# 71: How the ORIGINAL True Crime reporter became a murder victim herself...

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 16 May 2024, 1 h 42 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4047243821.mp3

Today's case is about Jill Dando, hailed as TV's Princess Diana, was a prominent figure in 90s UK television. Her tragic murder in 1999 shocked the nation, sparking the largest investigation in Metropolitan Police history. Now, after 25 years, a new suspect, convicted Serbian assassin Milorad Ulemek, offers a potential breakthrough in the quest to uncover who killed her. Trigger Warning: rape, stalking, war crimes and murder Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] On a quiet spring morning in 1999, Jill Dander, the original
[0:05] true crime presenter of the UK, became a victim in her very own
[0:10] unsolved murder case. She was killed on the doorstep
[0:14] of her London home in broad daylight by a shadowy figure in
[0:18] a long dark code. Jill's murder was executed with
[0:22] skilled precision and careful planning.
[0:24] It was clearly no random act of violence.
[0:27] In fact, is that what it was, an execution?
[0:31] Jill used her voice to bring attention to a lot of horrific
[0:34] crimes happening around the world.
[0:36] Maybe she'd gotten too loud and ended up pissing off the wrong
[0:40] people. Jill was the golden girl of
[0:42] British TV in the 90s. She was ABBC presenter, meaning
[0:46] that she appeared on half of all of the TV channels.
[0:49] At the time, people considered her to be like TV's Princess
[0:52] Diana. But when Jill was senselessly
[0:55] murdered, her case became the largest investigation in the
[0:59] history of the set police since the hunt for the Yorkshire
[1:02] Ripper. How could the nation's
[1:04] sweetheart be murdered in cold blood on her own doorstep,
[1:09] without the killer leaving so much as a trace of evidence?
[1:13] Maybe Jill Dander had angered the wrong people.
[1:17] Today we're uncovering all the strange and terrifying theories
[1:20] surrounding Jill's death. This series is intended for
[1:27] educational purposes, to memorialise victims and to
[1:30] amplify important conversations. All opinions stated are mine
[1:34] alone. This episode will cover a lot of
[1:37] sensitive topics, including discussions of rape, stalking,
[1:40] war crimes and murder, so viewer discretion is advised.
[1:45] Do click out now if you think you need to.
[1:47] So today's case takes place in Fulham in West London in 1999 on
[1:52] the morning of April 26th. The nation's sweetheart, Gill
[1:56] Sander was tragically murdered on her doorstep in broad
[2:00] daylight. She was just 37 years old.
[2:03] She was Britains biggest TV personality at that time.
[2:06] She was beloved and recognized by pretty much everyone in this
[2:10] nation, but Jill's story actually started from much
[2:15] humbler beginnings. Jill Wendy Dander was born on
[2:18] November 9th, 1961 in the seaside town of Weston Super
[2:22] Mare in the southwest of England.
[2:24] She had one older brother that was actually 11 years older than
[2:28] her, so quite a big age gap. And for that reason, the two of
[2:31] them weren't very close growing up.
[2:32] I guess they just didn't have a lot in common.
[2:35] But the two of them did share a lot of happy memories of going
[2:39] for picnics and going to the beach as a family.
[2:42] But before that, there was Jill as a baby and all of the severe
[2:47] health complications that she had as a toddler.
[2:50] Around the time that she was learning to walk, her parents
[2:53] noticed that her cheeks were always really red and flushed
[2:56] where they hadn't been when she was just a baby.
[2:58] It was a bit peculiar, but it became actually concerning when
[3:03] she began trying to run around. She'd only just learnt to walk,
[3:06] so now she was trying to run and she would get out of breath so
[3:09] quickly. Just running across the room
[3:11] would have her completely out of breath and her parents knew that
[3:15] this couldn't be normal. They took Jill to the doctors
[3:18] and they agreed that this wasn't normal, but with all the tests
[3:21] that they were doing, they couldn't quite figure out why
[3:24] this was happening. I think there were quite a few
[3:26] appointments that she had to go to and have different tests done
[3:30] and no one could give her family answers.
[3:32] It was an incredibly different time for her family.
[3:35] They had no idea what the issue was, No professionals could help
[3:38] them, and they didn't know how they could help their little
[3:41] girl. The anxiety that they must have
[3:43] been feeling at that point in time must have been unbearable.
[3:47] Thankfully though, doctors eventually give an answer to
[3:50] this problem, although it wasn't a good answer.
[3:53] It turns out that Jill had actually been born with the
[3:57] issue that she was experiencing right now, but it was only just
[4:00] becoming apparent now that she could move and walk and run.
[4:03] So actually, when she was born, Jill had been a blue baby, was
[4:07] known as a blue baby. And that's because they
[4:09] literally look blue due to like a lack of oxygen in their blood,
[4:13] their lips, their skin will have like this bluish tinge.
[4:16] And they're just finding out now when she's a toddler that the
[4:19] reason she was blue when she was a baby was because Jill had a
[4:23] very serious congenital heart condition.
[4:26] She had a literal hole in her heart and one of the arteries
[4:31] leading to her lungs was clogged.
[4:33] If they hadn't discovered these issues when they did, when she
[4:37] was still tiny tiny, then Jill probably would have died as an
[4:42] infant at just three years old, Jill Dando went through an 8
[4:46] hour surgery on her heart to try to close that hole.
[4:51] And back then, this type of heart surgery was very rare.
[4:54] It was largely experimental. Doctors still didn't quite know
[4:58] what worked. They were still testing things
[5:00] out. This was a new procedure and she
[5:03] was a three-year old baby. Her parents were so scared.
[5:07] But Jill Dando was among the very first survivors of this
[5:13] surgery. And when she came out of the
[5:15] hospital, she actually ran up to her parents, ran something that
[5:19] she wasn't really able to do before.
[5:21] She ran up to them. And her father said that that
[5:24] was the proudest day of his life.
[5:26] And after that life saving surgery, Jill lived her life
[5:30] pretty much as any other norm kid.
[5:32] I think she will have had to have a good few check UPS after
[5:34] that, but her heart really didn't seem to affect her for
[5:38] the rest of her life, which is great that they can catch things
[5:41] like this and and fix them completely when you're so young.
[5:44] And then your body just kind of gets used to a new way of living
[5:48] and a new way of like, I don't know, internal things happening.
[5:51] I don't know. I find science absolutely mind
[5:54] blowing. So Jill is now out of hospital
[5:56] and she's at home, probably doing a lot of recovery.
[5:59] And when she was young, having a TV at home was still a pretty
[6:03] big deal. There were only three channels
[6:05] to choose from at the time. That was if you were even lucky
[6:08] enough to own a TV. Not everyone had 1.
[6:10] And in Jill Dando's lifetime, she was still only in single
[6:14] digits. But in her lifetime, she had
[6:16] seen TV's turn from black and white to complete color.
[6:20] And I bet it was so fascinating for kids at that time to kind of
[6:24] watch this new technology arise. Jill Dando was one of those kids
[6:28] that was fixated by the TV. She couldn't take a ride eyes
[6:32] off the screen and TV's back then didn't have a lot of
[6:35] variation. I'm sure you can imagine because
[6:37] there were only three channels. They would show a mixture of
[6:39] like news and cartoons on Saturday mornings for the kids.
[6:43] TV back then brought families together.
[6:46] Now they all complain about like they all who is they all?
[6:49] I don't know people complain about TV like tearing families
[6:53] apart and technology is like destroying our kids minds and
[6:56] but back then it was a social thing.
[6:59] Everyone would gather around this one tiny little old shit
[7:02] quality screen to watch like the latest drama.
[7:06] By the time Jill was 8 years old, she was fascinated by the
[7:09] world of TV. When she wasn't actually
[7:11] watching the TV in her house, she was going to the library and
[7:15] checking out every single book on television that she could
[7:18] find. She was fascinated just by this
[7:21] concept that there were real people doing actual things and
[7:25] then it was being broadcasted on her little square in her house.
[7:29] But anyway, as Jill grew into a teenager, she was very devoted
[7:33] to her studies and she was actually voted head girl at her
[7:37] school. And for the confused Americans,
[7:39] head girl is similar to like the the student body president.
[7:44] That accent was so bad. Please Americans, stay
[7:47] subscribed to me. I won't do it again.
[7:49] Jill was very popular at school and not popular in the Mean
[7:52] Girls were popular like in the genuine way where everyone
[7:56] actually liked her. She never took issue with anyone
[7:58] to and no one ever had a reason to dislike Jill Dander.
[8:02] She minded her business and focused on her studies.
[8:04] Both her father and her brother worked as journalists for a
[8:08] local newspaper called the Western Mercury.
[8:10] And this is where Jill got her very first job as a print
[8:14] journalists. At just 18 years old.
[8:17] Jill Dander was the first ever female reporter at the Mercury.
[8:21] We love seeing women smashing those glass ceilings.
[8:24] Back in the 80's, the world of journalism was very much still
[8:27] an all boys club. I mean, women were there, sure,
[8:31] but they weren't often listened to.
[8:33] They were invisible. They were there just to look
[8:35] good and to fetch a drink. But into this testosterone
[8:39] fueled arena walked Jill Dander. She wasn't there to make coffees
[8:44] or to copies, she was there to report the news just like all
[8:48] her male Co workers were. And she was going to do it damn
[8:51] well. While Jill was working at the
[8:53] Mercury, she also joined the Western Dramatic Society because
[8:57] she had this real passion for acting and performance and
[9:01] theatre. In 1983 she even landed the lead
[9:04] role in an amateur dramatics production of Agatha Christie's
[9:08] and Murderers Announced. This is a theme that comes up
[9:11] quite a bit in this case is a lot of like ear very
[9:15] foreshadowing in Jill Dander's life.
[9:17] She appeared in an Agatha Christie murder mystery when she
[9:20] was young. Later on in life, she started to
[9:23] produce a true crime TV show. I mean, I don't really have much
[9:26] more to say about that. That's just a pattern that I've
[9:28] noticed that's quite interesting and a bit eerie.
[9:31] But then again, if I was to die in suspicious circumstances,
[9:35] mine would be like 10 times worse than this.
[9:37] I've got like a whole YouTube channel about murder.
[9:40] But anyway, back to Jill Dander her like stage experience and
[9:45] the Agatha Christie production really helped her come into her
[9:48] own, like as a performer. And I know that later in life
[9:51] she ended up being a presenter, which is not exactly the same
[9:54] thing. But becoming a performer in a
[9:56] theatrical sense will have given her a lot of stage presence and
[10:00] confidence and skills like Annunciation.
[10:03] Different, like different little skills like that were building
[10:06] even when she was a teenager. In 1985, after working for five
[10:10] years at the Western Mercury newspaper, Jill landed very
[10:15] first job at the BBC. BBC standing for British
[10:18] Broadcasting Corporation that is.
[10:21] Part of this new role actually required Jill to move away from
[10:24] home because now she would be delivering news bulletins for
[10:28] BBC Radio Devon, based in Plymouth.
[10:30] So at 23 years old, Jill left her hometown and went off to
[10:34] chase her dreams. And of course, being the social
[10:37] butterfly that she'd always been, she found it very easy to
[10:40] settle in and integrate into her new environment.
[10:43] Later that same year she made the big jump from radio to TV
[10:47] for the very first time. She was still based in like BBC
[10:50] Devon, but now she was put on a TV news show called Spotlight,
[10:55] which was their local news. Jill was excellent at this job
[10:59] and everyone that worked with her at this point in time knew
[11:03] that she was destined for big things.
[11:05] But her big break came in May of 1988 when she was offered the
[11:10] opportunity to present BBC's Breakfast Time.
[11:14] I said that as if there was going to be a big reaction from
[11:16] the audience, but honestly I think this was way before most
[11:19] of you guys time, so maybe I'll have to explain the impact of
[11:22] that one. Bear in mind there were very few
[11:25] channels at this point in time. There were 4.
[11:28] There was one more channel. Oh, lucky them.
[11:30] But she was now the main morning presenter for one of four
[11:36] channels. That meant that so many people
[11:39] were going to watch her face every single morning, watch her
[11:42] face, watch her see her face. She had jumped from being just
[11:47] this little regional news presenter to now waking up the
[11:51] whole entire nation pretty much with this major breakfast show.
[11:56] And that was all in the space of like 3 years.
[11:59] She was making major career moves.
[12:01] Very, very inspirational. But Jill Dando almost didn't
[12:05] take that job on BBC's Breakfast Time.
[12:08] The job that changed her whole entire life.
[12:10] She almost turned it down. And that was because she loved
[12:14] her previous job as being just a local small news reporter
[12:19] Endeavour. She found it so incredibly
[12:21] rewarding to be one of the little guys, you know, that was
[12:25] out there day-to-day in the streets, getting to know the
[12:28] people, people of her community and reporting for them.
[12:32] She'd gotten really used to this sense of community and and this
[12:36] way of working as well. This was a very small setup that
[12:39] she was in at the moment and she didn't want to lose all of that
[12:43] like close knit feeling by moving to London and working in
[12:46] a like mega high production TV studio.
[12:49] But in the end, she realized that opportunities like this
[12:53] might only come around once in a lifetime, and she would kick
[12:56] herself later on down the line if she'd never gave ago.
[12:59] So after giving it a lot of thought and asking a lot of
[13:02] people for a lot of different advice, Jill Dander thought,
[13:05] screw it, I'm moving to London. And so at the age of 26, she
[13:09] moved to the Big Smoke. And from the very start of her
[13:12] new gig, it was so clear that Jill absolutely shone on screen.
[13:17] She had this special talent for connecting with people, even
[13:21] through a screen, which is quite hard to do.
[13:24] She would just radiate warmth and good comforting energy into
[13:28] people's living rooms and people felt like they could really
[13:31] relate to this woman. She was an every woman.
[13:34] And soon Jill's talent would catch the eye of Bob Wheaton,
[13:37] the BBC editor for the 6:00 News.
[13:40] He was a pretty powerful man in the world of TV.
[13:44] He had a lot of connections and he was certainly someone that
[13:47] could change the course of Jill's career.
[13:50] Although Bob was very influential at the BBC, he
[13:53] wasn't technically Jill's boss yet at this point in time.
[13:58] They worked on separate programs, but he did still have
[14:00] a lot of influence in their sector.
[14:02] This was a man that she wanted to be on the good side of, and
[14:06] one day while he was preparing for the Evening News that he
[14:09] worked on, he was watching the Morning News that Jill worked
[14:12] on, and he was mesmerized by this woman.
[14:16] He thought that she was a total natural on screen, and she
[14:20] really had the face for TV. But leave it to a man with an
[14:24] overinflated ego to find a flaw in a talented woman like Jill.
[14:29] He thought she had potential, but he wasn't fully satisfied
[14:33] with how she looked. He described her as having
[14:35] arrived from the provinces, looking like a regional girl,
[14:39] which basically meant that she looked too plain, too ordinary
[14:43] to be on TV. There was nothing special about
[14:45] her, so he decided out of the kindness of his heart that he
[14:50] was going to change that. After taking a long, hard look
[14:52] at Jill, Bob told her that she just didn't look right.
[14:56] He said you need to sort your hair out, you need to wear the
[14:58] right clothes, and it actually gets worse.
[15:01] A bit later on, Bob told her that she had put on weight that
[15:05] she needed to lose, which absolutely infuriated me to
[15:08] hear, especially because this had never been a criticism used
[15:12] against Jill Dandor. Like, ever before, really.
[15:15] She'd been on TV for years at this point.
[15:17] There were so many videos, so many photos, so many news
[15:20] articles about her, yet no one ever seemed to pick out her
[15:25] weight as a defining feature about her, other than Bob
[15:29] Wheaton. But Jill wanted to continue
[15:32] growing her career, so she listened to Bob's advice.
[15:35] After all, he was higher up in the BBC than her, so maybe he
[15:39] did know best. And maybe there was a part of
[15:41] her that felt like she didn't really have a choice.
[15:44] While this wasn't her boss exactly, he was still very high
[15:48] up in the company that she worked at.
[15:50] And if he wanted to put in a bad word, I'm sure that would have a
[15:54] huge effect on her career. And of course, Jill wanted to
[15:57] keep this job. It was her dream job.
[15:59] And she was finally starting to see her flowers.
[16:02] So she made some changes to her appearance, including getting in
[16:07] touch with the same hairdresser that Princess Diana had.
[16:10] And Princess Diana was famous for her hair.
[16:14] She had that short blonde, like straight, sleek Bob.
[16:18] It was very unique. And this was going to be a big
[16:21] jump for Jill Dando. Mind you, she had like brown,
[16:24] curly long hair before this. They were changing everything
[16:28] about it, the cut, the colour, the texture.
[16:30] It was a total rebrand. And now she too was very famous
[16:36] for this particular haircut. The two most famous and adored
[16:40] women in the whole of the UK were rocking the exact same
[16:43] hair. Can you imagine what that did to
[16:45] the young women of the time? Yes, this hair became the new IT
[16:48] Girl accessory. Everyone was taking photos of
[16:51] Jill Xander or Princess Diana to their hairdresser, but this
[16:55] makeover actually very nearly didn't happen.
[16:58] Jill got in contact with the hairdresser, got all the way
[17:00] down to the salon, chatted through a potential hairstyle
[17:04] with this guy, and then right as he was about to cut it, like cut
[17:08] her hair off. Jill hesitated and said wait,
[17:11] should I ask my producer, AKA Bob Wheaton?
[17:15] But just to check if she was still allowed to make changes to
[17:20] her own body, it seems that Bob had well and truly got his claws
[17:24] into Jill. She listened to and followed his
[17:27] every word. And it wasn't long after this
[17:30] that the two of them actually began dating.
[17:33] Now, we don't know exactly when their relationship shifted from
[17:36] a business 1 to a romantic one, partly because they kept it a
[17:41] secret on purpose. They knew that this relationship
[17:44] wouldn't be looked upon very favourably at work, what with
[17:47] him being her boss and her being 14 years younger than him.
[17:52] I mean, there was a clear power imbalance here that was already
[17:55] proving itself in the way that he was changing this woman's
[17:59] whole entire appearance. I think Jill was around 2728
[18:03] years old at this point in time. But the this relationship is
[18:06] really hard to pinpoint because they did keep it a secret.
[18:09] So we don't know exactly when it began.
[18:10] But frustratingly, Bob Wheaton was kind of right about this
[18:15] whole makeover thing, because Jill's new look completely
[18:19] transformed her into one of the biggest style icons of the 90s.
[18:25] Everyone was drawing comparisons between her and Princess Diana,
[18:28] the literal people's Princess, which is the ultimate compliment
[18:33] for any woman of that time or of this time.
[18:36] I would cry if someone caught me.
[18:38] The people's Princess, the two of them just had a very similar
[18:41] nature that was very sweet and genuine and and nurturing,
[18:46] comforting. There was a reason that the
[18:48] British public got so attached to these two women just from
[18:52] seeing them through a screen, and that was because they were
[18:55] really, really easy to like. So it's no shock that Jill's
[18:58] murder hit everyone so, so hard, almost as hard as when Princess
[19:04] Diana died. And this is another comparison
[19:06] between them. They both had such tragic sudden
[19:10] ends, and both of their deaths are still filled with so many
[19:14] unanswered questions. And it feels as though powerful
[19:17] men in this country were at the heart of both of these women's.
[19:29] In 1991, just three years after Jill had moved to London to
[19:32] become ATV presenter, she covered her first breaking news
[19:37] story on the 6:00 news. That afternoon, she'd been out
[19:40] for a late lunch with her boyfriend at the time, Bob
[19:43] Wheaton, who was, of course, the editor of that show.
[19:46] They'd just gotten back to BBC Studios and they were getting
[19:49] ready for the show that night when the news broke of the 1991
[19:53] coupe in the Soviet Union. A coupe is basically when a
[19:56] group of people try to overthrow the government by force.
[20:00] And when the BBC received this news, it was down to Jill to
[20:03] jump into action as the main presenter of the News at Six and
[20:07] deliver this story to the whole country.
[20:10] This was a massive moment in her career.
[20:14] Remember, there were only about 3 channels at the time, so
[20:17] practically everyone in the whole entire country sat and
[20:21] watched this breaking news. Jill Dander was well and truly a
[20:24] household name at this point, but behind the scenes, her
[20:28] personal life revealed a much darker side than her polished
[20:32] persona ever revealed. Jill's agent, John Roseman,
[20:36] described her relationship with her boyfriend, Bob Wheaton as
[20:40] strange. And he wasn't the only one,
[20:43] obviously. Bob was 14 years older than
[20:47] Jill. He was her boss.
[20:49] He was known to have quite a controlling nature.
[20:53] The two of them actually dated for seven years, which is longer
[20:56] than I expected when I started looking into this case.
[20:59] Not gonna lie. Umm.
[21:00] They eventually broke up when I think Jill was about 30-4 years
[21:03] old. And apparently this was a mutual
[21:05] decision due to their like, super hectic work schedules.
[21:08] The two of them wanted to focus on their careers.
[21:11] They agreed to stay friends, stay in each other's lives.
[21:14] It was supposedly very amicable. But Jill's career only continued
[21:18] to skyrocket this whole entire time.
[21:20] Soon she was offered a presenting job for a travel show
[21:24] called Holiday, and this was an absolute dream job.
[21:28] I'm so jealous of her for having this job.
[21:30] She got to just travel around and visit the most beautiful
[21:33] locations that this planet has to offer, from beaches to
[21:38] forests and mountains to like wildlife, nature reserves.
[21:42] She saw everything on this show. What a dream come true.
[21:46] She had such a blast making this show and the audience had such a
[21:51] blast watching it. The show had already existed
[21:54] before Jill presented it, but with her presenting, she
[21:58] absolutely blew it up. Each episode of this show now
[22:01] had about 10 million average viewers.
[22:05] Now that is crazy. Around this same time she picked
[22:08] up another presenting job, potentially the job that she is
[22:12] best known for. The job that I know her for very
[22:15] well. Not that I was alive at the
[22:16] time, but I have like since watched back clips.
[22:19] Guys, come on, it was Crime Watch.
[22:21] I am a true crime girly through and through.
[22:23] I have gone back and I have watched Jill Dando episodes of
[22:26] Crime Watch. She was the blueprint.
[22:30] Long before there were true crime girlies like me on the
[22:33] Internet. People were glued to their TV
[22:35] resets to watch shows like Crime Watch.
[22:38] They would broadcast current news updates and current crime
[22:43] updates specifically of different things that needed
[22:45] solving or different updates in crimes or things to be aware of.
[22:51] Like, I just think it was such a brilliant show.
[22:53] On the show, Jill would talk about unsolved murders,
[22:57] mysterious crimes, missing people.
[23:00] They would have the police themselves come on the show to
[23:02] give appeals and to discuss cases, to discuss ways to keep
[23:06] yourself safe. And whenever they would discuss
[23:08] these cases, they would have like a little tip line running
[23:11] on the bottom of the screen that you could call up if you knew
[23:14] anything about what they were talking about.
[23:16] I think it's just such a brilliant concept, such a way to
[23:19] help the community solve its own crimes rather than trusting and
[23:23] and believing that the police will do it because they won't a
[23:27] lot of the time. The show was briefly cancelled
[23:30] in 2017 and I was heartbroken. I was devastated, but it has
[23:35] recently made a comeback on BBC and I haven't watched it yet.
[23:38] Not going to lie, I don't really watch TV that much, but if any
[23:40] of you have seen it while it's been back, let me know what it's
[23:43] like. Do I have to tune in?
[23:44] Crime Watch has proven to be a very, very helpful show.
[23:48] And a lot of the cases that Jill would present would end up being
[23:52] solved or arrests would be made. And actually we've covered quite
[23:56] a few cases on this channel that were featured on Crime Watch
[23:59] back in the day. Do you remember the murder of
[24:01] James Bulger? It's a really, really sad one
[24:03] that I covered years and years and years ago.
[24:05] I'm not not even entirely sure the video is still on this
[24:07] channel, but basically in February 1993 there was this two
[24:12] year old boy named James Bulger. He was walking around the
[24:16] shopping centre with his mum when she let go of his hand for
[24:18] a brief moment and he was lured away by two older boys.
[24:23] John Venables and Robert Thompson were only 10 years old
[24:26] themselves at the time, but they proceeded to inflict one of the
[24:30] worst torture and murder cases I've ever heard of in my entire
[24:36] life. They abducted this little boy
[24:38] and took him away to the railway.
[24:40] And I'm not going to go into any more detail with that case.
[24:43] It is absolutely traumatic. So be careful if you look it up
[24:47] in your own time, in your own time, as if this is like a class
[24:50] that I'm putting on. But as they had abducted him out
[24:53] of this shopping centre, they'd been caught on a lot of CCTV
[24:56] cameras and this footage was put out onto Crime Watch.
[25:00] People were asked to call in if they knew either of these boys.
[25:04] And actually this, this is what led to them being identified.
[25:08] Crime Watch the show has really, really helped to bring justice
[25:11] to a lot of people, not just murder victims, but people
[25:15] victims of crimes in general. And it's really, really
[25:18] heartbreaking to me that Jill Dando herself would become one
[25:23] of those unsolved cases that she worked so passionately to help
[25:28] solve. But at this point in her life,
[25:30] Jill was seeing so much success. And I bet her family was so, so
[25:35] proud of her. And imagine like how her older
[25:37] brother feels about it. How cool would that be to be?
[25:40] Like, my little sister is like the face of the TV.
[25:44] And by this point, Jill Dander was way more than just a TV
[25:47] presenter. She was a whole entire
[25:49] celebrity. She had magazine covers, awards,
[25:52] like BBC's Personality of the Year.
[25:54] But behind all of that fame, she was still just Jill, that very
[25:59] normal girl next door type that everyone loved.
[26:02] And that is why everyone loved her so much, because the fame
[26:06] never changed her. She was still always a girl that
[26:10] you could imagine going for drinks with or a girl that you
[26:13] could imagine introducing to your friend group like she was
[26:16] an every woman. As I said before, Jill was 35
[26:20] years old when she was introduced to a man named Alan
[26:23] Farthing through some mutual friends.
[26:25] Alan seemed like a great man. He was a doctor and Jill fell
[26:30] from him, literally, like from the day that she met him.
[26:33] And two years later, in January of 1999, the couple announced
[26:37] their engagement. Jill said that she had never
[26:40] been happier. Their wedding was booked for
[26:42] September of that year, and she even saw them having kids very
[26:46] soon after. But tragically, Jill Dander
[26:49] would be gunned down and killed within a split second.
[26:54] Less than five months after that proposal, on April 26th, 1999,
[26:59] Helen Doble, Jills neighbor, was walking up Gowan Ave. in Fulham
[27:03] sometime after 11:30 in the morning.
[27:06] Helen crossed the road and she saw Jills car and then she saw
[27:10] her front door and then she saw Jill lying in a pool of blood on
[27:16] her own front doorstep. She panicked of course, and
[27:19] called for an ambulance, telling them confidentially, It looks
[27:22] like it's Jill Dander. Ambulances arrived at the scene
[27:26] to find that blood was streaming from Jill's nose.
[27:29] Her arms were already blue and it seemed that she hadn't been
[27:33] breathing for a while. She was transported to Charing
[27:36] Cross Hospital, but at 1:03 PM, doctors pronounced Jill Wendy
[27:41] Dander dead on arrival. She was 37 years old.
[27:45] Just a few minutes later, her friend and colleague Jenny Bond
[27:50] had to announce her death live on the BBC.
[27:54] Watching Jenny present the news of Jill's death just completely
[27:58] breaks my heart. And she was so professional all
[28:01] the way through it. She was so brave.
[28:04] And then just at the very end, you can hear her voice break a
[28:07] little bit. Like, just imagine the energy in
[28:09] that newsroom when they received the bulletin and not only were
[28:13] they all suddenly finding out that one of their own had been
[28:17] killed, murdered, but now they have to very quickly pull
[28:21] themselves together, put a brave face on, go out there and be
[28:24] very formal. Speak to the whole entire nation
[28:27] about your friend that has just tragically lost their life, as
[28:31] if they're not all horrified and devastated and shocked and
[28:35] speechless. And and then to have to just put
[28:39] all that aside for business, it's just so heartbreaking on so
[28:43] many levels. And after this broadcast went
[28:46] out to the whole entire country, floods of tributes were coming
[28:50] in from everyone, from fans, from people that just loved
[28:54] watching her on the TV, to other celebrities, to politicians,
[28:58] People like Tony Blair, who was the Prime Minister at the time,
[29:01] and even Queen Elizabeth herself loved Jill Dander.
[29:06] In the breaking news bulletin that Jenny did, she said that
[29:09] Jill had been stabbed to death, but that wasn't actually
[29:12] accurate. I'm not sure why they believed
[29:14] she was stabbed at first, but this was very quickly corrected
[29:17] by the police when they found out that Jill had been shot with
[29:21] A9 millimetre semi automatic pistol, a type of firearm that
[29:25] actually can't be legally owned here in the UK.
[29:28] The gun had clearly been pressed up against the back of her head
[29:32] when this shot had been fired. And this actually made her
[29:36] injuries so severe that, like I say, at the very beginning,
[29:40] police couldn't actually tell if she'd been stabbed or shot.
[29:43] They did actually assume stabbed.
[29:45] But by that night, it was confirmed that Jill had died
[29:49] from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head.
[29:52] And that day, the crime scene was absolutely chaotic.
[29:56] There were multiple paramedics and police crowding the area,
[30:00] plus the press were everywhere and there were no boundaries for
[30:04] this. And of course, with it being in
[30:06] the 90s, everyone wasn't quite as forensically aware.
[30:09] So this was an absolute nightmare when it came to
[30:13] forensics contamination. The journalists and the
[30:16] photographers were the worst fucking part of it all.
[30:18] Like spilling into the garden and stuff like that.
[30:21] You never know what's going to be in there.
[30:22] You never know if there's evidence or footprints that get
[30:24] off. In all of this chaos, the police
[30:26] failed to secure the area properly and like I say, it all
[30:30] got contaminated. The police actually blamed the
[30:33] paramedics for this, saying that they were like running around
[30:36] the whole thing. But like, first of all, if
[30:38] anyone's got a fucking right to be running around a crime scene,
[30:41] it's, is it not the paramedics that are trying to save the
[30:43] person? But second of all, you didn't
[30:45] close off the crime scene properly.
[30:47] It's literally your fault. You, the police, that is not
[30:50] you, the listener. And not taping up the crime
[30:53] scene was just the first of many, many severe mistakes that
[30:59] police made throughout this case.
[31:00] This investigation was led by Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell,
[31:04] a man that you're probably not going to like that much by the
[31:07] end of this episode. Trust me, I don't.
[31:10] Granted, he was in a difficult position because this case was
[31:13] going to be a very difficult one to crack.
[31:16] It was the 90s. First of all, Ring doorbells and
[31:19] security cameras weren't really around.
[31:21] Yeah, not like personal home security cameras anywhere.
[31:25] They weren't that common. So where do you look first?
[31:27] Well, back then, they relied. I'm sorry.
[31:30] It makes I'm making it sound like it's way, way back in the
[31:32] past. Back in back in the olden days
[31:34] in the 90s, they relied very heavily on physical evidence
[31:38] that was found at the scene and witness statements.
[31:41] Both of these things they didn't really have.
[31:44] In Jill Dando's murder case, there were no eyewitnesses to
[31:48] the event, so that one was written off completely.
[31:50] There was no physical evidence at the scene of the crime other
[31:54] than the bullet and the cartridge, and that's to be
[31:58] expected. So with not much at the scene to
[32:00] go off, police had to start theorizing practically out of
[32:05] thin air who their killer could possibly be.
[32:08] But that was quite tricky when this murder seemed motiveless.
[32:12] Because think about it, everyone in the whole entire damn country
[32:15] loved Jill Dander. She never got in beef with
[32:18] anyone. She never offended anyone.
[32:20] There was no clear reason why anyone would ever want to kill
[32:23] her. Plus, it's unclear what anyone
[32:26] would stand to gain from killing her anyway.
[32:29] It wasn't like this was a robbery gone wrong.
[32:31] They didn't steal anything off her.
[32:33] They didn't do anything to her, Whoever had done this had
[32:36] literally just come to kill Jill and then get out quick.
[32:40] So the police decided to question Jill's in a circle
[32:43] first because, well, don't we all know at this point that in a
[32:47] murder case they always look to the friends and family, the
[32:50] partner? Because more often than not
[32:53] people are murdered by someone they already know.
[32:55] And Jill's in a circle included Bob Wheaton, her ex-boyfriend
[33:00] from a pretty toxic relationship.
[33:03] So he was a person of interest right off the bat.
[33:05] Well for some reason at this point in time, even though it
[33:08] had been a couple of years, like 3 years since they separated,
[33:11] Bob was still a part of Jill's life.
[33:14] They did both still work for the BBC, so maybe it's
[33:17] understandable they would see each other at work, but they
[33:20] were still friends. And police found out that Bob
[33:23] actually owed Jill quite a bit of money at the time that she
[33:27] died, about 35,000 lbs, which is actually about 79,000 and pounds
[33:34] in today's money with the inflation and stuff.
[33:37] So maybe there's something of a motive there, like he was in
[33:40] debt to this woman that had left him lonely, and there's a
[33:44] certain type of man out there that could be driven to murder
[33:47] in such a situation. So was Bob Wheaton one of those
[33:51] men? He explained to the police that
[33:53] the debt was leftover from when Jill had helped him to buy a
[33:57] house. I think they'd bought a house
[33:59] together actually and lived in it together for a while until
[34:02] they eventually split up up and she moved out.
[34:04] So I think it was just kind of leftover from that.
[34:06] Bob even showed the police, like his different bank accounts and
[34:09] his statements to show them that he wasn't exactly strapped for
[34:13] cash. Remember, he was a BBC editor.
[34:16] He was earning a decent amount of money.
[34:18] This debt that he was into Jill wasn't exactly a pressing issue
[34:22] in his life. It wasn't stressing him out.
[34:23] It certainly wasn't something that he would commit murder
[34:27] over. And with that, police ruled out
[34:29] Bob Wheaton, Jill's ex-boyfriend.
[34:31] He is no longer a suspect in her.
[34:33] Something interesting I do want to point out quite early on is
[34:36] that Jill wasn't actually living in the house that she was
[34:41] murdered in front of 29 Gowan Ave.
[34:44] That was her house, but she'd actually been living with her
[34:48] fiance Alan for a while at his house.
[34:51] So she was hardly ever at the Gowan Ave. house and she very
[34:55] rarely stayed the night. She was always staying over at
[34:57] her boyfriend's house, so this means it would be practically
[35:01] impossible to predict the rare times that she did show up
[35:05] there. For someone to know that Jill
[35:07] was going to be there on Monday morning at 11:30 AM, surely they
[35:12] must have been following her that morning.
[35:14] I mean, fair enough if this was a regular routine that she had
[35:17] and they could have been observing her for a while, but
[35:20] it wasn't. This was a very out of the blue
[35:23] trip that she made to her house. Either someone knew she was
[35:26] going there or someone had followed her there from
[35:28] somewhere else. So police were eager to track
[35:31] Jill's movements on the morning of her murder because if anyone
[35:34] had seen her before she was killed, they might have also
[35:38] seen someone stalking in the shadows behind her.
[35:41] There were over 190 different CCTV cameras in the surrounding
[35:47] streets, which meant the police had to watch 430 hours of
[35:52] footage between two of them. They put two police officers on
[35:57] watching all those hours of footage, bless their souls, but
[36:01] eventually they were able to establish a timeline of events
[36:04] on the morning before Jill was killed.
[36:06] At 10:05 AM, Jill leaves Alan Farthing's home and jumps in her
[36:11] car. At 10:21 AM.
[36:13] She drives to a petrol station and then heads to Hammersmith
[36:16] town centre, which is about a 17 minute drive away from Gowan
[36:20] Ave. where she would later end up.
[36:22] At 10:50 AM Jill goes into at least 2 shops, maybe 3 to buy
[36:27] some fax paper or copying paper. By 11:10 AM she's back in her
[36:31] car and at 11:31 AM she parked her car outside her house at 29
[36:36] Gowan Ave. and walks up the path to her front door.
[36:39] Before she could even reach to open her front door, a gun was
[36:43] pressed to the back of her head and she was shot and killed.
[36:47] She had no idea that it was coming.
[36:49] Just one minute she was here living her life, and the next
[36:53] she was lying in a pool of blood on her own doorstep.
[36:56] Having this timeline of events pieced together meant that
[37:00] police could watch Jill as she went about her morning, and they
[37:04] really couldn't seem to find anyone that was stalking her or
[37:08] following her. There was no one that appeared
[37:10] in more than one location. So maybe she wasn't being
[37:13] actively physically stalked that morning, but still, her killer
[37:17] must have known that she was going to be at that house that
[37:20] morning somehow, even if they weren't following her.
[37:23] Maybe they were posted up at the house all there just like laying
[37:26] in wait, knowing that she would arrive home at some point and
[37:29] then we're just waiting for that time to come.
[37:31] So police did some digging and tried to figure out who in her
[37:35] life knew Jill's schedule or even like her spontaneous
[37:39] schedule. And there was actually only one
[37:42] person that knew that she was going to be at Gowan Ave. that
[37:45] day, and that was her agent, John Roseman.
[37:49] In fact, the only reason Jill went to Gowan Ave. that morning
[37:52] is because John had sent her some faxes and and you know how
[37:57] fax machines be, they're not portable so she had to go back
[38:00] to her house to go and collect her faxes.
[38:02] Just in case you don't know what a fax machine is, I am going to
[38:04] explain and I'm sorry for those of you that I make feel very
[38:07] very old right now. I'm going to make it worse by
[38:10] saying I've never seen a fax machine with my own two eyes,
[38:13] but I'm going to explain what 1 is now.
[38:15] Faxes are basically like the olden way of sending a text
[38:19] message. I'm really sorry.
[38:20] You would basically scan your document into a fax machine like
[38:23] a physical piece of paper and document.
[38:25] You would dial the number of another fax machine and then it
[38:29] would like send off. It would send through the phone
[38:33] line, through through the air particles and then it would
[38:36] print out on the other side. I mean, thank God we have
[38:39] iPhones now, am I right? But the point is, he'd sent her
[38:42] a message that morning and she was going home to be able to
[38:45] collect that message. He was the only one that knew
[38:49] she was heading back to Gowan Ave.
[38:50] So who is John Roseman? Shall we have a chat about him?
[38:53] He was 49 years old at this point in time and he had a bit
[38:57] of a reputation. He was known as a very, very
[39:00] funny, crazy, silly, colourful, over the top straight talking
[39:05] guy. Didn't take himself too
[39:07] seriously. He was quite the character, but
[39:10] he was also quite the businessman.
[39:12] And there are a couple of rumours floating around about
[39:15] this guy and about his business practices.
[39:19] I guess basically one of the rumours is that he once turned
[39:22] up to someone's house with a baseball bat just to kind of
[39:25] make a point, I guess, threaten them, maybe allegedly, perhaps.
[39:30] I don't know. I wasn't there.
[39:31] But here's where John Roseman starts getting a little bit
[39:35] suspicious. Maybe he had spent the last four
[39:37] years writing a book. This book was called Good Men
[39:41] Die Like Dogs. It was about an agent, just like
[39:44] him, actually, whose clients kept getting murdered under
[39:49] mysterious circumstances. And just like Jill Dander, the
[39:55] first victim in the book, was murdered with a single gunshot
[39:59] to the head. John had written a novel that
[40:02] was disturbingly similar to what had actually happened in real
[40:06] life. Although there were some
[40:08] important differences that I need you to know of, that all
[40:12] the victims in his book were male.
[40:14] Joel Dando was not male. John was never like a seedy
[40:18] character. He was never suspicious or
[40:20] uncooperative. Police did actually kind of like
[40:22] him. He gave them a manuscript of
[40:24] this book when they asked to see it and they read through it, and
[40:27] when they eventually gave him it back, they said that it was
[40:29] good. It was a good book.
[40:30] After questioning him, DCI Campbell just discounted John
[40:34] Roseman as a suspect. He didn't think that he had
[40:37] anything to do with Jill Dando's murder.
[40:39] So on to the next. The police decided that maybe it
[40:42] wasn't someone in Jill's immediate circle.
[40:44] Maybe it wasn't someone she knew all that well anyway.
[40:48] I mean, after all, she was a celebrity.
[40:50] So there are a lot of people that know of her and might want
[40:54] to target her for different reasons.
[40:56] She doesn't necessarily know them.
[40:57] So they started thinking about like witness statements and
[41:01] well, as close as they could get to witness statements because
[41:04] like I said, no one actually saw anything happen really.
[41:07] But there was one person that said they heard a scream kind of
[41:10] around 11:30-ish and that makes sense.
[41:13] It probably was Jill screaming. Oh was it actually?
[41:17] I am now just realizing that she was shot in the back of the
[41:19] head. Do you think she would have had
[41:20] time to scream or something? Maybe it was the lady that found
[41:23] her body. Maybe she screamed before she
[41:25] called the the police and the ambulance.
[41:27] Something important to know actually about that scream is
[41:30] that there wasn't a gunshot sound like directly before it.
[41:34] And this could be for a couple of different reasons.
[41:36] Maybe it's because the screen wasn't Jill Dander when she was
[41:39] getting murdered, or maybe like the gun had a silencer on it.
[41:43] But like I said, there were no eyewitnesses to the murder.
[41:46] But there were actually a couple of people that described seeing
[41:50] a man in his late 30s or 40s. He was quite tall, about five,
[41:55] 11180 centimeters. He had dark hair and he was
[41:59] wearing a long dark coat, like three quarter length down to his
[42:03] legs kind of coat. This man had been spotted coming
[42:06] out of a park near where Jill lived.
[42:08] He was spotted waiting for a bus near where Jill lived.
[42:12] But I don't know, like, maybe he was just a man.
[42:16] Things like this kind of give me a bit of a giggle because what
[42:19] are the reasons that people were suspicious of this man over any
[42:22] other person that they saw that day?
[42:24] Is it because of the long coat? Is it because of the long coat?
[42:27] Wait, guys. So I've been doing a bit of
[42:29] digging. So I was actually really
[42:30] intrigued by the long coat thing.
[42:32] And I have realized that the Columbine massacre took place
[42:36] six days before Jill Dando's murder.
[42:40] And maybe the long coat thing. Maybe people were just
[42:43] suspicious of people in trench coats around that time.
[42:46] Wow. That is totally my own theory by
[42:48] the way. I've literally just done some
[42:49] Googling and added two and two together in my brain to make 6.
[42:53] But seven days after Jill's death, police released an efit
[42:57] sketch on the news. A sketch of what they think
[43:00] their suspect looks like. An efit is basically a computer
[43:04] generated image of a criminal based on the descriptions that
[43:07] witnesses give. Now, the way very many
[43:11] descriptions of this long coat man, so you can imagine how
[43:15] successful this EFIT was. Police were also really
[43:18] interested in this other witness statement.
[43:21] It was actually from a traffic warden that had been patrolling
[43:24] the area and she went to put a parking ticket on this blue
[43:28] Range Rover and there was a guy still sat in it at the time and
[43:31] he went ballistic on her. She was writing down his license
[43:36] plate number and he got so mad that she actually stopped, Like
[43:40] she actually stopped doing her job because she was scared of
[43:43] this man in this car. And this was around the time of
[43:46] Jill's murder, by the way, that both the long coat man were seen
[43:49] and the Range Rover fella got all gobby in his car.
[43:52] So there's one man that looks like a shooter and there's
[43:56] another man that seems like he has general anger issues and a
[43:59] lot of frustration and seemingly doesn't want his license plate
[44:03] noting down. Police tried to appeal for both
[44:05] of these men to come forward for like, interviews and stuff like
[44:09] that, but obviously without any names or even faces or anything,
[44:13] they were just like, if you have a blue Range Rover, please come
[44:17] talk to the police. Like it wasn't easy.
[44:20] It really wasn't easy. And police were very quickly
[44:23] realizing that maybe there was a lack of evidence and witnesses
[44:27] for a reason. And maybe that's because whoever
[44:30] had murdered Jill Dando had made sure that it was the most
[44:34] seamless and secret operation possible.
[44:37] Maybe it wasn't just a murder. Maybe it was an assassination.
[44:42] The fact that there is such little evidence shows that
[44:45] whoever did this really thought everything through.
[44:47] They made sure that they left. Nothing was seen by no one.
[44:50] They managed to be at the right place at the exact right time
[44:54] again without being seen or heard by anyone.
[44:58] It's insane to me. It's it's like they just
[44:59] vanished into thin air. In fact, it wouldn't be totally
[45:02] crazy to theorize that whoever had committed this murder, maybe
[45:06] it wasn't their first murder. It clearly seems as though they
[45:09] know how to get away with one. Jill's murder had all the signs
[45:14] of a professional hit, for example, she was killed with a
[45:16] single shot. There wasn't another bullet
[45:19] fired at all. The accuracy and precision and
[45:23] the confidence of this person. It just seems like they knew
[45:26] what they were doing a little too well.
[45:29] You would think if they weren't a very experienced shooter, then
[45:32] they would fire at least two bullets to make sure that one of
[45:36] them hit. Other potential signs that this
[45:38] could have been a professional hit is that the gun touched the
[45:41] back of Jill's head, remember, and this is something that's
[45:44] done often, like in professional hits for like executions, where
[45:48] they are making sure that that person is not going to survive
[45:52] beyond that one bullet. Obviously hit men are paid a
[45:55] fucking lot of money to do what they do.
[45:58] I'm saying they said that like it's like an actual job that you
[46:01] can apply for. I can only imagine the amount of
[46:03] money that they would get for like one job.
[46:06] And if you're getting that amount of money, you've got to
[46:08] make sure that that person is dead.
[46:09] Plus, all of this happened in broad daylight in the middle of
[46:13] the day without a single witness.
[46:16] Honestly, if it wasn't for the body, you wouldn't have known
[46:18] this happened. No one heard anything or saw
[46:21] anyone. Clearly.
[46:22] The person that killed Jill knew how to do so very quickly and
[46:26] without being seen or heard, so the police started to consider
[46:29] that her death could have been a professional hit.
[46:33] A hit man got her. Which actually brings us back to
[46:36] her work as a true crime reporter on Crime Watch.
[46:39] If you think about Crime Watch from the criminals perspective,
[46:43] that is a problem. That is a huge problem that
[46:46] needs to be dealt with because as long as Crime Watch exists,
[46:50] it is so much harder for them to get away with their crimes.
[46:52] So what if Jill's murder was because of something that she'd
[46:56] said or reported on Crime Watch or just in general the fact that
[47:00] she reports crimes to the whole country.
[47:03] I bet there's a lot of people that that doesn't sit very well
[47:06] with. What if it was some like
[47:08] criminal gang that shot and killed Jill Dando to make a
[47:12] statement to crime watch. Stop reporting these crimes.
[47:15] Stop digging your nose in or people will die.
[47:18] I find this theory very interesting that Jill could have
[47:21] been murdered as an act of revenge for her job for
[47:25] presenting crime Watch. In fact, in the Netflix
[47:28] documentary on Jills murder there was a criminal that they
[47:31] interviewed and he was saying that there were whispers in the
[47:35] criminal world around the time of Jills death that someone had
[47:38] been paid to kill her. He didn't want to say much more
[47:40] to this documentary for fears of his own safety, but he all but
[47:45] confirmed that it was a professional hit.
[47:48] But why Shoot the Messenger Is the exact words that Jill's Co
[47:52] presenter on Crime Watch used when he was talking to the
[47:55] police. He just didn't feel like this
[47:57] theory had a very strong motive. After all, it was hardly like
[48:00] Jill Dando was foiling big mob bosses and giant organised crime
[48:06] rings. Like the kind of things that she
[48:07] was covering on Crime Watch were disappearances or home
[48:11] burglaries and stuff like that. It just didn't make much sense
[48:15] that someone would want to kill her over that.
[48:17] The kind of cases that were often featured on Crimewatch
[48:20] were not necessarily the kind of cases that involved people that
[48:24] could hire a hitman, you know what I mean?
[48:26] That is very much in the like organised crime underworld, not
[48:31] some lads that robbed a bakery the other week and now it's on
[48:34] the telly. But just because I personally
[48:37] think it's quite unlikely doesn't mean that this wasn't a
[48:40] theory and quite a believed theory.
[48:43] And I'm sure a lot of you guys will actually resonate with this
[48:46] theory. You'll have to let me know down
[48:47] in the comments which theory you think is the most believable
[48:50] once we've covered them all. But if you're thinking this
[48:53] theory could be quite strong, then listen to this next part
[48:56] extra carefully. Essentially, there was an
[48:59] Intelligence Report from around that time.
[49:02] And before I tell you what was in it, I will tell you what an
[49:04] Intelligence Report is. Because I remember when I was
[49:07] first getting into true crime, I was so confused by what
[49:10] intelligence is. And it's so vague for a reason.
[49:13] It is literally just information that the police collect from
[49:17] different sources like informants, snitches.
[49:21] I think even things like witness reports can be considered like
[49:25] intelligence. I'm not sure, not entirely sure,
[49:27] but basically I think it was from a snitch.
[49:29] But anyway, around the time of Jill's murder, police had
[49:32] received intelligence that there were two men from North London
[49:36] who seemed to have a motive to kill Jill.
[49:39] The reports suggest that she was being targeted because she
[49:43] presents Crime Watch and it even even describes how and where the
[49:47] murder weapon, the gun, was disposed of.
[49:50] Unfortunately, we don't know any more than that.
[49:52] The actual intelligence that they had will have been way,
[49:55] way, way more detailed than what I've just given you.
[49:57] But that is all we can find online because that intelligence
[50:01] was never looked into. Why?
[50:03] For that reason, the report has never been made public.
[50:06] And we do know that at that time, DCI Campbell had left a
[50:10] note on that case that said no further action.
[50:13] He shut down that lead. It wasn't just that they didn't
[50:16] have time or resources or energy to look into it.
[50:20] It was that he actively closed it.
[50:23] And it's very frustrating to hear that a potentially quite
[50:25] promising lead was shut down because Campbell was just to
[50:29] tunnel vision with what he wanted to believe, that he
[50:32] couldn't give time to other angles.
[50:34] This is just one of many, many instances of careless or shallow
[50:39] police work in this case. The way that Jill was killed
[50:52] makes you wonder if it was representative of more than just
[50:56] the ACT itself, more than just Jill's death.
[50:59] As we said before, it seems like someone is trying to send a
[51:03] message. The killing was so silent and
[51:06] precise and it was something like out of a spy thriller.
[51:10] And there's something very sinister about that because what
[51:13] if it wasn't just any old hitman hired to kill Jill Dando?
[51:17] What if it was an assassination from an international spy agent?
[51:23] Now I know what some of you are thinking.
[51:25] Ellen and Neil has finally lost it.
[51:26] Like she's off the rocker. She's talking about shit that
[51:29] don't make sense. You've got to stick with me on
[51:31] this one because this theory does sound really weird off the
[51:34] bat. With peace and love to my
[51:35] researcher. I think this has sent her crazy
[51:38] in the last couple of weeks. But the more you get into it and
[51:42] the more facts you learn and the more things you put together, it
[51:45] does make a lot of sense. So let's dig into it.
[51:48] The theory goes that Jill Dando was the target of a Serbian
[51:53] sleeper agent in London that was ordered to kill her.
[51:57] These sleeper agents are supposed to just blend in and
[52:01] live a normal life and have normal friends and a normal job
[52:04] and shit like that until one day they will receive a call and
[52:08] it's like they're suddenly activated.
[52:10] And in that call, they will be given order from their side of
[52:13] tasks to carry out in that country.
[52:16] And often they are violent attacks like assassinations.
[52:20] And that's not scary at all to think about, is it, that in
[52:23] London, there are just like spies lurking in their shadows,
[52:27] bidding their time, ready at any moment to assassinate someone?
[52:31] And I'm sure you're asking, well, why would Jill Dando be a
[52:35] target for an attack like this? It wasn't like she was an
[52:37] undercover spy or a diplomat. She was only a TV reporter.
[52:41] And when I say only, that's not to diminish it, it's just to
[52:44] mean that she was so harmless to everyone.
[52:47] How did she even attract the attention of a Serbian sleeper
[52:51] agent? Well, on April 6th, 1999, Jill
[52:55] made a public appeal on the BBC for aid for Kosovo Albanian
[52:59] refugees who were fleeing the horrors of the Yugoslav war.
[53:03] Honestly, you would need like a six part Netflix documentary
[53:07] series to understand like the full history of this conflict.
[53:10] So I'm not going to go into all of that right now, but at the
[53:13] time, what the world was seeing and what Jill was seeing was the
[53:17] absolute horrors and the devastation of war.
[53:20] Serbian troops were burning villagers, terrorizing
[53:24] civilians. They forced over 650,000 people
[53:29] to flee Kosovo. And Jill couldn't just sit back
[53:32] and watch this. She knew that she had to do
[53:34] something. She was such an empathetic
[53:37] person and she knew that she had a gift of a platform.
[53:41] She had a voice. People cared what Jill Dando had
[53:44] to say. And so she knew she wanted to
[53:47] try and make a difference here. So she got on the BBC and made
[53:50] this plea in which she described this as a massive humanitarian
[53:54] crisis, saying these refugees have been walking for days.
[53:57] By the time they arrive, they're dehydrated, hungry, exhausted
[54:02] and cold. And throughout this news clip,
[54:04] they were showing images and videos of, like, children crying
[54:08] and people being wheeled away. Two were like too weak and too
[54:12] cold old to be able to walk anymore.
[54:14] Jill knew she had to say something.
[54:16] She knew she had to appeal to as many people as she possibly
[54:19] could for help. But she also knew that taking
[54:23] that kind of stand on such a political issue, I guess, could
[54:28] be dangerous. Because Jill was speaking out
[54:31] against this, it's possible that she could have caught the
[54:34] attention of some very dangerous people in Serbia that didn't
[54:38] like what she was saying, didn't like the idea that this woman
[54:42] from Britain might have influence.
[54:45] It is likely that they could have seen Jill dander as a
[54:48] threat. After Jill's appeal on the BBC,
[54:51] things started escalating very quickly with this war.
[54:55] And stick with me, I'm about to give you a lot of information in
[54:58] a short space of time. But it's going to be OK.
[55:00] We're going to get through it together.
[55:01] On April 20, 3rd, NATO gets involved.
[55:05] Now, if you don't already know, NATO is a military alliance that
[55:09] was created after World War 2. And in 1999, at the time of this
[55:12] case, there were 19 countries that were a part of it,
[55:17] including the UK. So NATO comes in and actually
[55:21] bombs A Serbian TV station, killing 16 journalists.
[55:27] And this happened just three days before Jill on also ATV
[55:32] presenter was murdered. The reason that NATO targeted
[55:35] that TV station was because it was actually owned and operated
[55:39] by the president of Serbia. And it was targeted because it
[55:42] was seen as the main source of Serbian government propaganda.
[55:46] So could it be possible that after this bombing, Serbia was
[55:50] looking to seek revenge on a NATO member country?
[55:54] The UK was one of the most powerful members of NATO at that
[55:58] point in time and they played a very big role in the conflict.
[56:02] So I guess this put a target on the UK for retaliation attacks.
[56:06] It's possible that the assassination of Jill Dando was
[56:10] Serbia's way of getting back at the UK for what they did.
[56:15] At this point in time in 1999, Jill Dando was probably the most
[56:19] well known face on TV, which essentially just made to the
[56:22] face of the UK or of the news especially.
[56:25] And I guess that's what they cared about the most.
[56:27] So was her death an eye for an eye, a journalist for a
[56:32] journalist or 16? It's horrifying to think about,
[56:35] but it's hard not to make that connection.
[56:38] In the beginning of the investigation, police took this
[56:41] potential Serbian connection very, very seriously.
[56:44] And they were actually really worried that other British TV
[56:47] presenters might also be in danger.
[56:49] And this was only proven when in the days after to Jill's murder,
[56:54] a series of death threats were made against other BBC
[56:58] journalists. There were two calls made to the
[57:00] BBC TV Centre 3 days after Jill's murder and this anonymous
[57:05] caller was threatening to kill four other female journalists.
[57:10] The message said from Serbia going to kill Anne Robinson and
[57:14] Alice Beer and two others. Anne Robinson and Alice Beer
[57:17] were of course BBC presenters at the time.
[57:20] They were both on a show called Watchdog, which had has a
[57:22] similar vibe to crime Watch. Watchdog basically looked into
[57:27] problems that customers were having with businesses and the
[57:30] show helped to hold those businesses responsible and
[57:34] accountable for the way that they treat their customers, if
[57:37] that makes sense. It basically aims to inform the
[57:39] public of different things, engage them and seek justice, I
[57:44] guess, just like Crime Watch. But that wasn't the only threat
[57:47] that was made against Alice Beer.
[57:49] She had actually received a letter a good couple of weeks
[57:53] before Jill Dando's murder that was threatening her again, this
[57:57] time a physically written letter.
[57:59] And Jill got one too. And the contents of these
[58:03] letters were horrifying. So creepy.
[58:06] They were detailing, the writer was detailing how they wanted to
[58:09] abduct the women, capture them and rape them.
[58:12] So this is huge right? Jill Dander had received a
[58:16] threatening letter that said someone wanted to harm her,
[58:19] someone wanted to act violence on her and then a couple of
[58:22] weeks later she's shot dead. I also just find it very
[58:25] interesting that there seems to be someone out there that has a
[58:28] very strange and dangerous scary obsession with British female TV
[58:34] presenters. When Alice heard about Jill's
[58:37] murder she was shocked, horrified, devastated,
[58:41] everything that her other Co workers were but Alice
[58:44] especially because she had got very similar threats.
[58:47] They had received the same threats.
[58:49] So now Alice was fearing for her life and she really thought that
[58:53] police were going to be with her within the hour to talk about
[58:56] these letters because obviously that must be a lead, right?
[58:59] Turns out no, police didn't really see it as a lead and they
[59:03] never went and spoke to Alice about these letters, which maybe
[59:08] they didn't need to, but Alice found it very strange that that
[59:12] wasn't even a line of inquiry. And me too Alice, I think that's
[59:16] strange too girl. Alice was quite frustrated
[59:18] because it seems like there is a pattern.
[59:21] This person is stalking TV presenters and has just killed
[59:24] their first one. Who is to say that they're not
[59:27] going to keep going until they've killed all the TV
[59:29] presenters in the UK or at least killed all the female ones that
[59:34] they have been writing these threatening letters to?
[59:36] To me, there's kind of like 2 theories in one here.
[59:39] I kind of forgot that we were still talking about the Serbian
[59:42] link, because to me, this does also kind of sound like an
[59:45] obsessive fan. Like a stalker fan.
[59:49] You know, those kind of obsessive stalker fans that
[59:51] can't quite figure out if they love or hate the person.
[59:54] Do you remember the Freaky Friday video that we did on
[59:57] Bjork's stalker? He claimed that he loved Bjork,
[1:00:02] wanted to marry her, but then he goes and makes this letter bomb
[1:00:06] and sends it to her house to kill her.
[1:00:08] Like what? Obviously we're never going to
[1:00:10] be able to put ourselves in the heads of these people because
[1:00:12] they're not in their right minds.
[1:00:14] But even still, I can't even see like a twisted logic there.
[1:00:18] Maybe the kind of like if I can't have you, no one can.
[1:00:21] But I don't really get that vibes from the Jill Dander case.
[1:00:24] But I do get that vibe from the threatening letters, especially
[1:00:28] the letters detailing like rape fantasies that were sent
[1:00:32] specifically for Jill and Dallas.
[1:00:35] But maybe that's a little theory in itself, that it was a BBCTV
[1:00:40] presenter fanboy that had a few screws loose.
[1:00:43] I don't know. But back to the Serbian
[1:00:45] connection. Umm, you're not going to believe
[1:00:47] this, or maybe you are because this is DCI Campbell we're
[1:00:51] talking about. He actually ruled out the
[1:00:54] possibility of a Serbian connection and didn't give much
[1:00:58] reason as to why he ruled that out.
[1:01:00] Maybe there's not a huge amount of evidence for it, but I would
[1:01:02] also say there's not a huge amount of evidence against it
[1:01:05] either. Nothing more than the other
[1:01:07] theories that we've got. And surely he knew that shutting
[1:01:10] down a lead like that would just be like striking a match under
[1:01:14] conspiracy theorists. Doesn't it sound a bit like a
[1:01:17] suspicious government cover up? Things getting ruled out and no
[1:01:22] reasons for it? After all, the Serbian president
[1:01:25] at the time wasn't beyond doing things like this, murdering a
[1:01:29] random British woman to make a message.
[1:01:31] Earlier that same month, a Serbian journalist and a fierce
[1:01:35] critic of the president was shot to death outside of his house.
[1:01:39] He was killed in retaliation for him speaking out against the
[1:01:42] regime. And it wasn't until over 20
[1:01:45] years later that 4 Serbian spies, yes trained spies, were
[1:01:51] convicted of his murder. The president had sent spies to
[1:01:55] go and shoot someone on their doorstep.
[1:01:58] Doesn't this sound exactly like the story of Jill Dando?
[1:02:02] And we've seen enough on this channel to know that very rarely
[1:02:05] things are just coincidences and the idea that Jill was murdered
[1:02:09] by some Serbian sleeper agent isn't too far fetched.
[1:02:13] I mean some of the crime scene evidence can actually support
[1:02:16] it. For example, on the bullet
[1:02:18] casing, someone had made like 6 tiny little holes all the way
[1:02:22] around it. They were very precise and
[1:02:25] again, very very tiny, so someone must have done it by
[1:02:28] hand. This isn't like the work of a
[1:02:30] big machine that's mass producing them.
[1:02:32] This was very unusual, certainly not something that you find
[1:02:35] often in the UK. So where did a bullet like that
[1:02:38] come from? Well, this type of crimped
[1:02:40] cartridge was typically manufactured in Russia and found
[1:02:45] in the Balkans, and Serbia is in the Balkans.
[1:02:48] So let's imagine for a second that this theory is true.
[1:02:52] Jill Dando was assassinated by a Serbian sleeping agent in
[1:02:55] London. Sleeping agent?
[1:02:57] Sleeper agent, They're just very tired.
[1:02:59] If that was true, that would look very bad for the British
[1:03:02] government, that first of all, they'd like let that happen,
[1:03:05] that they weren't super tight on things like that.
[1:03:07] It would it would be a bit embarrassing.
[1:03:09] And let's be honest, all of the citizens of this country would
[1:03:12] be terrified. The British government could
[1:03:14] never admit to their people that a foreign president had the
[1:03:18] power to order an assassination of a national treasure like Jill
[1:03:22] Dando right on her own doorstep. So in that case, maybe it was
[1:03:26] easier, safer even, for the government to let this theory
[1:03:31] fade slowly into whispers of conspiracy.
[1:03:34] So that is why a lot of people think that the Serbian link was
[1:03:39] ruled out quite quickly. I don't know.
[1:03:42] What do you think? But anyway, as the weeks turned
[1:03:44] into months, there was still no arrest insight and the British
[1:03:48] press were becoming unbearable for the police.
[1:03:51] They were demanding developments and updates and they just
[1:03:54] couldn't understand why the police weren't making progress,
[1:03:57] weren't cracking this case. So much so that the journalists
[1:04:00] actually started going out and doing their own detective work.
[1:04:03] They were knocking on doors in Jill's neighborhood, trying to
[1:04:06] uncover any pieces of new evidence that they thought the
[1:04:09] police might have missed. And don't get me wrong, this
[1:04:12] wasn't to help jail, or to help the investigation or to seek
[1:04:15] justice. This was just so that they could
[1:04:17] get a new headline because police weren't bringing in
[1:04:20] updates quick enough. They needed to go out and get
[1:04:21] themselves. Basically, at this point in
[1:04:23] time, it seemed like the police weren't doing shit, although
[1:04:26] they swore that they were. They were just drawing blanks.
[1:04:30] Like there were no leads, there were no suspects.
[1:04:32] They just kept going around in circles.
[1:04:34] But they insisted that they were really trying.
[1:04:37] I begged to differ, though. Personally, I begged to fucking
[1:04:40] differ. We've been really mad at the
[1:04:42] police work in this case. I mean, this happens often in
[1:04:45] the Ellen O'Neill writing room, but umm, yeah.
[1:04:47] This one, especially DCI Campbell is is not a friend of
[1:04:51] the channel. In this case, police lost so
[1:04:54] many opportunities to question or investigate witnesses.
[1:04:57] A document from the case file lists over 380 potential
[1:05:03] suspects, and over 100 of those potential suspects were never
[1:05:08] even approached by the police. What do you mean you're going to
[1:05:11] call them a potential suspect and then just leave them?
[1:05:14] Leave them to get on with things?
[1:05:16] A second document in the case file revealed that on the
[1:05:19] morning of Jill's death, 11 different people were seen kind
[1:05:23] of in that area, and none of those eleven were identified or
[1:05:27] questioned by the police. And that's like what the long
[1:05:30] caught man, the fella in the blue Range Rover, Do you
[1:05:33] remember shouting pants? There were so many witnesses
[1:05:35] that they knew were there based on people's descriptions, but
[1:05:39] they were never able to, like, actually figure out who that
[1:05:42] person was and speak to them. And to me, it's just incredibly
[1:05:45] frustrating and weird that so many potential suspects were
[1:05:49] left as a question mark in this case.
[1:05:51] Like they weren't even ruled out.
[1:05:53] They were just kind of there and police weren't doing anything
[1:05:57] and those police were running out of time to provide answers
[1:06:00] for the public. It had been almost a full year
[1:06:03] since the murder of Jill Dander and still no one had been
[1:06:06] charged and they were no closer to having a true suspect.
[1:06:10] At this point DCI Campbell realised that their methods were
[1:06:14] not working and it really took him a whole fucking year to
[1:06:17] figure that out really. But at this point the police
[1:06:19] were a year behind in their investigation and something
[1:06:22] needed to change fast and that was when they started to fix it.
[1:06:26] On the idea that it could have been a crazy stalker fan.
[1:06:30] I got a bit ahead of myself earlier, didn't I?
[1:06:32] Wow, we get to talk about that now.
[1:06:33] Of course Jill was a celebrity and like many celebrities she
[1:06:37] had two parts to her life, her private life and her public life
[1:06:41] that everyone saw. But for someone that is very
[1:06:43] obsessed with a celebrity, they want those lines to blur.
[1:06:47] They try to blur those lines. They try to get in contact with
[1:06:50] the person or follow them or find out their address.
[1:06:53] And this is crazy stalker people, by the way, not just
[1:06:55] like fans. Please don't do this with anyone
[1:06:57] that you're a fan of. It's creepy and weird and
[1:06:59] illegal actually. But again, calling back to the
[1:07:02] video that we did on Bjork's stalker, he was always trying to
[1:07:06] find out shit about that woman. Like the fact that he did
[1:07:08] actually manage to send a bomb to her address in London means
[1:07:12] he found out her whole entire address and he nearly killed her
[1:07:15] with a as well. He did.
[1:07:16] He made a bomb, sent it to her house, and the only reason she
[1:07:20] didn't die is thank God the police intercepted it.
[1:07:23] It got all the way to the post office in London from like
[1:07:27] America or Canada, who anyway nowhere near from a different
[1:07:31] continent. This fucking bomb had travelled,
[1:07:34] gotten to London and finally then police managed to intercept
[1:07:37] it before it got to Bjork's house.
[1:07:39] But she could have died. She almost died because of a
[1:07:42] stalker fan and police worried that this is a exactly what had
[1:07:46] happened to Jill Dando. Someone had formed this crazy
[1:07:49] obsession with her to the point where I don't know.
[1:07:53] Again, I said this earlier like I don't really know why obsessed
[1:07:57] stalker fans want to kill the person.
[1:07:59] Like I can't relate. I love Ariana Grande so much but
[1:08:02] if I killed her I wouldn't get another album.
[1:08:04] So police decided to call in help to create a criminal
[1:08:08] profile of that killer, which is basically where they analyse the
[1:08:12] killer's behaviours and their choices based on on the crime
[1:08:15] that they've committed. And through that they can figure
[1:08:19] out what kind of person the killer might be.
[1:08:21] For example, if the murder was done with someone's bare hands,
[1:08:25] then that could probably tell you that your killer is quite
[1:08:27] physically strong, even like the time that a murder was committed
[1:08:31] could tell you a lot about the killers, like working hours,
[1:08:34] their lifestyle, when they sleep.
[1:08:36] Like it gets really interesting and it can get really specific
[1:08:40] as well. Although this one wasn't that
[1:08:43] specific, but it was still decent.
[1:08:44] The profile that was created of Jill's killer said that they
[1:08:47] probably ticked a couple of the following boxes.
[1:08:50] They were either an infatuated psychopath, a loner who doesn't
[1:08:54] get out much, a stalker who can't let go of Jill, or a super
[1:08:58] fan who was obsessed with her. I feel like a super hater could
[1:09:01] also be lumped in with that category.
[1:09:03] And at this point in time, this seemed pretty promising and the
[1:09:07] theory that it was a professional hitman was slowly
[1:09:10] slipping away. The police never even had any
[1:09:12] hard evidence to prove that in the 1st place.
[1:09:15] But it wasn't long after police had completely abandoned that
[1:09:18] Hitman theory that a name appeared on their desk, Mr.
[1:09:22] Barry Balsara. And this wasn't brand new
[1:09:25] information. Actually, Barry Balsara had been
[1:09:29] said to police a couple of times in the beginning of this case.
[1:09:33] But again, they never looked into it.
[1:09:35] But there were a couple of different people that brought
[1:09:38] that name up to the police. So let's talk about those.
[1:09:40] Why do we think Barry Balsara is a suspect?
[1:09:43] The first report they got of this Barry Balsara was actually
[1:09:46] just a couple of hours after the murder of Jill Dando.
[1:09:50] He was in the area and he was acting very weird and agitated.
[1:09:55] The call that they got was from someone that owned a local
[1:09:58] business and I think Barry had been into their business and
[1:10:01] then and acted weird and then left and was still acting weird
[1:10:05] on the street outside. And so this person thought, OK,
[1:10:07] maybe I should be calling the police about this.
[1:10:10] This is weird. Well, it turns out after he left
[1:10:12] that location, the crazy only continued.
[1:10:15] He kept walking around in town until he tried to get a free
[1:10:18] taxi ride from a cab company called London Traffic Cars,
[1:10:22] which, like side note, if you're a taxi company and you want me
[1:10:25] to choose your service over everyone else's, maybe don't put
[1:10:28] the word traffic in your name. That's not going to make me
[1:10:31] think I'm going to get there very fast.
[1:10:33] London Traffic Cars anyway, ended up calling the police
[1:10:36] about Barry Balsara because not only was he asking for a free
[1:10:40] taxi ride and like, no, this is a business, bro, but he was also
[1:10:44] just being that same weirdness that he was before.
[1:10:48] He was very agitated. He seemed desperate to leave the
[1:10:51] area, but he had no money on him.
[1:10:53] It was a very weird situation and everyone that crossed his
[1:10:57] path that day thought so to the point where they all called the
[1:11:00] police. All two of them, by the way.
[1:11:02] I don't know why I'm saying all when it did only happen twice,
[1:11:05] but it's weird that it happened twice, right?
[1:11:06] But it gets even weirder, right? The next day, someone from
[1:11:10] London Traffic Cars calls the police again with even more
[1:11:14] information because it seems that Barry Balsara had gotten
[1:11:17] back in touch with the taxi company to try to set up a fake
[1:11:22] alibi for that day. Barry had gone back to this taxi
[1:11:26] company and asked an employee if they could verify that he,
[1:11:30] Barry, was there yesterday, and they even asked if they
[1:11:33] remembered what he was wearing. Bear in mind that the day that
[1:11:37] he's trying to get an alibi for is the day of Jill's murder.
[1:11:40] He actually rang up later that day, so he left the taxi rank
[1:11:44] satisfied with his answers. But then he rang up again asking
[1:11:48] if they could give him the exact time that he was at the taxi
[1:11:52] rank the day before. He said that it was for his
[1:11:54] solicitor. What is going on here?
[1:11:57] And you know what? Police didn't bother looking
[1:11:59] into him at all when they got all these reports.
[1:12:02] I don't know. To me that is quite an immediate
[1:12:04] suspect. Someone acting really sketchy
[1:12:06] and agitated in the area and desperately trying to get away
[1:12:10] from the area and then trying to set up an alibi.
[1:12:14] It's absolutely infuriating to me that police didn't bother
[1:12:17] looking into this at the time of Jill's murder.
[1:12:19] They received 3 phone calls about a weird guy in the area
[1:12:24] and what just didn't look in into it.
[1:12:26] Why? And it is just infuriating
[1:12:28] because a year into this case, remember that's where we're at
[1:12:32] now. I had to time travel back for
[1:12:34] you for a second, but at this point they're a year out.
[1:12:37] They've wasted so much time on leads that haven't gone anywhere
[1:12:40] and now they're like Nah, do you remember that Barry Balsaro guy
[1:12:43] from right in the beginning? Maybe we should look into that
[1:12:46] after a whole entire year. But they did find out rather
[1:12:50] quickly that it was going to be hard to look into Barry Balsaro
[1:12:53] because Barry Balsaro doesn't exist.
[1:12:56] I was a fake name. It was an alias.
[1:12:58] His name was actually just Barry George.
[1:13:00] And that made me laugh in my research because it reminded me
[1:13:02] of Barry Scott. Sell it back.
[1:13:04] Barry George was born in London in 1960, which makes him just
[1:13:07] one year older than Jill. He'd had a rough childhood.
[1:13:11] His parents divorced when he was young.
[1:13:12] His dad moved to Australia, you know, the usual.
[1:13:15] By the age of 40, he was sent to a boarding school for children
[1:13:19] that have emotional and behavioral issues.
[1:13:22] Umm. But other than that, there was
[1:13:23] nothing more really to know about his childhood.
[1:13:26] There were no major red flags in his childhood really.
[1:13:28] But unfortunately, the same can't be said for his adulthood
[1:13:31] because police quickly found out that this guy had a criminal
[1:13:34] record. And not just for anything, for
[1:13:37] attempted rape and impersonating a police officer.
[1:13:40] But I'm not really as interested in that, honestly, even though
[1:13:43] attempted rape doesn't make him a killer, certainly doesn't
[1:13:47] fucking look good, does it? That he doesn't respect other
[1:13:49] people or their bodies or their lives and their consent.
[1:13:53] And I don't know, it's just, it's just showing me what kind
[1:13:56] of person this is. So of course, the major reasons
[1:13:58] that police suspect Barry Balsara, Barry George, sorry, I
[1:14:02] am going to call him Barry George now because that is his
[1:14:04] real name. The reasons police thought it
[1:14:05] could be him was obviously all those suspicious sightings on
[1:14:08] the day of Jill's murder. But there was actually more than
[1:14:11] that. Now that they were properly
[1:14:12] looking into this guy, they realised that he had an
[1:14:15] obsession, a fixation on Princess Diana, who is Jill
[1:14:20] Dandos doppelganger. They look identical ish.
[1:14:25] But his fixation on Diana wasn't like normal fan behaviour.
[1:14:29] It wasn't, you know, like the posters on the walls and like
[1:14:32] it's changing your surname to their surname on social media.
[1:14:35] Do you remember when people used to do that?
[1:14:36] I'm not going to lie to you, my Spotify username is still
[1:14:39] Eleanor Fuentes because I love Victoria Fuentes from Pierce the
[1:14:42] Vale. Imagine like Barry Diana written
[1:14:44] in his written in his diary. But anyway, as I was saying,
[1:14:47] this wasn't any normal fan, not even a super fan.
[1:14:50] He was disgusting. There was 1 occasion that he was
[1:14:54] actually detained on the grounds of Kensington Palace, which is
[1:14:58] where Princess Diana lived. He was found in a Bush hiding
[1:15:03] with a mask on and a hunting knife in one hand, rope in the
[1:15:08] other hand. What the fuck was he going to do
[1:15:10] to Princess Diana? If Barry could have such a
[1:15:13] twisted, dangerous fixation on Princess Diana, then what's
[1:15:17] there to say that that fixation didn't transfer onto Jill Dando
[1:15:21] when Diana was killed? I mean when she died, Barry
[1:15:24] George lived in a flat on his own on Crookham Road in Fulham,
[1:15:28] which was just a 10 minute walk away from where Jill lived on
[1:15:32] Gowan Ave. Barry was known locally as a bit
[1:15:35] of a loner, someone that didn't have many friends, was socially
[1:15:38] awkward. He was a lonely, frustrated
[1:15:41] person. He was basically ticking every
[1:15:43] box on police's list. Do you remember that criminal
[1:15:46] profile that they made-up that he was like an obsessed stalker,
[1:15:49] a loner? Tick, tick, tick.
[1:15:50] So feeling pretty confident that they had their guy, DCI Campbell
[1:15:54] went and authorized a search warrant for Barry's flat.
[1:15:58] And what they found in there was beyond disgusting.
[1:16:02] His flat was a total dump. There was rubbish everywhere,
[1:16:06] There were ants all over the floor.
[1:16:08] And if that wasn't revolting enough, police officers also
[1:16:12] found feces in multiple places in that flat.
[1:16:17] I'm really sorry if any of you were eating while listening to
[1:16:20] this episode. You're probably not anymore.
[1:16:22] But one of the key pieces of evidence that they found in his
[1:16:25] flat were rolls and rolls and rolls of undeveloped film.
[1:16:30] And they knew that they had to get them developed because this
[1:16:33] could be potential evidence. But boy, they did not want to do
[1:16:36] it. They were scared to see what
[1:16:38] could possibly be on this film. And honestly, they were right to
[1:16:42] be disturbed because this whole roll of photos, hundreds and
[1:16:46] hundreds of them, they were just sneaky snaps that Barry had
[1:16:50] taken of random women out in public.
[1:16:53] He had been stalking women repeatedly, taking these photos
[1:16:57] and collecting them, saving them.
[1:16:59] And police even found notes in his bedroom of different women's
[1:17:04] names and addresses or phone numbers, car registrations that
[1:17:09] he had put alongside them. And I'm honestly going to guess
[1:17:13] that it's not because these women were giving over this
[1:17:15] information. This is all notes that he has
[1:17:17] probably taken down from stalking different women.
[1:17:20] There was another roll of film developed as well that showed
[1:17:23] pictures of him with guns and wearing masks and stuff.
[1:17:27] Barry was clearly a big gun guy, like not in terms of muscles,
[1:17:32] but in terms of he really liked guns.
[1:17:34] There were gun magazines all over his flat.
[1:17:36] Police found an old holster for a firearm at this point in time.
[1:17:40] DCI Campbell was completely convinced that Barry George was
[1:17:44] their killer, but the search of his flat didn't reveal any
[1:17:47] direct evidence that linked him to Jill's murder.
[1:17:51] What the search did uncover, though, was a long dark trench
[1:17:55] coat in his wardrobe matching the description of that guy that
[1:18:00] was seen like fleeing from Jill's area on the morning of
[1:18:03] her murder. So the court was sent for a
[1:18:05] forensic analysis and guys, they found a single gunshot residue
[1:18:11] particle in the pocket of this coat, in the inside jacket
[1:18:16] pocket as well, which makes it even more like mysterious to me,
[1:18:20] as if like they were really hiding the gun in the inside
[1:18:23] pocket. And this single gunshot residue
[1:18:26] particle matched the residue that was found at the scene of
[1:18:30] Jill's murder in her hair on the cartilage.
[1:18:33] This was evidence that you can't really refute, or at least they
[1:18:37] thought that you couldn't. And so with that, police really
[1:18:40] thought they had him, and they brought Barry George in for a
[1:18:43] questioning. It appeared to police that Barry
[1:18:45] George wasn't being completely truthful in his interviews.
[1:18:49] He was very cooperative, but he seemed to contradict himself a
[1:18:52] lot, as if he couldn't get his story straight.
[1:18:55] Initially, he claimed that he didn't own any guns.
[1:18:58] He wasn't a gun guy. But then he later admitted to
[1:19:01] owning 2. But he insisted that they only
[1:19:04] fire blank ammunition. I mean, that is, that is a bit
[1:19:08] of a jump, isn't it? He also claimed to the police
[1:19:11] that he had no idea who Jill Dander was.
[1:19:14] What, Like, the biggest celebrity in your country?
[1:19:16] One of the biggest celebrities in your country?
[1:19:18] You don't know who she is. Her face is on your TV every
[1:19:21] single day. I mean, I guess it's not
[1:19:22] impossible that he'd never heard of Jill Dander, but I think it's
[1:19:26] very, very unlikely. And he has already been caught
[1:19:31] lying in his police interview. So I don't know.
[1:19:35] But one thing that I do need to let you know about Barry George
[1:19:38] is that as he was doing all of this police interview stuff, he
[1:19:42] was given a psychiatric assessment and he was diagnosed
[1:19:46] with Asperger's for the first time in his whole entire life.
[1:19:49] Asperger's is a term that we don't really use anymore.
[1:19:52] It's like an old diagnostic term.
[1:19:54] It basically means that he had autism, he was on the autistic
[1:19:57] spectrum and this was never identified in his whole entire
[1:20:00] life, although he was sent to a school for people that had like
[1:20:04] learning difficulties. I guess I'm not entirely sure
[1:20:08] the specifics of what he was there for and what kind of
[1:20:11] things he was getting help with, but I just find that very
[1:20:15] interesting that he'd gone through his whole life without
[1:20:17] being diagnosed with autism and it only came up during this
[1:20:21] trial. And the reason I bring this up
[1:20:22] at this point is because he had done all of these police
[1:20:25] interviews, like questioning and stuff all on his own.
[1:20:29] He. He didn't have a lawyer and that
[1:20:31] is crazy, by the way, never talked to police without a legal
[1:20:34] representative right there. I just think that we have to
[1:20:36] bear in mind that this person that definitely needed a legal
[1:20:40] representative and probably needed some support in that
[1:20:43] moment from someone that understood Asperger's as it was
[1:20:47] then, but he didn't have any of that.
[1:20:48] It was just him and a couple of police officers that were
[1:20:51] grilling him. So I guess maybe that could be
[1:20:54] how some of the inconsistencies have come in.
[1:20:56] I really think that he should have had a lot more support, he
[1:20:59] should have had people sitting there with him, helping him
[1:21:02] through this process. As Barry George was like in and
[1:21:12] out of the police station for questioning, DCI Campbell
[1:21:16] himself actually went on crime watch to talk about Jill Dando's
[1:21:21] case and appeal to the public for more answers.
[1:21:23] How unsettling is that? That they are discussing the
[1:21:27] murder of a lady that used to stand right where they are
[1:21:30] standing presenting that exact show, and now she has become a
[1:21:35] case on her own crime show. Totally fine guys.
[1:21:38] I'm not going to have nightmares after this.
[1:21:39] It's totally fine. Police felt like it was very
[1:21:42] important for them to go on to Crime Watch to explain this new
[1:21:45] theory to the public, that it seemed like Jill was killed by a
[1:21:49] stalker or some like obsessed fan.
[1:21:51] Even though Barry was already being questioned by the police
[1:21:54] and he was being very cooperative, they decided that
[1:21:56] Crime Watch was worth doing anyway, just in case anyone
[1:22:00] watching might have had like supporting circumstantial
[1:22:03] evidence that they could call in about.
[1:22:04] They did make sure not to mention Barry or any specific
[1:22:08] suspects when they were talking on Crime Watch so that it
[1:22:11] wouldn't like influence anything.
[1:22:12] I'm not entirely sure what came of Crime Watch.
[1:22:15] Maybe, maybe there were some tips that we've kind of
[1:22:17] integrated into the rest of this video, but I don't know, Don't
[1:22:20] really have much to tell you from that.
[1:22:22] Clearly, though, things weren't working.
[1:22:24] Things weren't going very fast, and so the police decided to use
[1:22:28] another questionable tactic. DCI Campbell sent an undercover
[1:22:33] cop to go and cozy up to Barry at an Internet cafe in London,
[1:22:38] and they were going to try to pull some information out of it.
[1:22:42] This is known as a honey trap operation, where an undercover
[1:22:45] officer pretends to be a friend or a romantic interest to a
[1:22:49] suspect in order to extract information from them.
[1:22:53] The idea was to get close to Barry and then bring up
[1:22:56] particular topics of conversation where he might slip
[1:22:59] up and admit that he's a really big fan of Jill Dando or yeah,
[1:23:03] he was in the area in Fulham on the morning of the murders.
[1:23:06] Different things like that. But unfortunately, this is yet
[1:23:09] another lead that went cold. Nothing happened with the honey
[1:23:13] trap operation. Barry never admitted anything,
[1:23:15] never said anything. Wasted time.
[1:23:18] But what this honey trap operation tells me personally, I
[1:23:23] I think that the police already had it in their heads of what
[1:23:27] they wanted to find from this operation.
[1:23:29] They wanted a loner, they wanted a weirdo, and they wanted that
[1:23:35] loner weirdo to be Barry George so that they could just lock him
[1:23:38] up and be done with this case. In my opinion, I actually think
[1:23:42] they wanted it to be Barry George so bad that they had to
[1:23:46] start bending things to make him fit the narrative.
[1:23:50] There was barely any compelling evidence to arrest and convict
[1:23:54] Barry, but did that even matter? As we've seen before, the police
[1:23:58] can literally just make up evidence if they still want to.
[1:24:01] I mean, obviously that's illegal.
[1:24:02] They can't just do that. Like, that's not part of the
[1:24:05] police rules, but police go by their own rules, don't they?
[1:24:08] Hey. And now the biggest update of
[1:24:10] the case this whole entire time, 369 days into the investigation,
[1:24:17] the police charged Barry George with the murder of Jill Dander.
[1:24:21] But did they really believe this?
[1:24:24] Like, really? Or had the police just turned
[1:24:28] this weird kind of creepy man into a suspect just to satisfy
[1:24:32] the press? We know full well that the
[1:24:34] pressure was mounting in the British police at this point in
[1:24:38] time. Maybe they felt they needed to
[1:24:40] just pin it on someone quickly and no one really liked Barry
[1:24:44] anywhere. So, and let's be honest, like
[1:24:46] being realistic, for Barry to have actually pulled off this
[1:24:50] murder the way that it was, the stars would have had to align
[1:24:55] perfectly. Like, come on, no one noticed
[1:24:57] this fellow walking around with a gun.
[1:24:59] No one noticed him walking around Gowan Ave.
[1:25:01] He would have had to have arrived at the house at the
[1:25:04] exact right moment. Plus, how was he even going to
[1:25:06] know that she was there? Again, this case is just always
[1:25:10] raising more questions than it's answering.
[1:25:12] And I think DCI Campbell and his team knew this.
[1:25:15] They felt the same way. They felt just as flustered as
[1:25:18] me trying to make sense of this, which is why I think they were
[1:25:22] scrambling to build a case against Barry George.
[1:25:25] And to do this, they ordered for another criminal profile to be
[1:25:30] made, which is just such an odd use of their time at this point,
[1:25:34] since they're pretty sure that they've got their guy.
[1:25:36] A criminal profile is of most use when you have no idea who
[1:25:40] you're looking for. It helps to narrow down the pool
[1:25:43] a little bit. But in this case, they already
[1:25:46] thought they knew who that was, so why did they need that
[1:25:48] criminal profile making again? Could it be because they wanted
[1:25:52] one that aligned almost perfectly with the traits that
[1:25:56] Barry George possessed so that they could use this as evidence?
[1:26:00] It's almost as if this other criminal profile was made solely
[1:26:05] to support the narrative that police had arrested the right
[1:26:08] person. Maybe because there wasn't much
[1:26:10] other evidence to support this arrest anywhere.
[1:26:13] Umm, and that's not how that is supposed to work by the way.
[1:26:17] In fact, there's even a term for this.
[1:26:19] It's called self supporting evidence.
[1:26:21] It's when your so-called evidence only serves to justify
[1:26:25] the conclusion that you've already jumped to, rather then
[1:26:28] guiding an unbiased investigation.
[1:26:31] And this is a pretty serious problem when you start creating
[1:26:34] a profile after you've already got a suspect arrested, because
[1:26:38] surely the profile is just going to be like, it's not supposed to
[1:26:42] happen that way around. This is literally making up your
[1:26:44] own evidence, isn't it? But regardless, Barry's murder
[1:26:47] trial began in February 2001, almost two years after Jill's
[1:26:52] murder. The trial lasted 52 days in
[1:26:55] total. And after hearing all of that
[1:26:57] evidence, the jury deliberated for five days.
[1:27:00] When they finally returned, several of the jury members
[1:27:03] looked visibly distraught. Some of them were even crying as
[1:27:08] they re entered the courtroom. And you could cut the tension in
[1:27:11] that courtroom with a knife. No one knew which way the
[1:27:15] verdict might go, but on July 2nd, 2001, Barry George was
[1:27:20] found guilty of the murder of Jill Dander, and he was
[1:27:24] sentenced to life in prison. In the end, the piece of
[1:27:28] evidence that sealed Barry's fate was that single particle of
[1:27:32] gunshot residue that was found inside the pocket of his curve.
[1:27:35] But bear with me, because this story doesn't actually end with
[1:27:38] Barry's conviction. Famously, the police in this
[1:27:41] case made a lot of fatal mistakes.
[1:27:45] As we know from the Serbian connection that we spoke about
[1:27:47] earlier, there's a real possibility that Jill's death
[1:27:50] was about more than just the ACT itself.
[1:27:53] And after Barry was sentenced, the police received a letter
[1:27:57] that suggested that this might be true.
[1:27:58] And this wasn't just any letter, It was a confession, A
[1:28:02] confession to Jill Dando's murder.
[1:28:05] And it wasn't written by Barry George.
[1:28:07] It was actually written by a man that was already a convicted
[1:28:11] killer at that point in time. His name was Wayne Ayre.
[1:28:14] At the time he was serving a life sentence for murdering his
[1:28:18] flatmate, which happened just two months after Jill Dando's
[1:28:22] murder. So the timeline matches up.
[1:28:25] This letter that the police received was long.
[1:28:28] It was 10 pages long. So I'm going to try my best to
[1:28:31] condense that shit for you. And in this letter, Wayne Ed
[1:28:35] claims that he is a part or was a part of an IRA cell.
[1:28:40] The IRA or the Irish Republican Army was an armed resistance
[1:28:44] organization that believed all of Ireland should be
[1:28:47] independent, an independent country free from British
[1:28:51] colonial rule. And Wayne claimed in this letter
[1:28:54] to the police that senior members of the IRA had chosen
[1:28:57] Jill as a target because of her connections to the police
[1:29:01] through her work with Crime Watch.
[1:29:03] Wayne also confessed in this letter to being part of an
[1:29:06] establishment cover up. Those are the words he used.
[1:29:09] He claimed that the British government basically allowed the
[1:29:13] IRA to get away with Jill Dando's murder just to avoid
[1:29:17] breaking the Northern Ireland peace process.
[1:29:20] So police received this Corker of a letter, this 10 page
[1:29:23] manifesto. That does seem quite
[1:29:26] interesting, doesn't it? I'm actually not entirely sure
[1:29:29] if Wayne himself was trying to confess to this murder, or if he
[1:29:33] was saying he knew who had done it and he knew all this inside
[1:29:36] information. Either way, police didn't bother
[1:29:39] fucking looking into it, so I guess that's why we don't know.
[1:29:43] Oh, it infuriates me. It infuriates me, guys.
[1:29:45] Why don't they look into anything, especially in this
[1:29:48] case, Why are they ignoring such interesting evidence?
[1:29:52] I guess at this point in time, they did already have a
[1:29:54] conviction. Barry George was behind bars.
[1:29:57] And if police were to admit that this was compelling evidence and
[1:30:01] they were to look into it, then that would have to be them
[1:30:04] admitting that they were wrong or even thinking that they could
[1:30:08] be wrong. And that doesn't make the police
[1:30:10] look very confident. It wouldn't give people a lot of
[1:30:12] faith in their decisions and in their convictions if they've
[1:30:15] already convicted A murderer and they're like, hmm, but hang on,
[1:30:19] what if it's the wrong guy? Should we keep looking at the
[1:30:21] evidence? Everyone's going to be like,
[1:30:23] what do you mean? After a year in prison, Barry
[1:30:26] actually made his first appeal to the Criminal Cases Review
[1:30:29] Commission to try and get his conviction overturned.
[1:30:33] So he goes to court and they do this whole hearing where they go
[1:30:36] back over all the evidence and they just kind of told him to
[1:30:40] shut up. They said that the evidence all
[1:30:42] still held up and Barry deserved to be behind bars.
[1:30:45] So off he went back to his prison cell.
[1:30:47] So let's talk about that evidence for a second, shall we?
[1:30:50] We have already spoken about it, specifically that single
[1:30:52] particle of gunshot residue inside his pocket, which by the
[1:30:56] way, was found in a coat in his wardrobe over a year after Jill
[1:31:01] was murdered. It's crazy that a particle from
[1:31:04] over a year ago could still be on a coat that you just have in
[1:31:07] your wardrobe. I don't know gunshot residue, by
[1:31:10] the way, if you don't know what it is, I'm sorry that I haven't
[1:31:12] explained this earlier. Basically, when a gun goes off,
[1:31:15] residue also comes off it. And if you're in the area or if
[1:31:18] you touch a gun or anything like that, you're going to get it all
[1:31:21] over you go. The particles explode out of the
[1:31:23] muzzle and they can land, well, they usually land on the
[1:31:26] shooter, on the person or the object that's getting hit and
[1:31:30] like, I don't know, like surrounding areas.
[1:31:32] But usually when this happens, there are a lot of gunshot
[1:31:36] residue particles. If you're near the gun, you're
[1:31:38] going to be kind of covered in it.
[1:31:39] So one singular particle on the inside of a pocket in his coat,
[1:31:47] I don't know, that is tiny. And this isn't actually a clear
[1:31:51] sign of Barry George's guilt because did you know that
[1:31:55] particles can be transferred accidentally?
[1:31:57] Wow, who would have thought? It get me a science degree.
[1:32:00] So, for example, if someone shoots a gun in the morning,
[1:32:04] don't know why they're doing that, but they're doing it, and
[1:32:06] then they go and get on the London Underground, they ride
[1:32:09] the tube a couple of stops and then they get off and then I get
[1:32:12] on and sit in their exact seat. There's a good chance I now have
[1:32:16] gun residue on me from where it's come off of them onto the
[1:32:19] seat and then gone from the seat onto me.
[1:32:21] If that could get me put away in prison for murder, Oh my God,
[1:32:27] That is really, really scary to think about.
[1:32:29] And a lot of people believe that this is what happened to Barry
[1:32:33] George. A few years later, Barry made
[1:32:35] another appeal and went through that whole process again, and
[1:32:38] this time someone would sense was in the room.
[1:32:41] This time the Commission found that there was way too much
[1:32:45] importance put on this single particle of residue.
[1:32:49] And we actually have a stat for you.
[1:32:51] Often one in 100 people pick up a stray particle of gunshot
[1:32:55] residue without even knowing it, and that is not even that rare
[1:32:59] one in 100. It's probably happened to us all
[1:33:01] at some point in time. Charlotte in this day and age in
[1:33:04] 2024, forensic teams don't give much weight to individual
[1:33:08] particles anymore for this exact reason.
[1:33:11] But unfortunately, at the time, in the early 2000s, they didn't
[1:33:15] quite know that yet. So when the Commission found out
[1:33:18] how much weight was put on this singular particle, they thought
[1:33:22] that this case should go for a retrial.
[1:33:24] And that happened in 2007 in the original trial that actually got
[1:33:29] him put down for murder. There was a Ballistics expert
[1:33:32] brought up to talk about this gunshot residue.
[1:33:34] And they said that it looked like Barry was the one that had
[1:33:38] shot the gun. But now the Commission was
[1:33:40] finding that that wasn't necessarily the case.
[1:33:42] You don't need to shoot the gun yourself to have a bit of
[1:33:45] residue on you. Remember the tube?
[1:33:47] And in his appeal it was stated that if all of this was said in
[1:33:51] the first trial that like a singular gunshot particle could
[1:33:55] actually get on you from other means, then maybe the jury
[1:33:58] wouldn't have voted to put him in prison.
[1:34:02] Eventually, after spending eight years in prison for a crime that
[1:34:06] he did not commit, on August the 1st, 2008, Barry George was
[1:34:11] found not guilty of the murder of Jill Dander and he was
[1:34:15] released from prison. Which is good news for Barry.
[1:34:18] Awful fucking news that he had to spend 8 years in prison where
[1:34:22] everyone thinks he's a murderer. But I'm so glad to hear that he
[1:34:25] was listened to and that is now out.
[1:34:28] But unfortunately, since Barry George, no one else has been
[1:34:32] brought forward as a suspect in the Jill Dando murder case.
[1:34:35] Although there have been more and more theories as the years
[1:34:39] have been going by and they just get Wilder and Wilder.
[1:34:42] One of the most shocking theories that we came across was
[1:34:45] that her murder case might have been part of a massive cover up
[1:34:51] at the BBC. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly,
[1:34:54] allegedly. But this massive cover up at the
[1:34:56] BBC is is all to do with none other than Jimmy fucking Savile.
[1:35:01] Jimmy Savile was once a beloved BBC presenter.
[1:35:05] In fact, I think a lot of people at the time would have gone so
[1:35:08] far to say that he was a national treasure.
[1:35:11] Everyone loved that man, kids and adults alike.
[1:35:14] But after his death, Jimmy Savile's reputation was blown to
[1:35:17] smithereens when it was exposed that he was a serial sexual
[1:35:22] abuser. He abused mostly children and
[1:35:25] young women. And absolutely sick and
[1:35:27] disgusting man, that has become like a stain on early British
[1:35:32] TV. Like I said, so many people
[1:35:35] considered him a national treasure.
[1:35:37] So many families trusted him with their children.
[1:35:40] They took him on the they took them on his show.
[1:35:43] Those revelations are genuinely one of the biggest things that
[1:35:46] has rocked this country in the 21st century.
[1:35:49] I I would say that, but where's the Jill Dando connection?
[1:35:52] Well, I was just getting to that.
[1:35:54] In 2012 when the Jimmy Savile scandal broke, rumours started
[1:35:58] floating around that Jill might have known about a paedophile
[1:36:01] ring that was operating inside the BBC during the 90's.
[1:36:06] The theory is that Jill was murdered because people were
[1:36:09] trying to silence her. Maybe she knew about Jimmy.
[1:36:12] Maybe she'd even threatened to tell people or to go to the
[1:36:15] police. Maybe she even threatened to
[1:36:17] expose the BBC for helping him. Allegedly.
[1:36:20] Maybe. I don't know.
[1:36:21] You can kind of decide yourself if there's much merit to that.
[1:36:25] I don't think so, but I will tell you at the end what theory
[1:36:28] I personally believe. Another theory that I found like
[1:36:31] kind of interesting, but not interesting enough to spend any
[1:36:33] more than like 30 seconds talking about is that it could
[1:36:36] have been a case of mistaken identity.
[1:36:39] This theory thinks that Jill's murderer was trying to kill a
[1:36:42] different TV presenter, but he got it wrong.
[1:36:47] He mistook Jill for this other woman, shot and killed her.
[1:36:50] But I'll be honest, Jill doesn't look like this other presenter
[1:36:52] that he supposedly mistook her for.
[1:36:54] I don't, I don't know. I don't believe that one
[1:36:56] personally. And now we're getting into more
[1:36:59] recent stuff, I want to tell you about a story from 2023.
[1:37:03] So literally just last year. This isn't a theory when it
[1:37:06] comes to Jill Dando's murder. Or maybe it could be LinkedIn
[1:37:10] with one of the theories. But anyway, let me explain.
[1:37:13] In the UK there is a forensic psychologist named Kerry Danes
[1:37:16] who has been featured in a lot of different documentaries, like
[1:37:19] true crime documentaries on the British TV.
[1:37:22] Kerry is quite well known for what she does.
[1:37:23] She's a recognisable face, well one of the most recognisable
[1:37:27] faces when it comes to like British true crime
[1:37:30] documentaries. That is quite a niche thing to
[1:37:32] be famous in, but hey, you and me both sister.
[1:37:35] Well, one day Kerry Danes arrived home after a normal day
[1:37:38] out, or so she thought. And when she went into her
[1:37:41] garden, she saw the words Jill Dander scrawled on her garden
[1:37:45] fence. And her pet cat was found dead
[1:37:50] at the end of her garden. Someone had broken its neck.
[1:37:53] How fucking horrifying is that? It made my stomach turn when I
[1:37:57] first read. And Kerry genuinely believes
[1:37:59] that whoever did this was using Jill's name as a threat and the
[1:38:03] message was very clear. Like, watch yourself, watch what
[1:38:06] you're saying or you will end up like Jill Dander.
[1:38:10] Unfortunately. In the BBC documentary about
[1:38:12] Jill's life, DCI Campbell says that he doesn't believe there
[1:38:16] will ever be any justice for Jill's murder.
[1:38:19] He doesn't think that anyone else will ever stand trial.
[1:38:22] Like, this is just it. Now, this is just one of the
[1:38:24] great unsolved cases of this country.
[1:38:27] But the story doesn't end there. Again, I've done this twice.
[1:38:31] We actually have some very, very new information that literally
[1:38:35] only came out last month. And This is why I wanted to do
[1:38:38] this case so quickly. Literally all the team were sat
[1:38:41] together in the office and we saw this news and we were like,
[1:38:43] OK, Jill Dando next. Get that Next up on the case
[1:38:46] list on April 23rd, 2024, literally just a few weeks ago,
[1:38:50] a new suspect emerged in this case and it's not anyone that
[1:38:55] we've spoken about South far. It was however, a Serbian hit
[1:38:59] man who was working for the regime and I'll tell you what he
[1:39:02] does bear a striking similarity to the E fit sketch that they
[1:39:06] made of who they believe could have killed Jill Dander.
[1:39:09] I'm not going to lie, I did kind of doubt the validity of this
[1:39:11] sketch in the 1st place since there were no eyewitnesses.
[1:39:14] And I don't know, I feel like they were just making a sketch
[1:39:17] of a man. They didn't really know what he
[1:39:19] looked like, but they said that this man matches the sketch.
[1:39:23] He fits all of the general criteria that they thought this
[1:39:26] man would have been in his like 30s or 40s at the time.
[1:39:29] I don't know, it's quite basic that though, isn't it?
[1:39:32] But I'll tell you what the kicker is when it comes to this
[1:39:34] theory because if it was bullshit, I wouldn't mention it
[1:39:37] in my video. But this man, his name is
[1:39:39] Milorad Ulemic. Sorry for that pronunciation,
[1:39:43] but this man is already in jail right now for murdering two
[1:39:49] former Serbian presidents. This man is serious shit.
[1:39:53] This fucker is a hitman through and through.
[1:39:55] And one of these Serbian presidents that he'd killed was
[1:39:59] murdered in exactly the same way as Jill Dander a gun to the back
[1:40:03] of the head. So could this really be it?
[1:40:05] Like, is this the breakthrough that we've been waiting 25 years
[1:40:09] for? Have we actually found Jill
[1:40:11] Dander's murderer? I really, really hope the police
[1:40:14] are all over this lead and they take it seriously because it's
[1:40:17] been 25 years and she deserves justice as much as the rest of
[1:40:21] the country is still intrigued and want answers.
[1:40:25] Above all, Jill Dander deserves justice.
[1:40:28] I am going to be totally honest with you guys in the end of this
[1:40:30] video that I don't know what I believe.
[1:40:32] I don't know what I believe. Probably the Serbian hitman one.
[1:40:35] Like if I had to choose one, that one does seem the most
[1:40:38] watertight. But even then, it's not
[1:40:40] watertight, is it? None of them are watertight.
[1:40:42] And that is the issue. That is why I'm really
[1:40:44] struggling to like pick a side because I could poke holes in
[1:40:48] every single one of these theories that we've just said.
[1:40:51] And that is unfortunately the exact reason why this case is
[1:40:54] still, well, unsolved. I always get so frustrated when
[1:40:57] I finish an unsolved video and I like don't have an answer to
[1:41:00] give you. I'm like, come on.
[1:41:01] Please sort it. Thank you so much for listening
[1:41:07] to usual disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[1:41:10] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[1:41:12] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[1:41:15] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[1:41:18] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
[1:41:22] podcast app so that you get notifications when we post new
[1:41:24] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[1:41:27] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[1:41:30] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[1:41:34] production. See you next time.

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