Police revisit old CCTV footage in Jill Dando murder case using new technology
Scotland Yard is using enhanced CCTV analysis technology to re-examine 27-year-old footage from Putney Bridge Underground station in the unsolved murder of BBC presenter Jill Dando. Police stress this is part of ongoing inquiries, not a new investigation.
The Metropolitan Police have said advances in technology are allowing investigators to take a fresh look at decades-old surveillance footage connected to the unsolved 1999 murder of BBC broadcaster Jill Dando.
Detectives have returned to 27-year-old CCTV recordings from Putney Bridge Underground station using new footage-enhancement techniques. Scotland Yard emphasised, however, that this review is part of the existing investigation rather than a newly opened case.
Dando, then 37, was shot dead outside her home in Fulham, west London, on 26 April 1999. Shortly after the attack, an unidentified man — referred to by investigators as "Man X" — was captured on camera near Putney Bridge station, roughly a mile from her home.
According to the Mirror, a driver had seen a man "running for his life" on Fulham Palace Road around the time of the shooting and later identified Man X in the station footage as that same person.
A Met Police spokesperson said the investigation has undergone numerous reviews over the 27 years since Dando's death, each aiming to determine whether developments in technology or forensics could help move the case forward. Recent improvements in CCTV enhancement, the spokesperson said, have given investigators the chance to re-examine the original Putney Bridge footage — but this should not be seen as a significant new lead or the start of a new investigation.
Beyond her work presenting Crimewatch, Dando appeared on several other BBC programmes during the 1980s and 1990s, including the travel show Holiday and The Antiques Inspectors. She began her career as a reporter at her local paper, The Weston Mercury in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, before joining Breakfast Time, the forerunner of BBC Breakfast.
In 2019, Hamish Campbell, the detective who led the original inquiry, said in a BBC documentary marking 20 years since the shooting that he doubted the case would ever reach court again, citing the more than 2,000 people who had been named as potential suspects or persons of interest and the sheer scale of work required to investigate each one.
