Jill Dando: Her Life and Death by
Brian Cathcart
pbk out October 02
(Penguin)
at £7.99
`Between the car and the door the whole complex of talents,
experiences, habits and emotions that made up the person called Jill
Dando had ceased to be.' With these words, writer Brian Cathcart
poignantly sums up life's arbitrariness. One moment Jill Dando was
walking towards her door, carrying the ingredients for her evening meal.
The next moment, a man put a gun to her head and fired.
We know that the killer was a man because neighbours saw him
fleeing the scene. The police had little more to go on and spent the
next year checking out her acquaintances and exploring the possibility
of a professional hitman. Finally, their interest centred on Barry
George, who lived nearby.
With his hairlip, epilepsy and unemployed status, Barry
George knew that he had his work cut out to attract women. His low IQ of
76 didn't help. As such, he reinvented himself to females he was
attracted to, telling them that he was a professional stunt man or a
military officer or Freddy Mercury's cousin. Sadly, he went further,
groping women he liked. He was twice accused of such incidents and in
1983 went to prison for attempted rape.
Barry George realised, albeit belatedly, that he couldn't just
touch women he liked, so from 1985 onwards he had no further criminal
convictions. That said, he was still a nuisance to women, trying to
strike up conversations with them inside shops and outside. He was clearly
very lonely and would walk about his native London for hours each day.
He also invented so many medical problems that most local doctors
refused to have him on their books.
But he didn't fit the profile of Jill Dando's murderer. The
hit had been fast and assured, whereas Barry George's medical condition
makes him physically awkward. He'd only owned replica guns and simply
wouldn't have been bright enough or dextrous enough to turn a non
functioning gun into a functional one.
The media tried to suggest that he was obsessed with Dando, but
of the hundreds of newspapers and magazines in his cluttered flat, only
eight of them even referred to her. Brian Cathcart duly acknowledges
`the weakness of the case' against a clearly inadequate man.
This is an immaculately researched and very readable account of
an unfathomable crime. The least interesting part, for this crime
writer, was the pages devoted to Jill Dando's childhood and career path.
But in fairness, the book is subtitled Her Life And Death and Dando fans
will be interested in her rise to fame.
Subsequent to this book being published, Barry George has
been visited in prison by Don Hale. He was the journalist who fought
tirelessly for the freedom of Stephen Downing, a man with a low IQ who
spent twenty six years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Stephen
has recently been released.
Asked by this reviewer to comment on Barry George's case,
Don said `I think he is innocent, another miscarriage victim and someone
completely incapable of plotting, planning or carrying out such a
professional killing.'
You read it here first.
