Scotland Yard Re-examines 27-Year-Old CCTV in Unsolved Jill Dando Murder

Dando, a former presenter of Crimewatch, was 37 years old when she was shot and killed outside her home in Fulham, west London, on 26 April 1999. An unidentified person, referred to as “Man X”, was captured on camera near Putney Bridge station, about a mile from Dando’s home, shortly after the attack. The Mirror reported that a driver had seen a man “running for his life” on Fulham Palace Road around the time of the shooting, and that she later picked out Man X in the station CCTV as the person who had been sprinting.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “In the 27 years since Jill Dando’s murder, the investigation has been subject to numerous reviews, aiming to identify whether matters could be progressed with advances in technology and forensics.”

The spokesperson added: “Recent advancements in CCTV enhancement technology have provided investigators with the opportunity to re-examine original footage from Putney Bridge train station. The review of CCTV footage forms part of ongoing inquiries and should not be interpreted as a significant line of inquiry nor as a new investigation being opened on this matter.”

Outside her work on Crimewatch, Dando was also seen during the 1980s and 1990s on BBC shows including the travel programme Holiday and The Antiques Inspectors. She began as a reporter at her local paper, The Weston Mercury in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, before moving to the morning programme Breakfast Time, which later became BBC Breakfast.

In 2019, the detective who led the inquiry into Dando’s murder expressed doubt the case would ever be solved. Speaking in a BBC documentary to mark 20 years since the 37-year-old television presenter’s shooting, Hamish Campbell said he did not think any new suspects would ever be brought to court.

“Do I think somebody will come back to court? Probably not, no,” he said. “Sometimes, I felt we were a day away from solving it and other times, I thought: ‘No, we’re a long way away’. Senior officers were asking: ‘What are the likelihoods of this case being resolved?’”

Campbell said more than 2,000 people had been named as potential suspects or as responsible. “Some actions to trace and eliminate one person might take a day. One action might take two weeks. But there’s thousands of them and that’s the issue of managing stranger homicides,” he said.

Editor's Summary

Scotland Yard has returned to 27-year-old CCTV footage from Putney Bridge station in the hunt for the killer of BBC presenter Jill Dando, using improved image enhancement technology, but says the work continues existing inquiries rather than opening a new investigation. Dando, 37, was shot outside her home in Fulham, west London, in April 1999, and no one has been convicted of the murder. The detective who led the original inquiry said in 2019 that he doubted the case would ever be solved.