jill dando wiki : Jill Wendy Dando (9 November 1961 – 26 April 1999) was an English journalist, television presenter, and newsreader who was 1997 BBC Personality of the Year. At the time of her death, she was the presenter of the BBC programme Crimewatch.
On 26 April 1999, Dando was fatally shot outside her home in Fulham, London. A local man, Barry George, was convicted and imprisoned for the murder but was later acquitted after an appeal and retrial. The case remains open.
Dando was born at Ashcombe House Maternity Home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. She was the daughter of Jack Dando (February 1918 – February 2009), who died in Weston-super-Mare on his 91st birthday, and Winifred Mary Jean Dando (August 1928 – January 1986), who died of leukaemia aged 57. Her only sibling, brother Nigel (born 1952), worked as a journalist for BBC Radio Bristol but retired in 2017, having previously worked as a journalist in local newspapers since the 1970s. Dando was raised as a Baptist.When she was three years old, it was discovered that she had a hole in her heart and a blocked pulmonary artery. She had heart surgery on 12 January 1965.
Dando was educated at Worle Infant School, Greenwood Junior School, Worle Comprehensive School,and Broadoak Sixth Form Centre, where she was head girl,and passed two A-levels. She studied Journalism at the South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in Cardiff. Dando was a member of Weston-super-Mare Amateur Dramatic Society and Exeter Little Theatre Company, with whom she appeared in plays at the Barnfield Theatre. She was a volunteer at Sunshine Hospital Radio in Weston-super-Mare in 1979.
Dando was a devout Baptist. From 1989 to 1996, she dated BBC executive Bob Wheaton. She also had a relationship with national park warden Simon Basil. In December 1997, Dando met gynaecologist Alan Farthing on a blind date set up by a mutual friend. Farthing was separated from his wife at the time.A couple of months after Farthing's divorce was finalised,the couple announced that they were engaged on 31 January 1999. Their wedding was set to take place on 25 September of that year.
Dando's funeral took place on 21 May 1999 at Clarence Park Baptist Church in Weston-super-Mare. She was buried next to her mother in the town's Ebdon Road Cemetery.The gross value of her estate was £1,181,207; after her debts and income tax, the value was £863,756; after inheritance tax, it was £607,000, all of which her father inherited because she died intestate.
Dando's co-presenter Nick Ross proposed the formation of an academic institute in her name and, together with her fiancé Alan Farthing, raised almost £1.5 million. The Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science was founded at University College London on 26 April 2001, the second anniversary of her murder.
A memorial garden designed and realised by the BBC Television Ground Force team in Dando's memory, using plants and colours that were special to her, is located within Grove Park, Weston-super-Mare (51°21′09″N 2°58′45″W) and was opened on 2 August 2001. The BBC set up a bursary award in Dando's memory, which enables one student each year to study broadcast journalism at University College Falmouth. Sophie Long, who was then a postgraduate who had grown up in Weston-super-Mare and is now a presenter on BBC News, gained the first bursary award in 2000.
In 2007, Weston College opened a new university campus on the site of the former Broadoak Sixth Form Centre where Dando studied. The Sixth Form building has been dedicated to her and named "The Jill Dando Centre".
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