Jill Dando, the Crimewatch host who was shot dead on her doorstep 24 years ago, was the subject of an underworld “professional hit”, according to a former career criminal.
Noel “Razor” Smith, who plied his trade as an armed robber but has since turned to writing, speaks out in a three-part Netflix series about the shocking killing of the BBC presenter.
Smith spent time in HMP Belmarsh when Barry George, who was wrongly convicted of the 37-year-old’s murder in 2001, arrived after being charged. At a retrial in 2008 George was unanimously acquitted.
Smith, when asked who he thought had killed Jill, said: “I don’t really want to talk about that for my own safety. But there are rumours in the criminal world. It’s not who you would think and it’s not Barry George. It was a professional hit.”
Asked to explain why he thought Jill was shot, he said: “No. If I tell you why, you’d know who did it.”
George was initially jailed largely due to of a particle of gunshot residue. However, it was so tiny it was considered not admissable at his retrial. He lived close to Dando in Fulham, west London at the time of the killing.
George is now 63 and was interviewed in Ireland, where he now lives, for the show. When asked, did you kill Jill Dando? He replies: “Simply no. It makes me angry they’ve taken eight years of my life.”
And yet, Hamish Campbell, senior investigating officer at the time stands by George, who has Aspergers, brain damage, ADHD, learning difficulties and epilepsy, being the killer.
He adds: “I don’t think it’s a mystery at all.”
Smith was asked by a journalist to try and get an interview with George when he arrived in Belmarsh.
The armed robber claims he faked a heart attack to get into the prison hospital alongside the George.
There he asked him: “Do you like guns?” Smith claimed that George responded: “He said: ‘I like Guns n Roses’”.
Smith said: “I thought ‘he is not capable of a cold-blooded execution in broad daylight and then not speaking about it for a year.
“When Dando was shot a lot of criminals kind of went “yeah,” because a lot ended in prison, down to stuff on Crimewatch. The way it was done was professional.
“In the 80s and 90s, every hit was in broad daylight in the street. The chances of catching a professional who works in that way are slim to none.”
