Original subtitles

More of that in a moment, but here's Jill with something else.

Struggling away, hello.

Uh...

[Jill Dando] Television in some way had always fascinated me from the year dot.

I was about eight years old and I'd have my four library tickets

and go to the library and get books about television.

[female reporter] Good morning.

You're watching the BBC's Breakfast News at 6:30.

It took me I suppose, um, until I was about 25 to get inside.

[woman 1] Jill Dando.

[man 1] Jill was the most famous TV presenter on British television.

[woman 2] The golden girl of British television,

murdered on her doorstep in broad daylight.

That just does not happen.

[woman 3] I think anyone who has got a little bit of fame

knows that there are two sides to it.

You get a lot of unwanted attention.

Strange people. Obsessive.

You kind of look over your shoulder a bit.

People all over are joining again

to solve some of Britain's most difficult and serious crimes.

[woman 2] Crimewatch had a fantastic reputation

for putting information out there

and getting people to ring in with critical pieces of evidence.

If you harbor any suspicions, do call. So many clues and so much anguish.

Do you ever get worried about the things you see on Crimewatch?

Oh. Yes, you do. But the crimes that we show are so rare.

It's not something that you walk into the street

and think, "The same thing's going to happen to me."

[woman 3] There was reason to be scared.

[man 2] It takes a certain sort of person,

a brutal sadistic psychopath, to shoot a gun into a head.

This was one of the largest murder investigations

the Metropolitan Police ever had to face.

[man 1] It's been 22 years and it's unsolved.

Whoever did it is still out there.

[theme music playing]

One of Britain's most popular television presenters has been murdered

in what could be a professional hit.

The tributes here on the flowers echo the overriding reaction of shock...

[man 1] Even the Queen has been moved to comment, saying she is shocked...

[man 2] Police say there are many possible motives for the murder.

[man 3] ...responsible for solving so many crimes

may have created enemies in the process.

[woman 1] The Crimewatch presenter may have been assassinated in retaliation

for the NATO bombing of the Belgrade.

[man 4] Detectives confirm that Jill Dando

had claimed of being followed by a stalker.

[woman 2] A man who has gone on trial in London

had an obsession with celebrities and was fascinated with firearms.

[man 5] Detectives say they're not ruling out any line of inquiry.

Some believe the killer may have got away with murder.

[somber music playing]

[phone ringing]

[man] Ambulance service, hello?

[woman] Hello, ambulance? I'm walking along Gowan Avenue.

It looks like, um, there's somebody collapsed.

And, confidentially, it looks like it's Jill Dando.

And she's collapsed on her doorstep. There's a lot of blood.

[man] Can you approach and check that she's breathing?

-[woman] Doesn't look like she is. -[man] Right.

[woman] Blood's coming from her nose, her arms are blue.

[man] I need to find out if she needs... if she's breathing.

Is the lady's chest going up and down?

[woman] Oh, my God. No. I don't think she's alive.

-[man] Okay. -I'm sorry.

[man] Don't worry. I'll get help for you.

[woman] Please.

[man] I was on call for the central London murder group.

[phone ringing]

We had been busy, we were under-resourced.

And I was told by my detective sergeant

that there had been a stabbing down in Fulham.

[siren wailing]

Fulham was a well-to-do, wealthy area.

So it was unusual for that reason.

Very unusual.

I was driving down there

and I got a phone call from my chief superintendent.

[cell phone ringing]

And he said to me, "That case, that's going to be Jill Dando."

In most homicide cases,

the detectives would not have known their victim at all,

but in this case, almost everybody knew of Jill Dando.

[ambulance siren wailing]

There was an ambulance coming up the Fulham Road as we were going down,

and I realized that was her being taken away from the scene.

[woman] It was a lovely spring day...

and I was reading the bulletins, the news summaries.

The next scheduled bulletin is at 2:40.

I had put on a rather nice blue suit.

Well, one actually that came from the designers

that Jill and I used to go to together.

[indistinct chatter]

And everything was fine in the newsroom, which is a buzzy, noisy, vibrant place.

[man] ...page 45. Tell me what promos you're running?

And then the news came in that a woman had been killed.

And these rumors started going around the newsroom that it was Jill.

And it went terribly quiet.

-[siren wailing] -[gripping music playing]

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[Hamish Campbell] When I arrived, I was briefed by the uniformed officers.

And they told me that no one had seen what had actually happened to Jill.

But they had already identified two witnesses

who had seen a man leaving the scene.

And they described this white man, dark hair, thick-set,

wearing a coat, a dark coat, wasn't masked, wasn't wearing gloves.

So the real focus right there was how the person

who had been seen running away was to be caught.

Uniformed officers were told to spread out and search the area.

We were waiting for information from the hospital

because there was no confirmation that Jill had died.

That changed very quickly when I stood on the pavement

and just looked from the gate,

up to the front door of Jill's house.

And I could see the bullet and casing on the doorstep.

Jill Dando had been shot in the head.

It was immediately sort of unfathomable.

The concept of any woman being shot in the head in London,

yet alone a celebrity, was rare in the extreme.

[indistinct chatter]

The media are already up at the top cordon.

I knew then that the media interest was going to be extraordinary.

[ambulance siren wailing]

[male doctor] Jill Dando arrived here by ambulance at 12:30 p.m.

Despite all efforts by ambulance paramedics and hospital medical staff,

she was certified dead at 1:03 p.m.

The newsroom was cold with... with shock.

Real shock.

We're people who are used to reporting

on all sorts of deaths, disasters, wars.

But to have one of your own...

[laughing] I'm sorry. It's just I was...

[Jennie] One of your very, very own,

killed in that manner on her own doorstep was just too awful to believe.

[somber music playing]

And I... I had to read it.

[man] Jill was 37.

[Jennie] I remember a boss saying to me, "Are you going to be okay doing this?"

And I said, yeah, I'll be okay.

[man] Jill was 37.

Pete, I'm telling you she was 37.

All right.

[man] I told her, she was 37.

She was exactly two years younger than me. She was 37.

What shall I say?

[man] I'm telling you, she was definitely 37. Definitely.

Here we go.

Within the past few minutes, police have confirmed

that the BBC television presenter Jill Dando has been stabbed to death

outside her west London home.

She died in the ambulance on her way to hospital.

There are no more details at the moment.

The next scheduled bulletin is at 2:40.

[intriguing music playing]

I was working in the, uh, Bristol office

of the Bristol Evening Post.

And our newsroom had a bank of TV screens.

Our BBC colleague Jill Dando has died

after being attacked outside her London home.

[Nigel] Reports were coming out that she had died.

I clicked into sort of automatic mode.

I thought I need to protect my dad from this.

I rushed down to Weston-super-Mare.

He was obviously devastated.

I was wondering how we were going to cope with all this.

About half an hour after I had got down to Weston,

the TV reporter from BBC Points West knocked on the door. I knew him.

And I sort of slipped back into journalistic mode.

I gave him an interview.

[man] When did you last see her? Was it...

I saw her on, um... Easter Sunday.

It would've been about two, three weeks ago.

Yeah, she was on good form. Um, looking forward to her wedding.

It was a sense of emptiness and a sense of despair.

And I had to explain to my dad what had happened,

what was going to happen.

That we were kind of going to be in the eye of a storm.

[helicopter hovering]

[tense music playing]

[male reporter] The police search is well underway now, Alan.

There are a minimum of 30 detectives.

You can see behind me the operation in front of Jill's home.

[Hamish] All the resources came.

The ballistics experts, the blood experts, the scene photographers.

The scene itself had been heavily contaminated.

Because there had been attempts to resuscitate.

But everything was picked up, relevant or not, scrapings, gravel.

Fingerprint marks from the gate.

Fibers.

We had a bullet and a cartridge casing on the doorstep.

The ballistics expert told me it was a single shot

to the left side of her head.

Some thought like a professional execution.

And that bullet and casing on the doorstep were from a 9mm caliber weapon.

The search teams arrived.

The whole of Gowan Avenue was searched.

Bins, gardens, flowerbeds, shrubs.

Looking to see if the gun had been discarded or anything had been discarded.

We identified some of the key witnesses.

The postman, a sort of Mediterranean-looking man,

just after ten o'clock on the opposite side of the road to Jill's house,

and a witness claimed he saw a man running across the road

and he stopped at the bus stop.

And he was sweating.

[suspenseful music playing]

There was a traffic warden,

and she was about to give a ticket to the driver of a blue Range Rover,

and as she was starting to write the ticket out,

he brushed her off and he drove away.

So, I didn't know at the time

whether there was one person involved or two or three.

Everybody in that street on that day had to be eliminated out

as much as possible.

[vehicles honking]

[birds squawking]

[gripping music playing]

The next day's newspapers were absolutely rammed with stories about the murder.

It was the only story in town.

On a sad morning, we'll be talking about poor Jill Dando.

The shocking loss of one of Britain's best-known personalities

drew many tributes.

In London, police are investigating a murder

that has shocked the television-viewing public.

[reporter 1] Jill Dando was, in the opinion of many in Britain,

second only to Princess Diana

in terms of public affection.

Jill Dando was someone who was known to, virtually, everybody in this country.

[reporter 2] Even the Queen has been moved to comment,

saying she is shocked and saddened.

[woman] Following the death of Princess Diana,

I would say that Jill Dando's murder

was the biggest story that we will ever report on.

[indistinct chatter]

Female journalists of my generation were shaken by it

because we saw ourselves in Jill.

Jill had been a journalist. She loved the press.

She was good to us, she respected us, she knew we were doing a job

and we wanted as much as the police

to find out who did it because she was one of us.

[gripping music playing]

I was the crime correspondent at the Daily Mirror.

I can remember discussing it with... with my news editor.

And him saying to me, "So, what do you think about this?"

He said, it must be something with Crimewatch.

Well, not necessarily, hold your horses.

One of the pieces of information coming in from one of our reporters on the ground

was that they'd found a neighbor to Jill's house in Gowan Avenue

who'd heard a scream.

-[reporter] Did you hear a man's voice? -No man's voice at all.

-Did you hear a shot or did you... -There was no shots.

From what I'd say was a shot, I didn't think there was a shot, no.

[reporter] From your assessment, what did you hear?

I did hear... a scream.

I had a private conversation

with one of the members of the murder squad.

He said we cannot find any witnesses, any neighbors,

anybody who was in the area at the time who actually heard a gunshot.

We don't have the gun. We don't have anybody who saw the gun.

But this weapon could have had a silencer on it.

Unlike in the movies,

a silencer on a gun is a very rare piece of equipment in real life.

So, automatically, that suggestion steered us in the direction

that maybe this was a professional job.

Somebody asked the question, is this an assassination?

Is this an execution?

Like a political murder or an organized crime murder?

So all the theories about, you know, the who, the what, the why,

were starting to stack up.

[male reporter] Jill Dando was left dying on the doorstep of her home.

Revenge, perhaps, for her role as a crime reporter who helps jail top criminals.

Everyone had a view on how Jill Dando was murdered and who was responsible.

[intriguing music playing]

Back to the office, I held a meeting with the team.

I said, there's a danger of us being swept up with the media hype.

And reminded them that, with any murder investigation,

the victim was a key element to try to solve the case.

So we needed to look at Jill's life.

Who is Jill

and who were the persons closest to her and nearer to her?

I don't, I'm afraid.

I'm one of these people who what you see is what you get.

I don't think I've got any skeletons in the cupboard.

[audience laughing]

[children chattering]

[Nigel] I was nine years old when Jill was born in 1961.

Quite often on a Sunday as a family,

we'd go down for a picnic on the beach.

Do you remember those sand-blown lettuce sandwiches?

[laughs]

They were part of the staple diet

of summers growing up in Weston-super-Mare.

[nostalgic music playing]

There wasn't much money around.

We didn't have exotic holidays like that.

I wonder whether she actually had a passport

before she was offered the job as, uh, presenting the Holiday program.

[imperceptible]

It was almost preordained that she was going to become a journalist.

Well, she was interested in words and, um, she was more outgoing than I was.

I'd whisper in her ear occasionally saying, "Why are you still in Weston?"

"Why don't you look for jobs around the place?"

Thirty years ago, a computer capable of similar calculations

wouldn't have fitted into a building this size.

It would have been full of...

[Nigel] She got a job as a journalist on BBC Spotlight, based in Plymouth.

And then became a presenter.

They do mention the ethics committee refusing this idea.

They've said no more sisters are going to be donors.

[Nigel] She was so polished and so professional.

...Fisherman depend is in deep financial trouble.

[Nigel] But at the same time retaining a natural warmth about her.

[laughing]

Sort of a twinkle in her eye.

Her performances on Spotlight

caught the attention of the producers at BBC Breakfast.

[man] ...television made, is going up the line to Breakfast Time.

[Nigel] The world by then was her oyster.

-I must just... -How many times have I done this now?

Thank you very much. Oh, God. [laughs]

-We wish you well, my darling. -Thank you.

You better say goodnight for the last time.

Good night from here and good morning from London on Monday.

[producer] Page 45. Now, would you tell me what promos you're running?

Give me that. Just hold on a second.

No, Bob, I've got to know now.

Run the first one. I'll confirm in a couple of seconds.

I'm Bob Wheaton.

At that time, I was, uh, running the six o'clock news.

I can remember.

There I was sitting at the desk.

I'm ready to get the six o'clock news of the day prepared.

And there on, um, BBC Breakfast Time...

-Dementia has found more evidence... -...was Jill.

...possible link with aluminum levels...

[Bob] Hadn't seen her before.

[Jill] The study, published in...

She had a good face for television.

While Frank Bruno's been preparing for his fight...

[Bob] Her voice, beautiful, a classless English voice.

...tussling with a television crew in Canada.

She was a total natural.

Winds of up to 100 miles an hour...

[Bob] She shone and I knew she was gonna go places.

But I think how you look does matter.

And she'd arrived from provinces looking like a regional girl.

I'd looked at her and said to her, "You need to sort the way your hair is,

you need to wear the right clothes." She'd put on a lot of weight.

And, you know, she was advised that she needed to look right.

At the time she had curly, permed hair.

Um, brown.

And she wanted a different look.

I think I suggested that we cut this short and, uh, see where we go with it.

And she said, "I'm going to be on television. Should I ask my producer?"

And I went, "No, probably not a good idea."

[indistinct chatter]

[device beeping]

The government's £3.25 billion package to keep down the poll tax

has been welcomed by Conservative backbenchers.

[Martyn] It became quite a signature look.

And in many ways I think people saw Jill as a TV Diana.

[indistinct chatter]

At that time, Diana would come down

and we would probably do the occasional blow-dry.

[male interviewer] Who had the haircut first?

Jill.

[Bob] Her hair was right. She had lost a lot of weight.

Her diction was perfect. She had a charm about the way she presented the news.

Well, a fine weekend in prospects.

And people regarded her as a girl next door

who was giving them, uh, the authority of BBC News and it was a good package.

I suppose in celebrating the success, we got closer.

And, uh, eventually we became involved.

[Jennie] Jill got involved with Bob very early on,

so that was always quite... I don't want to say this on camera.

It was a difficult situation. She was... She was with the boss.

I think the top will probably be South Africa again.

Today, or rather today...

[Jon] I always thought it was a very strange relationship

because she was so freewheeling...

Just hanging fine...

And he was quite a control freak, but in a very quiet way.

There was no bad word said, it was like I, you know...

"Shh. Let me explain. This is what it is."

It was that kind of relationship.

...section which has got library film and graphics and so on.

Jill was at the top of her game.

She'd choose what she wanted to do.

[crowd cheering, applauding]

I was brought in as a young journalist, I think I was about 23.

[pensive music playing]

I really looked up to Jill.

Um, she was absolutely where I wanted to end up.

The headlines this morning...

[Anastasia] But it was really hard.

It was difficult not to feel a bit of an imposter.

[Jill] Could we have? I wouldn't mind some scripts.

[Anastasia] Sitting next to these alpha males,

sometimes she was made to feel inferior.

So often when he's talking to ladies who say

it's harder for us in broadcasting.

And I keep thinking, absolute nonsense, I mean, you know,

if you're a good-looking woman, then it is not difficult.

-It, well... -It is easier.

No. I think people expect more of women, that's the trouble, you know...

As Jill's, uh, career is advancing,

one of the problems that she had,

all the women had, was that it was a very male-dominated company.

To be absolutely honest, it was quite misogynistic.

All sorts of men will be regarded as controlling

because men are especially... Tough editors are tough sometimes.

But controlling in a way which is detrimental to the relationship

or to the person, not at all.

[intriguing music playing]

The reality is, most people are killed by someone they know.

The people in her inner circle were Alan Farthing, her fiancé.

Her previous partner for, who had been her partner for some years, seven years.

Mr. Wheaton.

And her business agent, Mr. Roseman.

They had to be seen and interviewed and eliminated primarily by alibi.

If you could show you were somewhere else on the 26th of April, in that time frame,

you can't be the murderer.

But it doesn't necessarily remove yourself from somehow arranging for her murder,

if that was the situation.

[indistinct chatter]

First of all I wanted to ask how you're coping at the moment.

I think I'm coping in the same way as

anybody else would cope under the circumstances.

I'm devastated.

Everybody around me is devastated.

-[indistinct clamoring] -Hi.

[indistinct conversation]

[Alan] I cannot understand why they would want to kill

-somebody as gentle... -This was my mother's...

...kind, well-meaning and

as perfect a person as Jill.

Yes.

The best daytime television program.

[Nigel] I'll always remember it.

We were in the back of a limousine following Jill's coffin.

There were just thousands of people who'd come out.

Weston just stopped.

[melancholy music playing]

I didn't know her personally, but I thought I'd like to be here.

[woman] Diana was our rose, but Jill was our sunflower.

I can't say any more.

[male reporter] A hundred or so people were invited to the church.

Many of her friends worked with her at the BBC.

The coffin arrived at the church at three o'clock.

It was accompanied by her brother, Nigel.

Her father, Jack.

And, of course, by the man she would have married this September,

her fiancé, Alan Farthing.

[Martyn] When Jill met Alan, it was quite a life-changing moment for her.

A moment that she'd thought about and had dreams of for quite a while.

She'd announced her engagement.

She should have been in a church getting married, you know,

and here she was in a church being buried.

[priest] Life was entering a new, exciting, fulfilling age.

Until that fateful moment,

Jill, the beautiful girl next door,

known to every family in the country, was shot dead.

And then everyone was asking the question, "Why?"

[Hamish] Some of my key thinking about it was,

if someone deliberately set out to kill her,

why would they choose to kill her? What was to be gained from that?

What benefit would anybody accrue from killing Jill Dando?

And then Alan Farthing mentioned that a large sum of money,

over £30,000, £35,000,

was given by Jill to Mr. Wheaton.

[intriguing music playing]

So, that had to be investigated as to why that sum of money had been given over.

[Bob] After the funeral, the police came to see me.

And one of the policemen goes, "Well, we've had this report

that you owed her quite a lot of money,

um, and you still owed it to her when she died."

"Uh, would you like to explain that?"

I said, "Yeah. Yeah. I'm quite happy to do that."

[intriguing music playing]

And you sort of feel, gosh, you know, the light is on me here.

They wanted to know about how we met,

um, how long we'd been together, uh, how did we break up.

And yes, she had contributed towards me buying my house by the river.

I said, I had a mortgage, um, but there was a small shortfall.

I could've had a bigger mortgage, but she wanted to share

because we were then sharing the house together.

And by the way, I do not need that much money that badly.

I can show you the evidence of why, and I took him to my computer,

went into my bank account and showed him, um, that I had quite a lot of money.

She was generous to everybody, including me.

We loved each other.

I wouldn't have ever thought of doing something like that.

To have lost somebody with whom, uh, I had spent valuable, interesting,

important and enjoyable years was a massive blow.

[pensive music playing]

[Hamish] Well, the things that are innocuous can appear suspicious.

I think it was just a gift from Jill to Mr. Wheaton.

You know, you talk about things in detail

but when following death, things can emerge,

but they're almost tittle-tattle, gossip, salacious or otherwise.

But it doesn't move you into the realm of responsibility for killing someone.

We concluded that he was...

he had nothing to do with the murder at all.

And we needed to sift out all that noise

and try to really focus on basic principles

before getting carried away further and further down different avenues.

Jill didn't live at 29 Gowan Avenue.

She lived with her fiancé, further out in West London.

We knew she visited Gowan Avenue rarely and stayed overnight even more rarely.

So to know that Jill would turn up at 29 Gowan Avenue

on Monday morning by 11:30,

you would have to have been following her.

-[suspenseful music playing] -[device beeping]

[detective inspector] I was the deputy on the inquiry.

It was a painstaking process.

Two officers going through

the many hundreds of hours of CCTV.

There were thousands of people to eliminate from the inquiry.

Nothing would be discounted until each had been evaluated

to a degree by one of the team.

There was over 190 CCTV and cameras in the surrounding streets.

Four hundred and thirty hours of viewing time.

And from that we established Jill's movements on the 26th of April.

Started from Alan Farthing's home.

[suspenseful music playing]

She stopped at a petrol station.

Filled the car with petrol.

And then she left the petrol station and she went into Hammersmith town center.

Went to at least two shops, maybe three, to buy some fax paper or copying paper.

She returned to her car.

Then she left Hammersmith and travelled south down to Fulham Road.

Then she got down to near Gowan Avenue,

parked right outside her house.

And then she walked up the gateway.

And killed at the doorstep.

[Ian] It was simply a matter of just plodding through everything.

And we can categorically say, 100%, that she wasn't followed.

So, how did the killer know

that she was going to be at Gowan Avenue that morning?

And then the thinking

is that Jill told somebody where she was.

So we did look at the phone calls to her on that day.

Who knew she was going to be where she was?

There was one person alone.

Mr. Roseman.

Jon Roseman was Jill's very colorful agent.

Um, I had lots of dealings with Jon over the years.

He was very, uh, shall I say, robust to deal with.

He was very straight-talking. Uh, you knew when you'd upset him.

There's a very famous story about him

going around somewhere with a baseball bat to, uh... to show his feelings.

[gripping music playing]

[Jon] The police, they came to visit me on a Saturday morning.

And they asked me about this timeline.

Because the only reason she went there that day was to pick up some faxes

that had been sent to her from my office about some work.

She was on her way to a lunch, I think it was.

And so she just, like, literally stopped off

back to her house to pick up faxes.

[keys jingling]

One of the things that they were interested in was my book.

I had always wanted to be a writer.

And so I had written a book.

They always say, write about what you know,

so I wrote about an agent.

An agent whose clients were murdered under mysterious circumstances.

A client who'd been shot.

[Hamish] Mr. Roseman had written a book

which involved the death of a presenter or personality.

So that seemed ironic that he's writing a novel

which actually then occurred in real life.

[Jon] The police, there were two of them, sitting in my office,

and we talked it through

and they asked me if I had a manuscript of the book, which I did.

And they also said, "What was the time difference

between the first murder in the book and the second murder in the book?"

And I'm thinking, like I was in the Twilight Zone.

I thought, he's not taking this seriously,

like somebody's had my manuscript and is following the plan of the book?

[male interviewer] Did you think whether others might be suspecting you?

[laughs]

Well, I'd have to have paid someone to do it, that's for sure.

But I had this reputation,

and yes, I was really tough, but it was just an act.

And anybody who suspected that I would cut off

a financial revenue like Jill Dando's would have to be insane.

[chuckles]

[director] Action.

Well, that's all for this...

Hang on, I can't see the lens.

[man] When you turn, bring your body around.

Oh, okay, right. I'm going...

[Jon] I mean, it sounds terrible, but had we not sent her any faxes...

That's all from Mauritius.

Next week I'll be on the Greek island of Skiathos.

I'm not going to say...

Had she not gone back to the house that day, it wouldn't have happened.

Who knows how, where else it would have happened,

but that was the reason she went back to the house.

I do find this kind of stuff really difficult to talk about.

Oh! It's just so glamorous. It's wonderful. Let me at it.

Everything was going so well for her.

I came here unescorted, but I'm told that a prince is waiting in the wings.

[Jon] I mean, nobody has a life like that, right?

We would love to have a life like that, right?

But Jill had a life like that.

It's not! It's not. It's not.

[both laugh]

Listen, I'm... Jill, I'm so sorry about this.

I... I find her death still difficult to come to terms with.

-Do you mind if I whirl her away? -Oh, you may whirl. I can't believe it.

[clicks tongue]

There you go.

None of that inner group of people was responsible for Jill Dando's murder.

And we still didn't have an understanding of the reason why Jill had been killed.

We had to properly focus down.

[suspenseful music playing]

Who was the man who had been seen running away?

Who was driving the blue Range Rover?

And who was the sweating man?

[Jeff] I knew by then from talking to my contacts,

that the murder of Jill Dando caused, you know, huge consternation

within the hierarchy at Scotland Yard as well

because Jill Dando was perceived as part of the policing family.

But they were bedeviled by the fact that they didn't have a suspect.

They didn't have a murder weapon.

[Hamish] Morning.

Are you any closer to knowing either a suspect or a motive for this killing?

We don't know the person who killed Jill Dando at this time

and we're trying to establish a motive as to why she was killed.

And our main inquiry focuses on determining the motive.

Once we establish the motive, we will be able to move forward more rapidly

as to who the suspect or suspects are.

[indistinct chatter]

The red-top news business won't tolerate a vacuum, right?

They want information. They've got pages to fill.

I could see the clouds gathering on the horizon

and I knew, unless they solved this crime really quickly,

it was only a short matter of time

before we started to become deluged with all sorts of theories.

[gripping music playing]

[reporter] In the absence of any obvious motive for the attack,

speculation, and it is only that, focuses on a possible stalker.

Jill Dando had had problems with obsessive fans in the past,

as one close colleague recalls.

I don't think she was in any sense, in fear of, certainly not in mortal fear

of anything happening to her. She was irritated from time to time.

Uh, there had been somebody stalking her.

Um, I mean, to be honest, that's really, it goes with the turf.

Anyone who is in the public eye, and Jill was in the public eye

more than almost anybody, um, does have certain threats.

We used to get all the mail coming to our office.

Some mail might be a little bit eh-eh,

so you had to be careful and just take some of these letters away.

But they weren't threatening, they were just, well, you know.

There's a lot of perverts out there.

But then we received a letter from somebody claiming to be a Serb.

It was in relation to the appeal

that Jill had given earlier that month for Kosovo.

This weekend we've all become aware

of the humanitarian crisis facing the Balkans,

as thousands of people from Kosovo...

[Jon] The letter seemed to be somewhat threatening.

Whatever you can afford can make a big difference to these people's lives

and their chances of survival.

[Jeff] The Balkan War had been going on in the former Yugoslavia,

you know, which had split into various states,

you know, Serbia and Kosovo and so forth.

It was a very horrible war.

So, when it started to emerge that her agent had a threatening letter...

Then the BBC started to get threats by telephone.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

[male reporter 1] The murder of one of the country's best-known TV personalities

has taken a frightening turn.

[male reporter 2] The TV center where Jill Dando worked received a phone call.

It was from a man claiming to be Serbian,

saying he was behind the star's death.

[theme music playing]