...
"He even took out civil claims against the prison service, legislations which in themselves, are a very complex procedure. To do this one needs to be aware of laws and procedures. George knew them all. This was not the behaviour of someone with limited intellect or ability."
George was meticulous and examined even seemingly trivial things with great care, according to our source.
"Such was his legal mind that one day, when he was given a television, he refused to sign the standard common compact required to receive it...George refused to sign until he had read it thoroughly and studied the terms." (pp 257-258)
He added that 99.9 % per cent of prisoners signed immediately.
I do not know for certain that BG killed jill Dando. But I do know that those who say he COULDN'T have done it because of his "low IQ" are entirely wrong. He was and is a lot smarter than his supporters make him out to be.
Another volume I bought is David Wilson's latest tome
Murder At Home. His books are a lot better than his toe-curling TV appearances, especially those with "Mils". His theoretical ideas are interesting. But when you get down to the granular level I find much to disagree with him about. He is a systematizer and tends to try to fit criminals and crimes into boxes, whereas in fact all such cases are unique.
The first chapter is titled 'The Door and the Doorstep'. He describes this as a "liminal" space. Liminality is an idea which he acknowledges originally came from ethnographer and social thinker Arnold Van Gennep in his 1909 meisterwerk
The Rites Of Passage. Ah. Takes me right back to my days as an undergraduate in the late '70s studying social anthropology.
"Liminal is a word for the in-between. It describes states, times, spaces, etc., that exist at a point of change—a metaphorical threshold—as in “the liminal zone between sleep and wakefulness.” (Merriam Webster)
He discusses Jill Dando's case amongst others and he is convinced it was a hitman what done it. A Serbian hitman in all probability at that. He says as much in that dreadful Mark Williams-Thomas doc on YouTube. He takes his cue from Michael Mansfield and calls the MO "sophisticated". He admits the Serbian hitman theory might seem far-fetched but says "there was in fact a history of Serbian hitmen working within Britain". But he only gives one example, and that is the shooting of a Croatian man living in Scotland, Nikola Stedul.
The attacker was Vinko Sindicic, "a notorious assassin linked with a number of killings across Europe, [who] had come to Britain using a fake passport, hiding in amongst ordinary Yugoslav football fans gearing up for a World Cup Qualifier at Hampden."
It was like something out of a classic spy novel. An exiled world leader in hiding, shot by an international hitman who snuck into the country. And it all happened in Kirkcaldy.
www.fifetoday.co.uk
Wilson writes "...it doesn't seem far fetched to link Jill's death to a Serbian hitman, given that one had been active on British soil in the decade before she had been murdered..." (p38)
Really? One example more than ten years before? And on a fellow Yugoslav (Stedul was a Croatian separatist)? Seems a big stretch to me. Unprecedented to kill a UK citizen over a TV appeal.
(Wilson also discusses the case of Alistair Wilson, who was mysteriously shot on his doorstep in Scotland in 2004, citing Peter Bleksley's book about the crime. Wilson is convinced it had to do with a contract hit involving a "regional" or even "national" businessman (Alistair was a banker). Unfortunately Bleksley and the police now firmly believe the murder was because of a dispute about some decking in the pub over the road which Alistair objected to. In a recent interview on YouTube Bleksley says the police were going to arrest a man but didn't have enough hard evidence and he knows who the man is, although he wouldn't give the name. An hour or so searching online enabled me to find out who this guy is and his criminal background. I discuss this all on the Websleuths thread about Alistair, who I confess I had never heard of when I woke up yesterday morning. Fascinating case!)
In conclusion David Wilson says that Jill's and Alistair's murders were "a form of retaliation and revenge". Hmmm. Not remotely convinced.
Bleksley has obviously now moved on from his hitman theory in the Alistair Wilson case as the criminal he suspects is an alcoholic wreck and has in his words had a terrible life. But Wilson had discussed hitmen in an earlier book
My Life With Murderers and even come up with a typology of them - the Novice, the Dilettante, the Journeyman and the Master. Again this classification seems a little arbitrary and ambiguous. What is the point of it outside the academic's love of schemata?"
But he does speak to a hitman about the Dando murder. He asks why you would carry out a hit on someone's doorstep and the bloke says it is the element of surprise when they are fumbling for their keys, concentrating on their door." If you "go into their house "you might leave forensics, if you're on the doorstep bang - simple." (p194) If people hear a noise they might think it's a car backfiring or a tyre bursting.
Wilson asks the hitman if he thinks it is significant that Dando was only shot once in the head, not twice. He replies "I do yeah, I mean if I was asked to comment on that I'd say the gun probably failed to go off the second time. It was very unusual ammunition as well, homemade ammunition, so you can easily get a misfire round. So I would imagine it was supposed to be two...that's...You know...that's the way to do it, two shots." (p195)
But he still thinks it was a professional hit, because it was a doorstep killing and she was shot in the head."
Surely there's a contradiction in there? A professional hit when any professional would fire more than once and this fellow used dodgy homemade ammunition with the possibility of a dangerous misfire.
Again, not convinced David!
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