When Jill Dando woke up in the home of her fiance, Alan Farthing, in Chiswick, west London, on April 26th, 1999, the television presenter, known as the "golden girl" of the BBC, was excited and bubbly, looking forward to their wedding.
She made Dr Farthing, a gynaecologist at a London hospital, a cup of tea before he left for work and then went shopping in nearby Hammersmith.
A few hours later, at about 11.30 a.m., she was crouching down on the doorstep of her home in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, where she was shot in the head at close range. The friendly 37-year-old presenter, known to many fans simply as Jill, was pronounced dead at Charing Cross Hospital at 1.05 p.m.
Public revulsion at the killing and sympathy for Jill Dando's family were immense. In the familiar manner of public response to high-profile deaths, floral tributes were piled high outside Jill Dando's home and hundreds of fans stood outside the Clarence Park Baptist church in her home town of Weston-super-Mare, where her funeral service was held.
The difficulty for the police was that no one witnessed the shooting, the gun was never recovered and, as far as a motive was concerned, several theories were put forward, including suggestions of a Serbian revenge killing over British involvement in the Balkans conflict and celebrity obsession.
The police followed up hundreds of leads. Many people came forward about men acting suspiciously in the area, there were sightings of possible suspects at bus stops and at the Thames river nearby, but the reports came to nothing and there were many frustrating months during which it seemed little progress was being made.
However, early last year police moved in on Barry George, a local man who had a fascination with guns, the army and the BBC. He was questioned and his flat was searched. Then within a few weeks of his arrest last May he was charged with Jill Dando's murder.
Two years after the murder, the trial of Barry George, also known as Barry Bulsara (he changed his name as a tribute to Queen singer, Freddie Mercury, whose real name was Bulsara) began at the Old Bailey, the prosecution arguing that detectives had pieced together "compelling categories of circumstantial, forensic and scientific evidence" to identify George as the gunman.
He lived in a flat close to Ms Dando's home. At about 7 a.m. on the day of the murder one of her neighbours spotted a man loitering outside the celebrity's home.
She later picked George out at an identity parade.
Another neighbour also said she saw George in Gowan Avenue shortly before 10 a.m., but George insisted that he did not leave his flat for another 30 minutes to walk to a nearby community centre, the Hammersmith and Fulham Action for Disabled (Hafad).
George's insistence that he was visiting Hafad close to the time of the killing and had then returned home was an important feature of the case. George did not give evidence during the eight-week trial, but the prosecution told the jury that the quickest route from his flat to Hafad would be to walk down Gowan Avenue.
George maintained he chose another route, doubling the length of his journey, but the prosecution insisted he had taken the longer route because "he had just shot Jill Dando and did not want to risk recognition".
Two days later George returned to Hafad to ask staff at what time he had visited the centre on the day of the killing, but the prosecution said this was simply an attempt to establish an alibi. The forensic evidence presented in the case mainly concerned the discovery of a spherical particle found in an inside pocket of one of George's coats.
No firearms residue was found inside George's flat, but the court was told that the particle found inside the coat pocket shortly before his arrest last May was similar to firearms residue discovered in Jill Dando's hair and on her coat.
In its summing-up of the evidence, the prosecution insisted it was no coincidence that the particle was found inside George's coat. "This aspect of the case provides compelling evidence of his guilt," counsel said.
