Netflix's Who Killed Jill Dando explores chilling theory of a 'professional hit'
The new Netflix documentary Who Killed Jill Dando? is set to explore the chilling theory she was killed in a "professional hit".
It will revisit the shocking murder of the beloved TV presenter in 1999, who was killed on her doorstep in Fulham, West London. The three-part series on the streaming site explains what happened to Dando and explores the aftermath through interviews with senior investigating officer Hamish Campbell, journalists and wrongly convicted Barry George’s original defence lawyer Michael Mansfield.
He tells the show: “The file should still be open on this case. They should be looking.” Noel 'Razor' Smith, an armed robber-turned-writer, is also interviewed in the series. He was in HMP Belmarsh when Barry George, wrongly convicted of 37-year-old Dando’s murder, arrived after being charged. George was unanimously acquitted at a 2008 retrial.
The Netflix show will look into Jill Dando's murderAsked if he had any clues as to who killed Dando, Smith says: “I don’t really want to talk about that for my own safety. But there are rumours in the criminal world, let’s put it that way. It’s not who you would think and it’s not Barry George. It was a professional hit.” Asked if he could give any insight into why she was shot dead, he shook his head immediately and said: “No. If I tell you why – you’d know who did it.”
George, now 63, who has Asperger’s, brain damage, ADHD, learning difficulties and epilepsy, was jailed for life in 2001. It was largely because of a particle of gunshot residue found in a jacket pocket. It was so small it was not admissable at his retrial. He had lived close to Dando, but has since moved to Ireland. In the documentary he is asked, did you kill Jill Dando?, he replies: “Simply no. It makes me angry they’ve taken eight years of my life. They’ve basically persecuted me.”
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However, Hamish Campbell, the senior investigating officer at the time, says that he stands by George being the killer. “Do I think he should have been found not guilty?”, Hamish says. “I thought the guilty verdict in 2001 was the correct verdict. It’s been in the news or subject to comment or report, every year for 23 years. I think people like a mystery - but I don’t think it’s a mystery at all.” Asked “do you think that Barry George killed Jill Dando?”, Campbell replies: “I did, yes. I don’t think I’ve changed my mind.”
When in HMP Belmarsh, Smith was tasked by a journalist to get an interview with George when he arrived there. He says he faked a heart attack to get in the prison hospital alongside the new arrival. He asked him: “Do you like guns?” “He looked at me and said, ‘I like Guns n Roses’,” Smith said. “I wanted the juicy story - ‘yes I killed Jill Dando’.” He asked Barry if he had killed Dando, to which he told Smith ‘no’.
“I looked at him and thought ‘there’s something not quite right about this guy’. He is not capable of committing a cold-blooded execution in broad daylight and then not speaking about it for a year. There is no way he could keep that secret. When Jill Dando was shot a lot of criminals at the time kind of went “yeah,” because Jill Dando was on Crimewatch and a lot of them had ended up in prison, down to stuff they had on Crimewatch.
“The way it was done was professional. In the 80s and 90s, the way every hit was carried out was in broad daylight out in the street.
You want a place where people are not expecting you to do it. The chances of catching a professional who works in that way are slim to none.”
Who Killed Jill Dando? airs on Netflix Tuesday 26 September.
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