Witnesses sightings
The gunman who murdered Jill Dando lay in wait near her home for an hour before he struck, police believe. There were seven sightings of the prime suspect – a smartly dressed man carrying a mobile phone – before and after Jill was shot on her doorstep at close range. Last night police issued an urgent appeal for more witnesses to come forward.
Det Chief Insp Hamish Campbell, who is leading the hunt, wants additional information to piece together events in the fateful one hour in Fulham from 10.30-11.30 on Monday morning. He said of the hitman suspect: “Somebody must know that man and that description.” The police chief also asked for help from anyone who might have been involved in supplying the Browning-type gun. Mr Campbell believes Jill was killed with a silenced 9mm semi- automatic pistol. The bullet was probably a “hollow point”, favoured by assassins because a single shot usually guarantees a fatal wound. One spent cartridge was found in Jill’s front garden.
WITNESS No.1 who may have spotted the smart man-suspect was a window cleaner. He saw a white male, wearing a dark suit, with neatly cut brown hair, aged 35 to 40 and carrying a mobile, near Jill’s house in Gowan Avenue at about 10.30. The window cleaner assumed from the man’s behaviour that he was an estate agent waiting to meet a client.
WITNESS No.2, at the corner of Gowan Avenue and Munster Road at 11.30, saw a smartly dressed man of the same age and build loitering near a disused building. He was wearing heavy, dark-rimmed glasses that appeared to be too big for him. This may have been an attempt at disguise. He was carrying a mobile phone.
WITNESSES No. 3 and 4 – Jill’s next door neighbour Richard Hughes and another woman who lives nearby – saw the suspect seconds after the shooting, at 11.35. Both had rushed to tend the star as she lay by her own front door with massive head injuries.
They saw a smartly dressed man, about 5ft 11ins, mobile in hand, jogging along Gowan Avenue towards Fulham Palace Road.
About 20 minutes later near Putney Bridge, WITNESSES No.5 and 6 – a school caretaker and a mother walking her toddler – saw the “smart man”. He was clambering over railings by the Thames. This may have been the gunman dumping the weapon. The tide was high at the time. Yesterday (2015) police divers spent hours checking the murky river bed, but found nothing.
WITNESS No.7, who was waiting for a bus, provided the final clue to Monday’s horror. A few minutes after the Thames-side sighting, he saw a man emerge from Bishop’s Park, which stretches down to the water, and run along Fulham Palace Road.
The man, in a smart suit and cream shirt, was covered in sweat. He waited at the bus stop and stood close enough to the witness for him to notice a mark on the bridge of his nose, as if he had just been wearing glasses.
Det Chief Insp Campbell said: “We need to speak to anyone who saw a man matching this description anywhere in that area at that time. “If this is, in fact, the sighting of fix or six different men, we need to find them all to eliminate them from our investigation.” He said the key elements to the description were: white, late 30s or early 40s, about 5ft 11ins, well-groomed and wearing a suit or smart jacket and trousers.
Mr Campbell, appealing for information, added: “The man was seen up to an hour before the shooting. What was he doing before then? Was he visiting a shop, was he buying cigarettes? Where did he go after the shooting? Did he return home in an agitated state? Was he missing from work for a short period yesterday? Somebody must know.” On the gun, the police chief said: “Somebody must know if they recently provided such a weapon to somebody through the illegal network. I know that somebody out there has that information and they must contact us.”
The type of gun – likely to have been a Browning or a Tanfoglio – was banned following the Dunblane massacre, but hundreds are believed still to be in circulation.
Staff at a Ryman stationers in Hammersmith were among the last to see Jill alive. She was in the shop between 10.30 and 10.45 on Monday and bought 500 sheets of A4 paper.”