BBC television presenter and journalist Jill Dando was shot and killed, aged 37, on the doorstep of her home on Gowan Avenue in Fulham, southwest London, on 26 April 1999.
As she returned home and approached her front door at about 11:32 am, Dando was pushed to the ground by an assailant who pressed a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol against her head and shot her once above the left ear. A neighbour discovered her body about fourteen minutes later and she was taken by ambulance to London’s Charing Cross Hospital but declared dead on arrival.
Jill Dando was a high-profile television personality at the time, and co-presented the BBC’s crime appeal programme, Crimewatch, but a Metropolitan Police investigation found no apparent motive for her killing. A local man, Barry George, served eight years in prison for the murder, but was later acquitted after an appeal and retrial. The case was never solved.
