Lost clues that led police to Dando's killer
The Dando investigation: vital evidence emerged after hunch about 'stranger murderer'
Nick Hopkins July 2001“Eight clues lost in a mass of information provided by 16,000 calls finally led detectives to arrest and charge Barry George. The crucial "messages" were provided by members of the public who called the murder squad between April 26 and June 14 1999. On their own, they were not regarded as overly significant and were placed in a holding queue for low-priority intelligence.
During a review of this material months later, DC John Gallagher realised the messages were referring to the behaviour and habits of the same person - George.
The decision to arrest him on May 28 last year, 460 days after the murder, was not taken quickly.
It came after George had been under surveillance for four weeks and when the squad, led by Detective Superintendent Hamish Campbell, had details of his previous convictions, including one for attempted rape.
They pieced together fragments of evidence regarding his whereabouts on the day Dando died. The hunch became a conviction when a scientist found a single particle of firearms discharge in the inside pocket of a blue cotton jacket hanging on the back of a door in George's flat.
It matched residue on the back of Dando's head and in her hair. "Once we had that, we knew we had enough to arrest him," said one officer.
Three months before, Det Supt Campbell, 43, had changed the focus of the investigation. He was disillusioned with theories of professional hitmen and Crimewatch vendettas, telling friends they seemed "outlandish and far-fetched".
Despite a £150,000 reward and a plea for information from police informants, he had not been presented with a shred of evidence to suggest Dando's death was the work of the underworld.
Only two men had been regarded as possible suspects before George. Martyn Gilbert had allegedly sent sexually explicit emails about Dando and had moved from his home in Fulham to Australia two weeks after her murder. He was ruled out after an officer flew to meet him.
So was Steve Savva, a mechanic from east London, who was wrongly named as a possible assassin by a police informer.
Mr Campbell believed he and his team must have missed something obvious in the maelstrom which followed Dando's death, and suspected the killer was not a professional at all, but an obsessive who had a lucky getaway.
Consulting other detectives at a conference in Birmingham last spring crystallised a growing conviction he should be looking for a "disorganised, stranger murderer" rather than a contract killer. Although wary of giving this too much significance, it chimed with offender profiles prepared by the National Crime Faculty.
Mr Campbell ordered his team to sift through thousands of information "messages" - mainly calls from the public - received in the days after the murder, in case something had been missed.
One referred to a man called "Busara" who lived in a flat in Crookham Road, Fulham, and was described by the caller as "very strange and mentally unstable". "Busara" had not been seen by detectives, so was put in the queue for action, a list of people detectives wanted to see, but not as a high priority.
The officer finally tracked down "Busara" after four weeks and reported back to Det Supt Campbell on April 5, telling his boss he had met someone who was "rather odd". "Busara" was Bulsara. Bulsara was Barry George.
Mr Campbell told his detective to take a statement from him, which he did the next day. With his mother Margaret acting as a witness, George recalled precisely what he had done on April 26 1999.
He said he had been at home that morning. He remembered exactly what he was wearing, mentioning a cotton jacket.
"He was the first person we interviewed who knew precisely where he was and what he was doing, without a moment of hesitation," said a source. "It was as if he had been preparing for the visit."
George also said he had "never heard of Jill Dando", which seemed unlikely, especially as his flat was littered with newspapers and copies of the BBC in-house magazine, Ariel.
The team immediately reviewed George's criminal record, which showed he had a history of violence towards women, including a conviction for attempted rape in 1983.
On April 17 last year, detectives searched George's flat and took away crates of clothes and personal belongings for forensic examination. Mr Campbell ordered a seven-day surveillance of George from 7am to midnight.
The team went through all the police messages again and found other clues which suggested George was lying about his whereabouts on April 26.
One was from a taxi firm, Traffic Cars, five minutes walk from Dando's home. It reported that "a very strange man", who fitted George's description, had come into the office on the day of the murder.
Witnesses at Hammersmith and Fulham Action for Disability (Hafad), a community centre in Greswell Street, thought George had been there at about noon.
George, police learnt, had returned to Hafad two days after the murder and asked staff if they remembered what time he had been there on April 26.
George told them he was worried he looked like the e-fit of the man the police were looking for. Detectives, however, had not released an image of a man seen running away from the scene.
George went to Traffic Cars again and asked if the controller, Ramesh Paul, remembered what he was wearing on his previous visit. When he could not, George became agitated and said "I was wearing yellow, like the colour of the sun! You must remember!"
The material taken from Crookham Road seemed disturbing. It included a handwritten list of 90 car registration numbers and descriptions of the women drivers. One of the number plates was Princess Diana's.
Detectives also recovered hundreds of undeveloped films which showed George had secretly taken several thousand photos of 418 different women.
One picture in particular grabbed the attention of the police. It showed George wearing khaki and a gas mask, and holding a silver handgun, which appeared to have been damaged or tampered with. Although the gun that killed Jill Dando has never been found, forensic analysis of the cartridge has shown the weapon must have been modified in some way.
George, they discovered, did have some knowledge of weapons and had spent six months in the Territorial Army. He did not have a firearms licence, but he legally kept three starting pistols in the 1980s. He had reported one stolen in 1986.
None of this was evidence that linked George to the murder of Dando, but in the second week of May the results of forensic tests on George's clothes landed on Mr Campbell's desk.
Inside the left-hand pocket of George's blue cotton jacket, scientists found a particle comprising lead, antimony and barium - firearms discharge. The particles matched those found on the back of Dando's head and on her coat.
Senior lawyers at the crown prosecution service agreed that on the basis of the forensic evidence there was "sufficient evidence" for the prospect of conviction.
At 6.30am on May 28 last year, four unarmed officers knocked on George's door and told him he was being arrested on suspicion of murdering Jill Dando.
Further analysis of more than 3,000 items taken from George's flat identified a fibre on a pair of trousers which matched those on a coat Dando was wearing when she was shot.
It was not conclusive - the fibre could have come from a number of clothes - but for detectives, it added a little more weight to the prosecution case.
After George was committed to stand trial at the Old Bailey and the CPS had served notice to the defence of its case, he completely changed his alibi.
He admitted he had been out on April 26, and had walked to Hafad at 10.50am, where he had stayed until lunchtime, putting him in the centre at the time of the murder. Staff at Hafad were confused about when they had seen him: one said 11.50am, others claimed it was later.
George told police he had taken a circuitous route to Hafad which avoided Gowan Avenue and took him past Fulham football club. He said he was wearing a bright yellow top.
Detectives scoured the cctv coverage of the area, and found a hazy image of a man, wearing a bright yellow top, walking towards Hafad just before 1pm.
"Is that coincidence or is it George?" said an officer. "We believe that was George. We think he killed Jill, went home and changed, and then out again to Hafad, avoiding the murder scene."
One obvious and gaping hole in the prosecution case was lack of motive. There was nothing in George's flat to suggest he was fixated with Miss Dando. There were no photos or posters, though they could have been destroyed. Nor was there any evidence that he stalked Miss Dando.
Detectives had one weak anecdote which hinted at revenge. Nine years ago, George, who had worked for the BBC briefly in 1976, approached a woman at a bus-stop near Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush and asked whether she worked for the corporation. When she nodded, he told her he disliked the BBC and its journalists because of the way Freddie Mercury had been treated before he died.
Having studied George, Mr Campbell concluded that establishing a motive might prove impossible. "George is a fantasist, so how can we understand the working of his mind?", he told his team.
A detective told the Guardian: "George spent his days following and looking at women. If he liked you, he would photograph you, find your address and visit you. He will ask you to talk to him and if you are aggressive back, that's the trigger for him to attack.
"We were looking for a traditional stalker, but George didn't have to stalk Jill Dando. He lived right by her. He walked past her house nearly every day."
From the moment George came into their orbit, Mr Campbell knew a conviction would be difficult. But Mr Campbell told friends he believed "with all his heart" that George killed Miss Dando
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jul/03/jilldando.media2
