Further excerpts
”The report appeared on Sunday and referred to the Panorama programme which was being made by Raphael Rowe. It mentioned two jurors who were having doubts and who apparently were willing to appear on the programme. It also mentioned that FBI agents criticised the Met Polices handling of the single particle evidence. On Monday Raphael asked me not to discuss the programme with MOJO. I replied that I had fallen out with them in 2001 due to the News of the World article. But I feared that a last minute hitch might have negative consequences and so I texted Michelle asking her to urge discretion on MOJO. She replied that they hadn’t known about the programme. In mid-August following a BBC Radio 4 programme I contacted Professor Elizabeth Loftus PHD. Elizabeth is an American memory expert based in Stanford University. Elizabeth later expressed concerns over eyewitness testimony which largely helped to convict Barry. She agreed to be added to the list of ‘concerned’, her concern being based on witness identification. Her website reads: ‘Elizabeth Loftus studies human memory. Her experiments show how memories can be changed by things we are told. Facts, ideas, suggestions and other post-event information can modify our memories. The legal field, so reliant on memories has been a significant application of the memory research’. Unknown to us on September 4th a Forensic Science Service report prepared for the CCRC dismissed the FDR evidence which dammed Barry as inconclusive. In their opinion it provided no support for the prosecutions case that Barry had killed Jill Dando. It would be another year before we became aware of that. Raphael Rowe phoned me to say that the Panorama-George programme would be broadcast on September 5th. I took a day’s holiday to watch it because as luck would have it I was on a late shift and I feared I would not get to see it. At 07.33 Pat Reynolds sent me a text message to say that BBC Radio 4 News was reporting on the programme every half hour.
It was also on BBC News 24, and RTE Radio 2FM. For me at least it was exciting news as this was the biggest development since the 2002 appeal and I felt I had helped in some small way to make it happen. The Telegraph reported that the programme cost £ 250,000 to produce and took Raphael two years to investigate. In response to criticism of Raphael a spokesman for the BBC said: ‘Raphael is a first class investigative journalist with five years experience reporting from a range of BBC outlets… He is a wholly appropriate presenter for this programme, which meets the usual criteria for impartiality, fairness and accuracy’.
At 21.00 I settled down to watch Panorama. It began with Raphael saying to Barry over Margaret’s telephone ‘so you didn’t kill Jill?’ …’ course not, replied a surprised Barry. Then the photo of Barry which I got taken at Whitemoor was shown alongside the prison envelope in which it was returned to me after the prison refused to allow Barry to have it. CCTV footage of Jill Dando on her last journey and a clip of 29 Gowan Avenue was shown, and Helen Doble’s 999 phone call was played. It ran through Barry being questioned, his visit to HAFAD and Susan Bicknell’s meeting with him. It was Susan’s first day at HAFAD and she recorded the time of his visit. Two days later Barry called back asking staff to recall the exact time of his earlier visit. A week later Susan typed an account of her meeting with Barry for the police and she wrote the time of his visit as 11.50. That seriously undermined the Crown’s case that Barry shot Jill Dando after 11.30, returned home by a circuitous route to change his clothes and then went to HAFAD. There would not be enough time to do that and be at HAFAD before 12.10 according to Raphael who walked the Crown’s suggested route. But Susan revealed that at court she was unwell and suffered a breakdown shortly afterwards. She felt upset that her illness might have caused the jury to doubt her and that they might have convicted Barry as an indirect result of her illness.
New gun evidence
Barry George
Sunday Express 3 Sep 2006By James Murray“MAJOR new doubts have been cast on the conviction of Barry George for the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando.
Two developments focus on a speck of gunpowder which was a crucial part of the case against him in 2001. A ballistics expert has claimed the speck discovered by police in a pocket of a blue Cecil Gee coat found at George’s flat did not even come from a gun.
Also, a former Crown Prosecution Service barrister has sent a confidential email to lawyers acting for George, who has always denied the murder, suggesting the speck might have come from a police firing range.
Venice- based Professor Marco Morin, who helps Italian police with ballistics analysis in mafia trials, has spent six months working for the BBC on the gunpowder evidence after being supplied exact details of the substance forensic experts found in George’s coat. Last night he told the Sunday Express: “It was said to be gunshot residue but I told the BBC that it was nothing of the sort. If anything it was something from exhaust fumes or smoke particles. It was definitely not gunshot residue.”
Prof Morin, a military historian, has written several books on gunpowder and firearms and has been involved in several high- profile Italian murder cases. He was also recently asked to contribute to a programme on the 1963 assassination of US President John F Kennedy.
Although he did not have the particle itself, he reconstructed it in his laboratory after being given details of its constituents.
The weapon used to shoot 37-yearold Crimewatch presenter Miss Dando on the doorstep of her London home in April 1999 has never been found. Police said the gunpowder speck was key evidence that George, 46, had concealed the murder weapon in his coat after the crime.
The Crown Prosecution Service barrister, who retired from the CPS in 2003, contacted a lawyer working for the Miscarriage of Justice Organisation, which is working closely with George’s lawyer Jeremy Moore. He passed the information to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, (CCRC) which will soon decide whether to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal based on the new evidence.
He told them: “Before I left the CPS a retiring senior Met police officer told me that the forensic team that examined Barry George’s flat was from Marylebone Police Station. It had an indoor firing range at that time and may still have. Like most police stations of size there is a canteen which is used by all Met staff and some visitors. Anyone using the range and anyone in the forensic team could have had close contact.”
In another development, the CCRC has interviewed key witness Susan Mayes, who picked George out of an identity parade a year after the murder.
Her evidence at the trial was that she had been on her way to work when she saw George in Gowan Avenue at 7am on the day of the murder. She described him as a stocky, slightly overweight man, with black shoulder-length hair, olive skin, no facial hair wearing a black suit with an open-necked white shirt.
Witnesses have given information to the commission questioning her account. There were claims that she was not working at the time but Ms Mayes told the Sunday Express : “They (the CCRC) asked me if I was working at the time. I was on my way to work when I saw what I saw.”
Lawyers for George have asked the CCRC to consider that on the day of the murder George’s hairstyle was distinctly short.
