Detectives are investigating evidence linking a Serbian assassin to the unsolved murder of Jill Dando.
The BBC Crimewatch presenter, 37, was shot in the head on the doorstep of her home on Gowan Avenue, Fulham, in April 1999. Her killer has never been found.
CCTV footage showing an unidentified man, known as Man X, walking along the gunman’s likely escape route around 20 minutes after Ms Dando’s murder is one of few leads examined by police.
Milorad Ulemek, 57, a Serbian former paramilitary commander and convicted assassin who is serving a 40-year prison sentence, has also been named as a possible suspect in the case.
Now, new evidence has prompted the Metropolitan Police to re-examine his involvement in Ms Dando’s murder.
Among the latest revelations is a picture of the convicted double-killer wearing a stripy blue tie similar to the one worn by Man X in the CCTV footage.
The photo shows Ulemek, known by his nickname Legija, next to his first wife, former Journalist Maja Lukovic, and was supposedly taken in Serbia at some time between 1992 and 1998.
A witness also previously claimed that a man she saw ‘running for his life’ from the scene bears a resemblance to the notorious assassin.
Jill Dando who was shot in the head on the doorstep of her home on Gowan Avenue, Fulham, in April 1999
The first image shows CCTV footage of an unidentified man, known as Man X, walking along the gunman’s likely escape route. The second shows Milorad Ulemek, 57, wearing a stripy blue tie like the one worn by Man X
Emi Polito, a facial comparison expert, was commissioned by the Mirror to examine the similarities between the ties worn in both photos.
He found the most ‘significant’ was similarity is a number of dark tones in the light stripes of Man X’s tie which mirror the one worn by Ulemek.
Both ties also have the same ‘general form and style’ and three dark stripes ‘broadly similar size and tone’. The appearance of the ties under the knot is also similar.
But Mr Polito said the analysis ‘moderately supports’ the claim that they are the same tie, although he warned that the poor quality of the CCTV makes it impossible to reach a more definitive judgement.
The original CCTV is supposedly among 223 boxes of material that are being held in police deep storage. Modern forensic imaging should help officers decide whether to treat Ulemek as a subject, the Mirror reported.
The Met Police told the newspaper that detectives are ‘assessing this information to understand whether it’s a new and realistic line of enquiry.’
After Ms Dando was killed, the BBC received a call saying she was targeted in revenge for a recent Nato attack on a TV station in Belgrade, Serbia, in which 17 people died.
Weeks earlier she had hosted a television appeal that raised £54 million for Kosovan refugees who fled Serbian paramilitaries during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
At the time of Jill’s death, Ulemek led a squad of assassins targeting those opposing dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
The Daily Mail’s front page the day after Jill Dando was murdered on April 27, 1999
The journalist’s tragic and brutal death has long been the subject of intense speculation
Notorious assassin Milorad Lukovic Ulemek, alias Legija, seen in May 2004
Mr Polito has previously been commissioned to compare the CCTV of Man X to the assassin.
He gave ‘limited support’ to the theory that Ulemek looks like the unidentified person along the gunman’s likely escape route. This is the second lowest on a subjective scale range from ‘no support’ to ‘powerful support’.
Mr Polito alleges the assassin and Man X share a similarly shaped mouth, chin and hairline. The Mirror reports the expert as saying the general shape and sizes of their noses and ear are also the same.
But the CCTV imagery was blurry and he clarified that his observations only add ‘light weight’ to the theory that they’re the same person.
The man on the CCTV is a white male with dark hair in a dark suit, thought to have been born in the 60s.
He was seen about a mile away from the murder scene, by Putney Bridge underground station. He bought a ticket, went through the barriers but then left the station through another exit.
He was ‘sweating heavily’ and speaking into a mobile phone when he took the bus to the tube station a few minutes after the incident, according to The Mirror.
The newspaper said that Ulemek was in his 30s at the time and of a similar build.
Meanwhile, speaking to a witness who saw the mystery man running from the area, The Mirror quoted her as saying: ‘It’s him’.
She told the newspaper ‘I’ve no doubt’ and said: ‘I’m bad for remembering names but I’m good with faces’.
CCTV footage shows the television presenter on the morning of her death
Gowan Avenue, Fulham, London, where Jill Dando was shot dead in 1999
A 9mm Beretta pistol and magazine which was found shortly before midday on the foreshore of the Thames near Putney Bridge in west London, was being examined by forensic experts
Six distinctive marks were found on the cartridge case used by the gunman who killed Jill
A month before Jill died, Ulemek was asked to murder a ‘leading journalist’, a court heard previously. But he declined, he said, because he was needed in Kosovo.
The Crimewatch star once time admitted that her role on the show left her in fear of retribution from the criminals she sought to expose.
And in 1999, she featured on Crimewatch as the victim of a brutal assassination two years later. Her career meant there was an extensive list of suspects.
It has long been suspected that she was shot by a professional assassin.
In 1999, Detective Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell was a senior investigating officer in the Met’s murder squad, based in Kensington, West London.
He had never met Jill, though she had made an appeal on Crimewatch for one of his old murder inquiries and they had attended the same lunch at Scotland Yard, where she had spoken of her fears of a ‘hit’ being carried out on a Crimewatch presenter.
When told by a colleague that reports were coming through that a woman had been ‘stabbed’ in Fulham, Campbell decided to take a sergeant and go see for himself as it it was a ‘very unusual’ crime for that area of London.
As he drove down, he received a call from his chief superintendent who said to him bluntly, ‘that case, that’s going to be Jill Dando’, it was heard in a Netflix documentary which aired last year.