26 September 2023 , 15:44
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As with many high-profile, unsolved murders, Jill Dando's death leaves us with more questions than answers a quarter of a century on. Now, a new three-part Netflix series, titled Who Killed Jill Dando?, explores the possible theories, hunches and dead ends of the cold-blooded murder of the BBC presenter outside her own home on April 26, 1999.
The biggest question perplexing investigators, grieving relatives and viewers remains: 'Who shot Jill Dando and why?' Though, it seems to find the killer, gaps from the day she was killed still need to be filled. As Detective Chief Inspector Hamish says in the documentary: "The reality is, many a stranger homicide inquiry, the answer lies within the first tranche of information. Though I feared that there was something and we'd missed it. That somewhere in the beginning there was a message or information which had been overlooked."
The lead detective later states three questions he could not wrap his head around from the moments after Jill's murder: "Who was the man who had been seen running away? Who was driving the blue Range Rover? And who was the sweating man?" Here, we take a look at the key leads police officers had at the beginning of the investigation and how they still remain unanswered.
BBC presenter Jill Dando was shot outside her home in West London in April 1999 (PA)
Detective Hamish Campbell feared they had missed key information from initial witness reports (PA)Who was the man running away?
Numerous witnesses claim to have seen a man running away from Jill's home moments after her death, but it is still unknown who this male figure was. Jill's next-door neighbour Richard Hughes said he heard a 'startled scream' then a gate clang, and when he went to his window, he saw a man walking away from Jill's house at a brisk pace. Others also witnessed a man running near her home.
"The postman saw a Mediterranean-looking man just after 10am on the opposite side of the road to Jill's house," DCI Campbell says, later adding: "I didn't know at the time if there was one person involved or two or three. Everybody in that street on that day had to be eliminated out as much as possible."
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Who was driving the blue Range Rover?
"There was the traffic warden and she was about to give the ticket to a blue Range Rover and she was starting to write the ticket out, he brushed her off and he drove away," DCI Campbell says. Police then received information about a blue Range Rover seen travelling across Putney Bridge, driving at high speed through red lights away from the murder scene. But despite enormous CCTV search, the vehicle was not located again and it remains unknown if the killer fled behind the wheel.
Who was the sweating man?
"A witness claimed he saw a man running across the road and he stopped at the bus stop. And he was sweating," DCI Campbell says. The witness later described him so officers could create an e-fit, which was shown to press and the general public. "A man phoned the enquiry room and stated that he looked like the e-fit," DCI Campbell explained. "He didn't say that he was responsible for killing Jill, but he placed himself at the crime scene, so he was a person of interest."
Undertaker James Shackleton said that "he had run out of the park because he was being chased by a man and he went to the bus stop". But DCI Campbell later discovered: "Mr Shackleton was identified as somebody who was a liar, had previously thought to involve himself in other murder investigations. He was bailed out of the police station and then eliminated from the inquiry."
Who Killed Jill Dando? is available to watch on Netflix now.