Technological advances are allowing police to review old CCTV footage in the unsolved murder of the BBC broadcaster Jill Dando, Scotland Yard has revealed.
Advances in CCTV enhancement technology have allowed detectives to return to 27-year-old footage of Putney Bridge Underground station, Scotland Yard said. But detectives stressed that the review was part of existing inquiries – not a new investigation.
The former Crimewatch presenter was 37 years old when she was shot and killed outside her home in Fulham, west London, on 26 April 1999. An unidentified person, referred to as “Man X”, was captured on camera near Putney Bridge station – about a mile from Dando’s home – shortly after the attack.
A driver had seen a man “running for his life” on Fulham Palace Road around the time of the shooting, the Mirror reported. She later picked out Man X in the station CCTV as the person who had been sprinting.
A Met spokesperson said: “In the 27 years since Jill Dando’s murder, the investigation has been subject to numerous reviews, aiming to identify whether matters could be progressed with advances in technology and forensics.
“Recent advancements in CCTV enhancement technology have provided investigators with the opportunity to re-examine original footage from Putney Bridge train station.
“The review of CCTV footage forms part of ongoing inquiries and should not be interpreted as a significant line of inquiry nor as a new investigation being opened on this matter.”
Outside her work on Crimewatch, Dando was also seen during the 1980s and 1990s on BBC shows including travel show Holiday and The Antiques Inspectors.
She began as a reporter at her local paper The Weston Mercury in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, before moving to the morning programme Breakfast Time, which later became BBC Breakfast.
In 2019, the detective who led the inquiry into Dando’s murder expressed doubt the case would ever be solved. Speaking in a BBC documentary to mark 20 years since the television presenter’s shooting, Hamish Campbell said he did not think any new suspects would ever be brought to court.
“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’. 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.”
