"Your Lordships, I am not sure of the propriety of writing to you, but you cannot have been blind to the barrage of publicity claiming Barry George is innocent.
Some of the coverage has been openly one-sided, though some - like last week's Panorama which took up George's case - has been even more disturbing.
You, as senior judges, are supposed to be above all this, unimpressed by such non-judicial murmurings.
But you are only human and given the febrile atmosphere surrounding this case it would be remarkable if you had not been influenced in some way.
So allow me to set out something by way of balance. Let me start by saying that while there can never be certainties in cases like this, I remain confident that Barry George killed Jill Dando.
That said, on the basis of the evidence, as it was presented at his original trial, I confess I was surprised that the jury found him guilty.
In particular, I was always unimpressed by a piece of evidence that lies at the heart of his latest appeal: a microscopic fragment of firearm discharge residue that was found in his coat pocket.
Barry George's supporters now claim that this tiny speck underpinned the entire prosecution case, though in fact he had already been charged with Jill's murder before tests on the particle had even been completed.
At George's trial, the prosecution argued that this residue matched samples found on Jill's hair and clothing - as well as the cartridge found at the scene.
The defence had ample opportunity to challenge that evidence. Yet now they say there are "new" grounds to question its significance.
So far as I am concerned, nothing has changed; I am as unconvinced about the particle now as I was then.
Even so, if you, my Lords, agree that this piece of evidence was such a crucial that it alone swung the jury, then it follows that George's conviction was unsafe.
But should you uphold his appeal - and I suspect you may well do so - it does not follow that Barry George is innocent, any more than that everyone who is convicted by the courts is definitely guilty.
The police and prosecution lawyers cannot speak out in public in advance of the appeal.
However, before reaching your judgment I urge you to consider clues that have had much less media prominence than the case for the defence, so that if you deem the original verdict unsafe, at least you'll consider a retrial rather than outright acquittal.
Then at least we will have another chance to review all the evidence, some of which was not admissible at the original trial.
But for the time being, let's stick to what we know already.
Despite all the speculation that Jill Dando must have been killed by a professional hitman, the practical evidence is that her murder was very amateur indeed.
I do not say this with the benefit of hindsight - it was obvious from the start.
Jill was shot outside her home in Gowan Avenue in Fulham, an address well-known to locals but which she went to irregularly because she lived with her fiance.
She had no special plans to visit her home that day and an extensive trawl of West London's CCTV cameras shows she wasn't followed.
So her killer either acted impulsively, or lay in wait - neither course suggestive of sophistication.
According to a neighbour who picked out Barry George at an identity parade, he had been hanging about some hours before the shooting.
In any case, whoever killed Jill had prepared no means of escape.
There was no getaway vehicle, and Gowan Avenue has few side streets, so the killer took a big risk in walking away where he would be visible for some time. (Her fiance's address, on the other hand, was much better shielded for any potential ambush.) This is hardly the signature of a well-planned crime.
Nor did the method of attack show any level of skill. The gun was not a proper firearm (it had been converted from a replica), there was no silencer, the bullet was home-made, and the killer held the muzzle against Jill's head risking forensic evidence transferring on to it - none of which is the hallmark of a professional assassin.
Furthermore, Jill's key was in the lock, and anyone with any sense would have pushed her inside and shot her there to muffle the sound and hide the body.
The killer was really not very proficient.
This is all a bit removed from the conspiracy theories that swirled around and distracted the investigation, including a laughable story that the murder was connected to Serb extremists who were unhappy with one of Jill's charity appeals.
(I know how the rumour originated. It was based on a mild letter of complaint from a viewer, which got more and more exaggerated in the retelling.)
As for the killing being a reprisal for Jill's role on Crimewatch, this would have been as unique as it was improbable.
Judges who sentence criminals, barristers who prosecute them, police who investigate them and prison officers who incarcerate them have rarely been threatened by those they have jailed.
And besides, if anyone was daft enough to go for a Crimewatch presenter they would more likely have gone for me, as I had been with the programme for far longer.
But Jill was glamorous. As I pointed out to the police from the beginning, when you look for a motive you usually look to people who know the victim. And through the medium of television, everyone knew Jill - she was in their homes routinely.
It was clear to me, as it was to the forensic psychologist called in by the detectives, that given the celebrity status of the victim, and given the shambolic nature of the killing, the murderer was likely to be one of those men who have a sexual fixation on a public figure but "who separate their internal world from external reality to such an extent that they need no direct physical contact at all with their target, and - because of their narcissism and absolute belief that their fantasies are real - may not need their victim to see them even as they pull the trigger".(That was what I wrote to detectives privately early in the investigation.)
In short, the killer was likely to be someone with a personality disorder - someone much like Barry George.
It has been suggested that the police were fixated on Mr George from the start, at the expense of any other line of inquiry, but alas the opposite is true.
It was a year before he came into the frame, and the way he did so is instructive and shows why, on balance, I believe him to be guilty.Soon after the shooting, the police received calls from two independent sources pointing to Barry George as a suspect.
In both cases he had visited places near Jill's home soon after the killing, and in both cases he had gone back to try to persuade the witnesses that he had been there at a different time and in different clothes.
These witnesses were so alarmed that they rang police repeatedly, and were deeply frustrated that their calls went unheeded.
It was not until a review of the inquiry, 11 months later, that a detective became excited by these leads.
That delay may seem shameful, but you must remember there had been literally tens of thousands of callers to the inquiry.
One of the penalties of headline crimes is that they attract more quantity than quality of information - and most media and public pressure on the investigators had been to discover a criminal plot.
It was only when all the conspiracy theories proved bankrupt that the "lone weirdo" option began to take centre stage.
Some commentators have alleged that, in desperation, the cops just picked on Barry George as "a local nutter".
As we have seen, that is not true; ideally, they would have picked on him the day after the murder.
Besides, even when George did become a suspect, the senior investigating officer remained unconvinced - there seemed to be no hard evidence against him.
But slowly a pattern of apparent coincidences emerged which, for me, is quite convincing.
This was not just a man with the sort of personality disorder one might associate with such a crime, but one who lived locally and had been near the scene before and just after the crime took place.
Here was a man who took photos of female presenters as they appeared on his TV (how many other people do that?).
Here was a man with a history of violence against women. Here was a man who carried knives and had a fixation about guns. Here was a man who lied about his whereabouts on the day.
And, contrary to defence claims that he was mentally incapable of organising anything like a shooting, here was a man who lived out his fantasies daily, following women in the street (sometimes, as with Jill, into their front gardens), getting into the grounds of Kensington Palace wearing a balaclava and armed with rope and a knife when Princess Diana was alive (and didn't she remind you a little of Jill?), and living the life of stunt man.
On one memorable occasion he starred in a daredevil feat shown on local TV in which he roller-skated down a ramp and leaped across a row of buses.
It is true that his mental condition has been deteriorating, and it may well be that he is now incapable of acting as coherently as he once did.
I wish he could be transferred to secure accommodation where he can be cared for, rather than remain in prison. But the evidence of his previous capacity and guile is scattered through his history.
So what about the theory that a fantasist like Barry George might deliberately have put himself into the frame to make himself the centre of attention?
This might explain his attempts to give himself false alibis.
But such calculated behaviour is at odds with everything the defence claims about his mental incompetence.
And in any case, he seems not to have wanted to be the centre of attention.
It is conceivable that he might have set about trying to construct his alibis out of misguided fear, though in successive police interviews he never said he was worried about being picked on for the murder.
Nor did he protest that in the past he had been routinely harassed by the police, as later claimed by the defence.
In fact, he had been spoken to by officers a couple of times over perhaps a decade - not unusual in that part of London, especially for a young man who often behaved strangely.
The first occasion was after a disturbance in a McDonald's restaurant, the second was when he was tailing a woman.
And nor, as his supporters now claim, is there reason to believe he was fearful of being set up for Jill's murder because he had been a suspect for a previous notorious crime - the stabbing of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common.
Yes, it is true that he was one of many hundreds of people routinely interviewed in connection with the case, but though he had been convicted of assaulting a woman and later jailed for attempted rape, he was never accused or even vaguely suspected of the Nickell murder.
In any case, the fact that he can be put in the right place at the right time for Jill's murder is not particularly troubling; but the fact that he tried to confuse the key witnesses about his movements on the day is suspicious, to say the least.
There is much other evidence, too, against Barry George.
Each piece on its own is inconclusive, but not when added together.
It is a regrettable fact that as forensic science has advanced, juries have become more and more dependent on technical evidence and less willing to convict on the basis of indirect corroboration.
Indeed, the very phrase "circumstantial evidence" has become almost pejorative. But how many coincidences does it take before we accept that there is a meaningful pattern to them?
I submit to you, your Lordships, that the accumulation of evidence is compelling, and it is quite a list. I urge you to verify how the early conspiracy theories were demonstrably fatuous.
I ask you to consider how the insistence that Barry George was mentally incapable of such a crime is simply contrary to fact.
How his trail of false alibis and continuing pattern of lies appears manipulative rather than fantastical.
How his personality disorder is plainly not benign (as we know from previous violence and stalking).
How his obsession with guns and female TV presenters is curious. How his availability at the scene is proven, and so on.
Let me put it another way: If Barry George was not responsible for Jill Dando's murder, we would need to invent someone of the same build, same appearance, same behaviour, same infatuations, same mental instability and same location, as well as having to disregard his palpable mendacity.
Finally, let me say this. Jill hated miscarriages of justice. So do I.
And though I was her friend and colleague I have no animosity towards George. In fact, having once worked with people suffering from epilepsy and damaged personalities, I feel sorry for him.
Nor, as a TV presenter so closely associated with Crimewatch, do I relish the idea of imprisoning an innocent and vulnerable person when the consequence must be that a dangerous killer is free.
Yet, on balance, I think that the judicial system got the right man, even if the process was imperfect.
What really matters is that whoever killed Jill Dando should not be at large to do something terrible again.
I wish you well with your deliberations.
Nick Ross
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491452/Dando-murder-I-know-Barry-George-killed-friend-Jill.html#ixzz5Bazr8W52 
