10 Mysterious Celebrity Deaths That Shocked The World

3. Jill Dando

The investigative journalist and BBC television presenter Jill Dando was shot in the head at point blank range on the doorstep of her own home in Fulham, London on the morning of 26th April 1999. Her body was discovered quarter of an hour later by a neighbour and was rushed to hospital, but pronounced dead on arrival: it was later confirmed that the shot would probably have killed her instantly. She was thirty-seven years old: the face of the BBC€™s popular Crimewatch programme, the 1997 BBC Personality Of The Year, and arguably one of the most famous faces on British television. A man named Barry George was arrested on 25th May the following year, charged with her murder and convicted on 2nd July 2001. With a history of stalking, sexual offences and weird behaviour, no one was keen to take his side: nonetheless, it became apparent that the case against him had been extraordinarily thin. Two appeals failed, but the third succeeded in having some discredited forensic evidence excluded, and the conviction was quashed in favour of a new trial. At the second trial in summer 2008, George was found not guilty of the crime. The pressure on police to solve the murder of a national figure had caused them to charge and convict the wrong man. The real culprit remains at large to this day. Some speculate a connection with Bosnian-Serb or Yugoslav terror groups, while others prefer to keep things simple and posit the existence of a deranged fan. Her fiance was interviewed, as was her agent, amid bizarre suggestions of a business dispute or professional jealousy gone terribly out of hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zc47ENbroE Still more point to the trappings of the murder: a shot from behind and to the left directly to the skull with a 9mm pistol, muffling the report of the gun and directing blood spatter away from the shooter indicated a professional assassin. It was reported that Dando had investigated a widespread paedophile ring a few years earlier, and had handed a dossier on her findings to BBC management. The truth will probably never be known.