A witness who believes she saw Jill Dando's killer running from the scene has broken her silence, welcoming a new police review of CCTV evidence but questioning why it took over two decades to happen.
'I saw him run': A witness's account
The woman, now a carer in her forties, is convinced she locked eyes with Serbian hitman Milorad Ulemek near the Fulham home where the beloved Crimewatch presenter was shot dead on 26 April 1999. She reported the sighting to police the day after the murder, describing a man in a suit, shirt, and tie who had a startled look on his face.
She told investigators she would recognise him again, stating emphatically, "I'm not good with names but I'm really good with faces." A month later, her conviction was strengthened when she picked out the same individual from CCTV footage taken from Putney Bridge tube station.
The crucial CCTV evidence
The CCTV was captured at around midday on the day of the murder, approximately half an hour after Dando was killed. The station is about a mile from Jill's home in Fulham and is close to the Putney Bridge bus stop, where a man fitting an e-fit description, known as the "sweating man," was last seen. Despite its potential significance, the Met Police never released this CCTV image to the public.
The witness was driving north on Fulham Palace Road when she saw the man. "He was really motoring, nobody would have caught him," she recalled. "He looked straight at me. He seemed startled." She described him as slim, in his 30s, about 5ft 11in tall, with dark brown hair around two inches long and a parting on the left.
When shown the tube station footage on 24 May 1999, she observed the man behaving strangely. "The guy looked like he had a travel card or something, put it in, walked through the barrier, walked about three steps maybe, stopped dead, looked straight up at the CCTV camera and walked straight back out of the tube station," she said. She found this behaviour highly unusual and memorable.
Long-awaited police review and witness frustration
Reacting to the news that the Met is now examining the CCTV findings, the witness expressed mixed feelings. "It is good that they are but they should have done it in the first place," she stated. "They've had it the entire time. I'm positive the man I saw in the CCTV was the man I saw running, they were definitely one and the same person."
Her account was corroborated by other key figures at the time. She was one of four witnesses who reported seeing a man in a suit running down Fulham Palace Road towards the tube station. Furthermore, Jill's neighbour Richard Hughes, who saw the gunman, said the individual looked like the e-fit produced from this witness's description. Geoffrey Upfillbrown, who lived across the road and also saw the killer, agreed it looked similar.
The suspect in the CCTV, referred to as "Man X," bears a strong resemblance to Milorad Ulemek, who was 31 at the time and of a similar height and build. Ulemek remains a wanted man in connection with the case.
