Harrowing 999 call after Jill Dando’s friend finds her body

This is the harrowing 999 call made by Jill Dando's neighbour and friend after she discovered the TV presenter's blood-soaked body on the doorstep of her Fulham home.

In the frantic call to emergency services friend Helen Doble can be heard sobbing after coming across Jill's body moments after she was shot dead.

Struggling to stay calm, she says: "I'm walking along Gowan Avenue. It looks like there is somebody collapsed… Confidentially it looks like it's Jill Dando and she’s collapsed.

"There’s a lot of blood."

The operator asks her calmly: "Can you just approach and check that the lady's breathing for me."

Miss Doble replies: "She doesn't look as though she's breathing. She's got blood coming from her nose. Her arms are blue."

The operator tells her: "I just need to find out if she's breathing. Is the lady's chest going up and down?"

Sobbing and breaking down Miss Doble says: "Oh my God, no, I don’t think she’s alive. I’m sorry."


The call was featured as part of the BBC1 documentary The Murder of Jill Dando which aired this evening.

In the programme Helen retraces her steps on that tragic day.

TV favourite Jill was gunned down in the middle of the day on her doorstep, in a crime that shocked the nation, on April 26 1999.

Barry George, now 58, was found guilty of her murder in 2001.

He spent seven years in prison before his acquittal in 2008.

Speaking about the moment she found Jill's body, Miss Doble said at the time: "It was just incredible that with one step everything changes.

“I was going about my business, anticipating seeing Jill being at home. To suddenly encounter such a violent scene was completely horrific.

“It took me a few seconds to realise it was Jill because of the way she looked. It was clear to me she was dead.”

Theories

Serbian hitman: Fears Jill was killed in retaliation for her work covering the Kosovo war, and NATO bombing of Serb journalists.

Michael Mansfield QC, Barry George’s defence lawyer in his first trial, said last year: “We established it was likely to be Eastern European ammunition [that killed Jill]. I think it was an assassination.

“Slobodan Milosevic (Serb dictator) had been bombed. There were reported threats to the BBC about retaliation.”

Tony Hall, director of BBC News at the time, tells the documentary he had threats after Jill’s death. He says: “One basically said I was next.”

Crimewatch suspects: Some suggested a potential crook shown on the TV show Jill presented could have murdered her.

Organised crime hit: But ex-Met officer Hamish Campbell claims there was no evidence to back up any of these theories.

'She didn't have any enemies'

The devastated cousin of Jill Dando says she longed to grow old alongside the TV presenter.

Judith Dando said she “never saw a horrible side” to Jill, adding: “She wasn’t too good to be true, this is really who Jill was.”

Looking over a folder of press cuttings about Jill, tearful Judith said: “I think for my daughter’s sake I want us to have this, and we don’t know what we’ll do with it, but some day we might and in my old age, which I thought I’d spend with Jill, it would be nice to go through the stuff.”


Judith said she still cannot understand why her cousin was targeted.

“She didn’t have any enemies, it’s so ridiculous. “Why would they…why would they target Jill?

“What possible reason could anyone have for doing that, except, of course, the fact that she was in the public eye?”

Jill’s brother Nigel said: “I would like to see somebody charged and convicted, but I would just like to know why someone would want to kill her.

“I would like somebody, the person who did it, to be able to tell me, or to be able to tell a jury or a judge, why it happened.

“And that would be fine, that would put my mind at rest and that would be the closer for me. It’s unlikely but
I remain hopeful.”

The Murder of Jill Dando is available on BBC iPlayer

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