Dando case review fails to identify new murder suspect

POLICE carrying out a review of the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando have not identified any new suspects seven months after Barry George was cleared of her killing.

Detectives have reviewed a list of former suspects and trawled through new information from members of the public who have given names to police.

However, no one has emerged as a plausible suspect for the murder of Miss Dando, who was shot on her doorstep in Fulham in 1999.

In particular, police can find no evidence to support the theory that the 37-year-old BBC presenter was shot by a Serbian hitman in revenge for the Nato bombing of Belgrade.

They reinvestigated the possibility after a claim that a West Midlands man of Serbian descent boasted of the killing in a Belgrade bar.

Detectives also looked at a number of crime bosses who may have sought to murder Miss Dando in revenge for her work as a presenter on Crimewatch.

Exhaustive checks with criminal underworld informants failed to reveal a single piece of intelligence to suggest that a hitman was employed for the murder.

However, police are still using the latest state-of-the-art forensic techniques to search Miss Dando's clothes and other items for possible new evidence.

So far, the review of crime scene samples has not found any new evidence but the process is yet to be completed.

A report will go to Assistant Commissioner John Yates later this year but sources say they do not expect any surprises.

An insider said: "Everything has been re-examined to check if the Dando team missed anything. The answer emerging is 'No they didn't'."

Last August George was cleared in a retrial at the Old Bailey of shooting the BBC presenter on her doorstep.

He served seven years of a life sentence before firearms evidence against him was discredited.