More than two decades after one of the largest homicide investigations in the history of the UK was launched, a new Netflix documentary is revisiting the decades-long unsolved murder case of beloved journalist and TV presenter Jill Dando. On the morning of April 26, 1999, the 37-year-old broadcasting star, the newscaster and host of the BBC’s Crimewatch, was killed by a single bullet on her London doorstep, a crime that is revisited in Who Killed Jill Dando?
Currently streaming on the platform and directed by four-time BAFTA nominee Marcus Plowright (Muslim Drag Queens, Fred and Rose West: Reopened) and executive produced by Emma Cooper (The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes), Who Killed Jill Dando? revisits the still-unsolved case with fresh eyes, revisiting Dando’s steps before that morning and looking back at her rise in television. Per the official synopsis, “British broadcasting legend, Jill Dando, was killed by a single bullet on her doorstep in 1999 in broad daylight. Despite one of the biggest homicide investigations in British history, the murder remains unsolved. This three-part series takes viewers through the twists and the turns of a true crime mystery as her family, friends, journalists, investigators and lawyers wrestle with the question: Who Killed Jill Dando?”
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Following Dando’s murder, London’s homicide squad is said to have interviewed more than 2,500 people, taken more than 1,000 statements, and traced more than 1,200 cars, per Elle. Police looked into everyone from Dando’s partners, friends, and acquaintances to the man who ran and waited at a bus stop, and there was even speculation that her role as the presenter of Crimewatch made her a revenge target, according to the Independent. While Barry George, a local man, was initially convicted of her murder before he was acquitted at a second trial in 2008 and the Serbian “warlord” Arkan, who died in 2000, was named as a suspect in the case in 2012, Dando’s death remains unsolved. In 2014, one of Dando’s former colleagues revealed that Dando was allegedly trying to expose a pedophile ring prior to her death, nobody has been charged in connection to Dando’s killing.
Along with archival footage, Who Killed Jill Dando? also features present-day interviews with key figures in the case, including George, English journalist and TV presenter Jane Moore, Dando’s brother, Nigel Dando, who was also a journalist.Nigel toldThe Times earlier that he hoped the show would lead to new information about the murder of his sister.
Who Killed Jill Dando? is now streaming on Netflix. The series holds a 78% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, with inews writing that the series “is a proper piece of journalism that sheds light on the case, even if it can provide no definitive answer.” Critic Rory Cashin wrote that Who Killed Jill Dando? “is Netflix at its most interesting and frustrating.”
