Jill Dando: Detective says people confessed to her murder but cannot be prosecuted
JILL Dando’s killer will never be brought to justice despite people confessing to the murder, according to the detective who led the inquiry into her murder.
Hamish Campbell told a new BBC documentary he did not think any new suspects would ever be caught. Asked if he thought the TV presengers’s murder would ever be solved, Mr Campbell said: "Do I think somebody will come back to court? Probably not, no. Sometimes I felt we were a day away from solving it and other times, I thought 'no, we're a long way away'."
Do I think somebody will come back to court? Probably not
He continued: "Senior officers were asking 'what are the likelihoods of this case being resolved?'
"We had over 2,000 people named as potential suspects or 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 went on to say a number of people had personally confessed to the murder in interview.
But he said even if the confession was plausible the gun to carry out the crime would have needed to be produced so they could match it to the killing.
Mr Campbell said: “It’s just madness.”
The new documentary comes 20 years after the newsreader and Crimewatch presenter' was gunned down on her doorstep in Fulham, west London, and reveals the decision-making behind the scenes of the inquiry into Miss Dando's murder.
Mr Campbell’s team arrested Barry George on suspicion of murder in 2000, one year after Miss Dando was killed.
Mr George was convicted and imprisoned for eight years, then acquitted and released after a retrial.
The film highlights how a particle of gunshot residue in the pocket of a coat police found in Mr George's house became the key forensic evidence against him.
In his retrial, the jury accepted that one particle of gunshot residue was insufficient forensic evidence to place him at the scene of the murder.
The film will also show how BBC director general Tony Hall, then Head of News at the BBC, was targeted with threatening phone calls in the weeks after Jill Dando's murder.
He said: ”We had three calls, as I recall, to the BBC switchboards in London and Belfast.
"I listened to the voice of one of them, which said basically, I was next. I mean they were threatening me.
"I have no idea what that amounted to, Was it a real threat? Was it not a threat?
"You know there are often copycat things that happen after these sorts of events, and the police took it seriously, but I don't know."
The Murder of Jill Dando will air on BBC One at 9pm on Tuesday April 2.