Jill Dando

Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando was 'murdered by a Serbian hitman after insulting Slobodan Milosevic's brutal regime'

Serbian widow claims BBC presenter was killed by same hit man who assassinated her husband
Serbian TV presenter Slavko Curuvija shot dead 15 days before Dando's death in April 1999


BBC presenter Jill Dando was one of two journalists ‘executed’ by a Serbian hitman in a revenge attack, it was claimed last night.

The allegation was made by a Serbian widow whose husband was killed in similar circumstances just 15 days before Miss Dando’s murder in April 1999.

Branka Prpa said she was convinced that her husband and the former Crimewatch presenter were targeted by the same killer after insulting Slobodan Milosevic’s brutal regime.

Her husband Slavko Curuvija was also a TV presenter, and an outspoken critic of the dictator. He was shot in the head outside his Belgrade home on April 11.

According to historian Miss Prpa, Miss Dando’s appearance in a BBC appeal on behalf of Kosovan-Albanian refugees made her a target for the hitman.

She said: ‘I think there is a link between Dando and Curuvija. I think they were both executed.

‘There were a whole range of people defined by the regime as political enemies who were assassinated at the beginning of the war.

‘They would simply kill you and walk away. When you look at this timeline of killing it is quite clear that it is part of the same context.’

The widow pointed to a range of similarities between Miss Dando’s murder outside her West London home on April 26, 1999, and that of her husband.

Both were high-profile journalists who were returning home when they were assaulted, then shot in the head.

Rumours have flourished throughout the past decade that a contract killer, possibly hired due to Britain's role in the Serbian conflict, was behind the Crimewatch star's ruthless killing.

But instead police focussed their investigation on Barry George, the loner who lived near Ms Dando's home in Fulham, west London, and who seemed obsessed with guns.

He was convicted of her murder in 2001 and jailed for life – before being freed on appeal in 2008.

At his first trial, Mr George’s barrister, Michael Mansfield, QC, contended that one possible motive for the killing was a Serbian death squad taking revenge for the bombing of a Belgrade television station.

Mr Mansfield produced a National Criminal Intelligence Service report which said that after the bombing, the Serbian warlord Arkan put out a contract on Sir John Birt, then BBC director-general.


When Sir John’s security was stepped up, the target was supposedly changed to Miss Dando.

Following Mr George’s acquittal, police were investigating information that a British petty criminal of Serbian descent boasted of the killing.

His alleged confession is said to have taken place during a drinking session in the Serbian capital in September 2001.

The petty criminal, thought to have been from the West Midlands but of Serbian descent, was said to have confessed to the killing in front of ten people at a bar in Belgrade.

A British businessman who witnessed the apparent confession told a Sunday newspaper after the 2001 claim: 'He took a bow because he claimed he had something to do with it.

'He stood up and his friends applauded him strenuously.

'He claimed it was in retaliation over some Serbian TV star singer that was killed in the bombings.'

Detectives investigated the apparent confession and interviewed witnesses present at the drinking session, but no one has since been charged with the murder.

In 2009 it emerged that an anonymous caller had phoned the BBC after Ms Dando's killing claiming he had killed the presenter over Nato action in the former Yugoslavia.

The caller was also said to have told the then BBC head of news that he was next on the hitman's list.

The details emerged from a board of governors' meeting held days after the Crimewatch presenter's still-unsolved murder.

Head of news Tony Hall told the governors how he had been phoned with news of the attack while attending a Broadcasting House meeting with then Director-General John Birt and other BBC chiefs.

He immediately rushed to Television Centre in White City, West London, where he called Mr Birt to say Ms Dando had died.

At some point that day or later the mystery caller phoned Mr Hall claiming responsibility for the shooting.

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