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Jill Dando's Murder: Barry George Accused, Convicted & Acquitted

Dando murder evidence questioned

Forensic analysis questions the only piece of scientific evidence against the man jailed for murdering Jill Dando, the BBC's Panorama has found. Firearms residue expert Professor Marco Morin says the single particle taken from Barry George's coat may not have even come from a gun.

He says it should not have been introduced as evidence.

George was convicted two years after the BBC presenter was shot once in the head in Fulham, west London, in 1999.

A juror has spoken publicly for the first time of her feelings about the guilty verdict reached in July 2001.

Juror Janet Herbert says: "I just felt shocked that on that little evidence anybody could be locked away for the rest of their life."

The jury was put up in a hotel during a weekend because the members were unable to reach a verdict.

A second juror who wished to remain anonymous says that some of the deadlocked jury talked about the case at the hotel.

'Excluded from discussions'

This was specifically against the judges instructions.

These instructions are meant to stop subcommittees forming cliques that could influence the final decision.

Janet Herbert felt excluded from these discussions.

Reporter Raphael Rowe investigates whether there is new relevant evidence the jury should have heard. He had exclusive access to case documents and exhibits.

Barry George's coat was found a year after the BBC presenter's death and was taken from its evidence bag and photographed at a police station before it was examined by forensic scientists.

A witness, a retired reverend, claims that he saw police entering George's flat with guns when they took the coat away but this has been denied by the police.

This may have contaminated the scene.

Professor Morin suggests that the particle may have come from an incinerator burning paint or from somebody arc welding.

Panorama finds out that the jury members were never given information explaining why Barry George was desperate to establish an alibi for the time Jill Dando was shot dead in the head on the doorstep of her home in London in 1999.

George had been questioned about the Rachel Nickell murder on Wimbledon Common in 1992.

He had nothing to do with that murder but he was afraid that he would be questioned again. Trying to establish the alibi made him look highly suspicious.

One witness, Susan Bicknell, tells the programme that she could provide George with an alibi but she suffered a nervous breakdown after the trial and fears her illness made her a poor witness when she took the stand.

Contrary to the media coverage and prosecution case that George was obsessed with Jill Dando, there were only eight newspaper articles about her found in the stack of 800 newspapers in George's house.

Case reviewed

None of the stories about her had been highlighted or clipped out or stuck on a wall.

A friend says that George never spoke about Jill Dando until after her death.

For the past two years, the Criminal Cases Review Commission has carried out a review of the case.

It says this has involved commissioning forensic tests and interviewing a number of witnesses and expects to make a decision about whether to refer it to the Court of Appeal "in the near future."

George lost an appeal in 2002 and remains in jail.

Panorama will submit its evidence to the commission.

Jill Dando's Murder: The New Evidence will be broadcast on Tuesday 5 September at 2100 on BBC One and streamed live at bbc.co.uk/panorama.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5305694.stm
 
I don't know if anyone has ever commented on this but there is a spooky similarity between Jill Dando's fiance and the e-fit of her supposed killer. Maybe it has been mentioned and I missed it.

Not that I am suggesting he is guilty, obviously, just wondered if the witnesses got confused!
 
The e-fit looks more like Alistair Campbell!

(I, too, am suggesting nothing other than a coincidence)
 
Hi, and thanks for responding

As I understand it, Alastair Campbell was actually questioned at the time (perhaps someone can refresh me on this point) but nothing came of it.

I am not suggesting Mr Farthing is anything other than totally innocent, but given the fact that the police can be incredibly heavy handed in these situations, and given that the killer had to know that Jill Dando would be coming back to her home at that time (or have staked the place out) and given that most murders are committed by people who know the victim, I am surprised if they didn't follow it up, that's all.

I repeat, I am making no allegation regarding Mr Farthing here and I fully accept that it could be only me who sees a likeness.

Certainly having viewed the most recent programme and the previous one, it's all Burlington Arcade to a speck of batshit that Barry George did not do the crime, IMO.
 
And gets to rot on remand for however many more months, while they think about it :(

I guess at least it all seems to be heading the right way...
 
A-mergin' I have been.

The mildly diverting banter that originally followed this has been hived off chat-wards thisaway.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
And gets to rot on remand for however many more months, while they think about it :(

I guess at least it all seems to be heading the right way...
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I worry about a Stefan Kiszko type scenario; spends all this time in prisoner and then dies not long after his release. :(
 
yeah. it doesn't sound like he was the most mentally well balanced person before he went in, and i doubt doing time for murder will have helped that much... :(
 
Dando jury to visit murder scene

The jurors sworn in for the Jill Dando murder retrial have been told they will visit the scene of the TV presenter's killing next week.

After been sworn in at London's Old Bailey, the eight men and four women were sent away until Monday, when the prosecution will open the case.

Barry George, 38, of Fulham, west London, is facing a second trial over the killing of Miss Dando.

She was shot on the doorstep of her home in Fulham in April 1999.

Mr George was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2001 after an Old Bailey jury found him guilty by a majority of 10 to one, but he has always denied his involvement in her death.

The Court of Appeal ruled last November that the jury's guilty verdict was unsafe because of new scientific doubts over gunshot discharge residue evidence.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7435612.stm
 
Dando 'killed by celebrity stalker'
10 June 2008

The man accused of shooting dead television personality Jill Dando was a celebrity-obsessed stalker, a court heard.

Barry George had taken pictures of women without their knowledge for years and 4,000 were found on undeveloped film at his flat, the Old Bailey was told.

Some were of television presenters Anthea Turner, Emma Freud, Caron Keating and Fiona Foster, photographed from his television screen.

But they were mostly of women in the area of Fulham, west London, where he and Miss Dando lived a few streets apart, said Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting.

Mr Laidlaw alleged that George had followed some of the women because he wanted to know where they lived and asked for dates.

There was no evidence that Miss Dando, 37, knew anything about being stalked when she was shot dead on her doorstep in April, 1999.

But her killer had been waiting around for some time for Miss Dando to return home to Gowan Avenue, Fulham, said Mr Laidlaw.

She had been shot in the head from close range within 30 seconds of getting out of her BMW car and reaching her front door.

Miss Dando was one of the best known people on television, presenting the BBC news, Crimewatch and the Holiday programme.

George, 48, of Fulham, who was first tried for her killing in 2001, is facing a retrial. He denies murder.

Mr Laidlaw said Miss Dando's death was the result of the actions of "a loner, a man acting alone with no rational motive to kill".

Weston-super-Mare-born Miss Dando was in a settled relationship and had been due to marry doctor Alan Farthing in September 1999.

He said George had a history of complex medical problems and had told police he had a "personality disorder".

Mr Laidlaw told the jury: "He had a fixation with the famous and with celebrities.

"For many years he lived out the fantasy by calling himself after, and adopting the names of, various entertainers."

In the years immediately before Miss Dando's death, George had pretended to be Queen singer Freddie Mercury's cousin.

Mr Laidlaw continued: "The defendant appears also to have had a fascination with female TV personalities.

"He took photographs of female news presenters on his television and he had the names of numerous female celebrities written down on pieces of paper and lists at his home.

"His interest extended to the BBC. He would hang around the BBC offices at White City, had BBC cards in his possession and obtained numerous copies of Ariel, the BBC's staff publication.

"There was also an occasion when the defendant had expressed a dislike of the BBC because of the way he thought the organisation had treated his cousin, Freddie Mercury, as he described him."

Mr Laidlaw said: "Over the course of many years the defendant, particularly but not exclusively in the area of Fulham, would approach women, engage them in conversation and then seek to discover where they lived and the vehicles they drove.

"Some of the witnesses provide evidence that Barry George, having discovered where they lived, also spent time waiting in the area of and observing their addresses.

"On occasions, he was present outside watching when they arrived back at their homes.

"One in particular was entirely unaware of the defendant's interest in her until a document containing directions to her home was recovered at the defendant's address after his arrest."

Mr Laidlaw said the "obsessive aspects" of George's behaviour might provide clues to Miss Dando's death.

He added: "These provide a reason why he might have had an interest in Jill Dando and why he might have formed some irrational plan to kill her.

"They raise the question: Had the defendant's fascination with female presenters, combined with Jill Dando's link with the BBC, and his belief that that organisation had treated Freddie Mercury badly, resulted in this irrational plan to kill?"

Six witnesses living in the area had made positive or partial identifications of George as being in Gowan Avenue that morning.

Mr Laidlaw said: "This aspect of the defendant's behaviour - this habit of following women and of being at their homes or the area of their homes - also supports the correctness of the identification of the witnesses."

George, who once worked for the BBC as a messenger, also had an interest in guns and the military which extended "far beyond curiosity".

Mr Laidlaw said: "The defendant had also had possession of a gun which could have been converted into the sort of weapon which was used to kill Miss Dando."

Jurors were shown a photograph, found at his home, of George holding a handgun and wearing a "military respirator".

George had been arrested a year after the murder. He said he had been at home and then went to a local support centre.
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LINK
 
rynner said:
Dando jury to visit murder scene

The jurors sworn in for the Jill Dando murder retrial have been told they will visit the scene of the TV presenter's killing next week.
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Great, I wonder just how this will help them consider their verdict. As far as I understand it, there's no dispute where she was shot, or what she was shot with, the murder scene has no bearing on the fact that the bloke in the dock can only be linked to the crime by circumstantial evidence (he was a bit of a weirdo and had a jacket possibly contaminated before analysis)

Will they be having a trip to the forensics lab to see where the jacket was just hung up before they made their miraculous single gunpowder speck find?

All this will do is create a lovely frenzied media circus, who probably won't be able to report anything anyway till the trial is over (are there laws against identifying or picturing jurors during ongoing trials?). At a time when the squeeze is being put on Legal Aid for the ordinary man, how much of the public purse is being spunked up the wall by QCs and barristers trying to put on American-style celebrity performances with one eye on the media? They just love showing off, the same with the Diana inquest, what exactly did they learn from a trip to Paris that they wouldn't have been able to grasp from all the footage, pictures, fancy News at Ten computer graphics etc?

The thing that really pisses me off, is that I'm paying for this crap.

Just look at the hard evidence, make a decision and go home. (Freeing Barry George, obviously, since there is no hard evidence.)Maybe they could spend the cash they'll waste traipsing round London looking at someone's front door on investigating who stitched up Barry George.
 
LordRsmacker said:
rynner said:
Dando jury to visit murder scene

The jurors sworn in for the Jill Dando murder retrial have been told they will visit the scene of the TV presenter's killing next week.
Click to expand...

Great, I wonder just how this will help them consider their verdict...
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If I was on trial for something I didn't do, I'd like to hope the jury really did understand all the circumstances.

Myself, I'm very experienced at using maps, charts and plans, and can usually visualise a scene from such information, especially when it's backed up by photographs. But from experience I also know that such a scene in reality can prove surprisingly different from what was expected beforehand.

The same goes for photos. By their very nature, they are an extract from the total scene, and without some good means of putting them into context they can be very misleading. (And I have good experience of that too!)

What looks good on paper, or what seems good when heard in court, may seem somewhat different when you are on the scene itself, and able to look around and absorb all the little details that maybe haven't been mentioned in court....

I rest my case! 8)
 
I agree, just this week local tv did an interview with someone in the high street of our little town, I found it difficult to recognise exactly where they were.
 
(are there laws against identifying or picturing jurors during ongoing trials?)
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Yup. That's contempt of court.
 
rynner said:
If I was on trial for something I didn't do, I'd like to hope the jury really did understand all the circumstances.
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Indeed, and if there was a conflict between pieces of proffered evidence, say there being dispute whether a person could get from A to B in a certain time, or some sort of physical interaction between the accused and the murder scene, or maybe a witness statement from a position that can be shown to be a blind spot, then fine, if counsel deem it to be relevant, get a site visit in. Like you, I'd want the jury to get all of the facts about MY physical proximity to the crime I'm being tried for.

In this particular case, there is no evidence offered that Barry George was actually at the scene (apart from the aforementioned circumstantial evidence), and the defence is that he wasn't there either. There is no dispute that she was shot where she was found, on her doorstep. Visiting the site will shed NO light on the man's guilt or innocence (unless the Crown is going to pull some new evidence out of the hat). He was either there, or he wasn't there, a site visit won't make that any clearer.

Bearing in mind that if someone is up before a jury, they are facing 6 months or more inside, why shouldn't EVERYONE demand that the jury be bussed out to the scene of the alleged crime? I'd not want to do a single night of porridge, let alone be too scared to pick the soap up for 2, 5, 15, 25 years, whatever, but I'm pretty certain that there'd be scant chance of getting the jury out for a walkabout, unless the trial was high-profile.

To my mind, this is just showing off, making a public performance out of a trial, feeding the media. It does Barry George, or Jill Dando, no justice whatsoever.
 
sherbetbizarre said:
Dando 'killed by celebrity stalker'
10 June 2008

The man accused of shooting dead television personality Jill Dando was a celebrity-obsessed stalker, a court heard.

Barry George had taken pictures of women without their knowledge for years and 4,000 were found on undeveloped film at his flat, the Old Bailey was told.

Some were of television presenters Anthea Turner, Emma Freud, Caron Keating and Fiona Foster, photographed from his television screen.
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doesn't that just make him like eery photojournalist out there who goes for the easy money celeb shots rather than gritty shots of the perils of life, the universe and everything in it?

Weston-super-Mare-born Miss Dando was in a settled relationship and had been due to marry doctor Alan Farthing in September 1999.

He said George had a history of complex medical problems and had told police he had a "personality disorder".
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so, hang on a mo, does that mean he was treating george, or that he looked over confidential patient files which only related to him because the patient was accused of killing his fiancee?

Mr Laidlaw told the jury: "He had a fixation with the famous and with celebrities.
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so do most of the chavs on the estates and most of the major tabloid papers.

Mr Laidlaw said: "Over the course of many years the defendant, particularly but not exclusively in the area of Fulham, would approach women, engage them in conversation and then seek to discover where they lived and the vehicles they drove.

"Some of the witnesses provide evidence that Barry George, having discovered where they lived, also spent time waiting in the area of and observing their addresses.

"On occasions, he was present outside watching when they arrived back at their homes.
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surely this only shows that he was obsessive. if he were dangerous, would he not have attacked any number of those women, especially if he apparently went up to dando and shot her in the head.

"One in particular was entirely unaware of the defendant's interest in her until a document containing directions to her home was recovered at the defendant's address after his arrest."
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by which point a climate of fear over him has been created and anyone with any links to him, known or unknown, will surely be thinking it is creepy.

Mr Laidlaw said: "The defendant had also had possession of a gun which could have been converted into the sort of weapon which was used to kill Miss Dando."
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could have been is not the same as did, or is that just me?

rynner said:
Dando jury to visit murder scene

The jurors sworn in for the Jill Dando murder retrial have been told they will visit the scene of the TV presenter's killing next week.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

i agree with LordRsmacker, this seems like just a fruitless attempt to make it look like everything is being done, when what is being done will have no bearing or relevance on proceedings.

to me, barry george has always just come across as something with a severe personality disorder, but as there is, apparently, no history of violence - i say apparently as i have not seen any indication, but i may be wrong so i'm gonna cover my arse - it is slightly incredulous that he would then go out, modify a gun, shot her, get rid of said gun - to all intents and purposes very well - and then be caught out by the "evidence" that is against him.

there is the possibility that he stalked jill dando, and maybe other female celebs, and he has been spoted around other womens residences, but it's a huge leap from stalking to murdering in cold blood.

as with the di inquest, i think the decision has already been reached on what the verdict will be, but in this case i strongly believe it is the wrong one.
 
Some unexpected light is shone on whether a jury should be taken out of the courtroom to visit the scene of the crime (or any other relevent scene) by today's story about a trial that had to be abandoned because several members of the jury were playing Suduko (instead of listening to the evidence and associated legal arguments) 'to fight off boredom'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 447627.stm
 
Yikes! Imagine facing a life of pillow-biting and finding out the jurors were doing puzzles!!!

Perhaps they should be getting them out of the court for a run round the quad to keep them awake, followed by spot questions on the day's proceedings to check they have been paying attention!
 
I'm disappointed to hear that there is no action that can be taken against them for their behaviour.
 
There is. At the judge's discretion they can be charged with contempt of court and summarily imprisoned. I wonder why this hasn't been done, as judges are usually very stern about this sort of thing.
 
George Not Guilty of Dando Murder

George not guilty of Dando murder

Barry George has been found not guilty of murdering BBC television presenter Jill Dando outside her London home.

Mr George, 48, of Fulham, west London, denied shooting 37-year-old Miss Dando on her doorstep on 26 April 1999.

He was retried at the Old Bailey, having first faced trial for the killing in 2001.

His defence argued he was not capable of carrying out what could be seen as the "perfect crime" that required "meticulous" planning.

Mr George has consistently insisted he did not murder Jill Dando.

He was arrested on 15 May 2000, a year after the shooting.

Forensic evidence about a tiny speck of gun residue in Barry George's coat helped secure his original conviction but was not permitted in the retrial.

The jury of eight women and four men were sent out to deliberate on Wednesday after an eight-week trial.

Mr George showed no reaction as the verdict was read out. He nodded as psychiatrist Dr Susan Young, who sat with him in the dock during trial, whispered to him.

He is expected to be released later and walk free from the Old Bailey after spending eight years in prison.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2008/08/01 13:15:17 GMT

© BBC MMVIII
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just saw the verdict on the 6o'clcok news. but they had an interview with his psychiatrist who said that he was overwhelmed and emotional at the verdict, so why has the web report stated him as emotionless?

i smell lazy journalism!
 
or just trying to make him sound like more of a weirdo.

for all that's being said of him as 'the local nutter', looking at barry george's wiki entry. most if not all of his really whacked out behaviour seems to be from 1981 or earlier - at least 18 years before Dando was shot...
 
If being "the local nutter" makes one guilty of murder a good third of the people on this board would be banged to rights. And yes including me. :roll:
 
Not in the least surprised, it always looked like they'd banged up the local oddball to get a quick result... :(
 
Timble2 said:
Not in the least surprised, it always looked like they'd banged up the local oddball to get a quick result... :(
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Not that quick, it took them a year to arrest him, but it appeared to a lot of observers to be clutching at straws, which was, it turns out, exactly that. Nothing like persecuting the local nutter to bring out the best in people. Did I say best? I meant worst.

And the one of the worst things about this is that the real killer has spent nine years feeling comfortable that they've got away with it. Which they have.
 
Nothing like persecuting the local nutter to bring out the best in people. Did I say best? I meant worst.
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my point was that as far as we know, these days he isn't even the local nutter and hasn't been for a long time, but he's been played up to be by the media.

we're told of all these crazy things he's done, but none of them seem to postdate 1981, when he'd have been 21.
 
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