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Oct. 8, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
58:25
Edition 761 - Jaime Maussan/Guest Catchups

Three items from the last tv show - First, an Exclusive with investigator Jaime Maussan on the alleged "alien mummies" he presented in Mexico recently, then a discussion of some new anti-matter research with Dr Chris Smith - The Naked Scientist... Finally ex-BBC tv correspondent Michael Cole on the shocking - and still unsolved - murder of newscaster Jill Dando in 1999...

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is the unexplained.
Well, the nice weather continues as I record these particular words.
The sun is still beating down through the window here, and that is very, very nice indeed.
As you know, the television show came to an end a week ago, so I've got a few highlights from it to put here for posterity.
They will include Jaime Massan appearing exclusively on the show and making an offer to scientists about those claimed alien mummies that he demonstrated in Mexico for the Mexican Congress or a committee of it quite recently that made international headlines.
So it was a big thing that he came on my show, and that is an ongoing story.
Also, we'll talk about antimatter with Dr. Chris Smith, famous scientist.
They call him the naked scientist in the United Kingdom because of a podcast and radio work that he does.
He's always very good.
So antimatter is the subject for the second item.
And the third item is something that was brought back to us by a television show that was on air in the UK over the last 10 days or so.
It's actually a Netflix series about the killing of a television news anchor, Jill Dando.
Now, this happened in 1999 in the UK.
And if you live here, then I think you will probably know all about this.
If you don't, then just imagine the situation that you turn on the news one day and one of the most popular news anchors and general television program presenters in the country, a definite rising star, has been gunned down, shot through the head on her doorstep at Fulham in London.
The year was 1999.
And I've never forgot, or never forgotten, reporting those events to London when they happened and the shock that something like this could happen on the streets of London.
There have been many forms of speculation about this.
And I thought, since a lot of the media was talking about Jill Dando, I would talk with somebody who none of them had talked with, a BBC colleague of hers who knew the people that she knew and knew her, a man called Michael Cole.
Now, Michael Cole was, in his later years at the BBC, the television royal correspondent of the BBC, and then later went to work for Mohammed Al-Fayed at Harrods, of course, the father of Dodi Fayyed, who had a great deal to say, of course, around the death of Princess Diana and his son, Dodi.
So Michael Cole was there through all of that, and that's how I got to know him, because I was phoning him up every day, asking him for comments from Mohammed Al-Fayed about the ongoing investigation into the death of Diana.
So on this occasion, we'll talk about Jill Dando.
That's what's going to be on this show.
Thank you very much to Adam, my webmaster, for his ongoing hard work.
And thank you to you for being there and for all the kind things that you've said recently.
Okay, item number one then, Jaime Mossan.
And the story is this.
A NASA contractor is reportedly looking to study, quotes, alien bodies that presented to Mexico's Congress during a controversial UFO hearing.
This is the story and exclusively, Jaime Mossan.
We've got what I think may be a bit of an exclusive for you here.
You tell me.
And I'm going to try and unpick this as best I can.
Now, on the show last week, we had Will Gilson who talked with us about those Mexican mummies, which had apparently come from Peru, been brought there by an investigative journalist and TV personality ufologist called Jaime Massan, whose work I've been aware of for more than 20 years.
He used to appear on the daddy of shows like this, Art Bell's show, Coast to Coast AM across the United States.
So I would hear him periodically.
Now, where do we begin?
Well, we talked last week with Will Gilson about these alien bodies that were displayed.
Remember, they made the headlines everywhere.
I was getting emails to beat the band 10 to the dozen from people saying, look at these things that have been displayed in Peru.
They look so strange.
And then, of course, a lot of people were saying, well, yes, they are strange, but they're probably fake.
And thereby hangs a tale and began a controversy.
Daily Mail reported this week, a NASA contractor is reportedly looking to study, quotes, alien bodies that were presented to Mexico's Congress during a controversial UFO hearing.
Jaime Mossan, a veteran broadcast journalist and prolific ufologist who presented the corpses, told the Daily Mail that an unnamed third-party contractor has been in contact with him about carrying out a full DNA investigation potentially on behalf of the U.S. Space Agency.
That's about as much as you need to know for now, I think.
We've got some images to bring you along the way with this, but most importantly, we've got Jaime Massan himself on here.
Jaime, thank you for coming on.
It's really good of you to do this.
Yeah, my pleasure, Howard.
My pleasure.
Now, the way that this I was.
I mean, I'm just going to explain the way that this happened was sheer happenstance.
The station that I'm on put out a video of an interview I did with somebody about and around this, and we showed some of the images.
We talked about it obliquely over the last couple of weeks.
And I said, I've been trying to contact Jaime Hassan.
In fact, my setup producer, John, had been trying to email you, not having any luck with it.
And then a friend of yours got in touch with me through my website and said, I know Jaime Hohssan.
I'll put you in touch.
And that's why we're speaking now.
It's sheer serendipity.
Yeah, well, it's very easy when you know how to, you know, but I'm here to answer any of your questions.
Okay, now you know, and we'll touch on this, that this has been deeply controversial since you did this.
So I suppose, and if we've got any images that we can flash up here, it will be interesting to see them.
But that session of a committee of the Mexican Congress and these alien mummies, so-called from Peru, that story went round the world.
Why did you take them?
And that's some of the footage that was displayed to the world from this session.
Why did you take them to Mexico, Jaime?
No, I didn't.
I investigated this case in Peru from 2017 to the beginning of the pandemic.
Then last year, I found out that someone in Mexico had brought two bodies.
When I talked to him, he told me that he had done this legally.
And then that's what I, he has the papers, he said.
When it's necessary, he's going to show them.
But he didn't go to Peru to get them.
They were brought to Mexico because he has an investigative institution.
And the reason he wanted the body was to investigate them.
And that's the reason.
But no, me, I don't have anything to do with that.
All right.
Do you know that according to the newspapers and wire services that I see here, there is supposedly in Peru a criminal investigation on that involves you?
And you're saying here tonight that you knew nothing of the origins of this and you certainly didn't steal them from Peru and you did not bring them in.
I haven't been notified.
No, but I don't think there is anything like that in Peru.
Or the opposite.
I'm thinking in suing the Ministry of Culture because they discredit this case with lies.
What I mean, they investigated, Flavio Estrada, an archaeologist, investigated one body that was brought to him in 2017.
What's the small bodies, 40 centimeters?
It has nothing to do with the big bodies that I presented.
It means that what the Ministry of Culture is saying, that these are assembled, that they are fakes, that they were made, is not true.
Well, that's been one of the many allegations, hasn't it?
Jaime, sorry to jump in there, but it's important.
And I know people were saying, oh, listen, he's interrupting.
I think I've got to at this point.
You know, there were a lot of people who said that these are clearly constructs.
They are faked.
How?
Have they presented any evidence?
Or they just say, it's easy to say, difficult to demonstrate.
I haven't seen anything that proves that these bodies are hoaxes.
It's just opinions and so on.
I presented a doctor, a forensic expert, one of the best in Mexico, one of the best.
He presented his investigation.
Nobody is talking about that because that's very strong.
You see, the people who are doing these commentaries, they are doing from far away because no one has come to us to investigate them.
You said, and that's one of the reasons that I wanted to get in touch with you.
You said that they should be sent to Oxford.
Are the scientists from Oxford willing to come to Mexico?
I will provide them with everything we have.
Right, everything.
Well, that brings me to a question that I was going to ask you, but you've nicely preempted it.
Was why you did this in, of all places that you could have done this, why did you bring, or why were they, you said they were already in Mexico because they'd been discovered by somebody who told you that he'd got them legitimately.
Why did you not attempt to bring them to, as I said last week, an academic institution in Oxford, maybe Harvard or Stanford in the United States?
No, no, no, they don't want to do anything to, they don't want to do anything with this.
You see, and before I presented them, even worse, in Peru, I tried to give the bodies that there are in Peru to the University of San Marcos.
And at the very end, the lawyers from the university didn't want to.
The only university that is investigating the case right now and is going to present a preliminary report in a few days is the University of Ica, San Luis Gonzaga, or called UNICA, UNICA, which is in Mexico.
There have been 12 scientists have been investigating these bodies for four years.
That's the way to investigate them.
Okay?
And they're going to present the preliminary report.
And I hope they will come to Mexico, to the Congress in Mexico, and they will tell the world what they have found.
Because it's going to be very impressive.
It's a clear demonstration by a university from the state.
It's not a private or anything like that.
It's from the state.
It's going to present us the results, and the results are going to be shocking for so many people.
So those who criticized you, you are saying that this report will effectively vindicate you and also prove the authenticity of these alien bodies that you showed?
I don't know if they were going to attack the university because they attacked everything.
If they don't, if they take these studies and they analyze the studies and through that they said something wrong, I could accept it.
But just by saying that this is a hoax, again I tell you, the Ministry of Peru never has investigated these bodies.
How can they know?
How can they know?
That's a lie.
And from that lie, many other scientists, institutions said, oh, it's a hoax, it's a hoax, it's a hoax.
But it's not a hoax.
I mean, I am telling the truth.
The bodies are real and genuine.
I've been investigating them for six years.
Do you think I would take these bodies to the Congress in Mexico to allow the whole world to see it, to destroy me?
I mean, I am not crazy.
I've been journalist for 53 years, my friend.
I know what it is.
I know what the risks are.
I never thought that all the attacks would come from a lie.
And the Ministry of Culture in Peru lied.
Okay, well, you know, I hear what you say.
I wish I had somebody on from the ministry to respond.
We don't.
But I'm hearing what you, Jaime Massan, say.
So you're telling me here, and I want to talk about some of the findings that you got already about these, because that's very, very important.
It's crucial to say here and now then, those who have said that these are dolls covered in paper mash, papier mashé, and those who have said these are constructs involving somehow llama Skeletons.
They're wrong.
Well, the bodies are desiccated.
They were, you know, we just found that they had dioxide chloruro, the a poison.
They have a poison in the body, the diatomia earth, and then this poison again, chloruro, chlorur of cadmio, cadmio, chloro, chloro, chloruro.
I don't know how you say that in English, sorry.
But they have this poison.
It means that somebody knew because this poison wasn't produced a thousand years ago.
It means that they are, besides, let me tell you something else.
The metal in the body, they have cadmium and osmium in here, in the chest, and both are very toxic.
How can they do that?
Why did they do it?
Right, and we have to say that what I understand about that is cadmium is the metal that they use, for example, in transistors.
And it is, you know, if you were to ingest it, it would be toxic to you.
So you're saying that around the chest area of these mummies, they somehow have inbuilt that metal and another metal.
Transplant, implants, or whatever you want to call them.
They are here.
We don't know why.
We know osmium is used for telecommunications.
Most of the bodies, because there are 20 power, there are 20 bodies.
Most of them have these metals, sometimes in the head, most of the time in the chest, sometimes in the hands.
Then there are many evidences when they are really investigated that can prove that this is real.
And again, if you can help us with OSFR, I'm willing to pay for all the expenses of the scientists to come to Mexico and do their investigation.
You think I'm doing that because I think it's a hoax?
Of course not.
I know it's real.
Let's just make that nice and clear then.
I hear what you say about the metal, and we can only speculate about what that metal might be doing here on those mummies and how that could have got there.
I think the estimated age of these is 1,600 years, isn't it?
1,000.
1,000.
1,000 years.
Okay.
According to the National University of Mexico, yes, 12,000.
Understood.
And for those who will accuse me, as some did last week, of interrupting, sometimes you have to clarify something, sometimes you have to because of the digital delay when you're doing wonderful communications like this across great distances.
That's interesting.
And let's, just before we go to commercials here, amplify that, because we need to take that further.
I suggested last week that maybe if a scientist from Oxford or Cambridge or one of our great research institutes here in this country was interested in checking the bona fides or whatever these might be, bearing in mind, until you've checked them, you don't know that they're fakes.
You don't know that they're real.
You just know that they're there.
But if you check them, you will get some answers.
So, honey, you're making an offer and you state that offer as we go to commercials.
Just say it again for me.
Yes, yes.
I am willing to pay for all the expenses of two or three scientists that come from Oxford University to Mexico to investigate the bodies.
We will give them everything we have and whatever they need, we will try to get it from them, for them.
We're talking with Jaime Massan, the man who made worldwide headlines a few weeks ago around the time of that NASA session.
There was also a story out of Mexico.
Jaime Massan, investigator, journalist, and a man who has been at the center of some controversy in the past, and he's in the center of more controversy now.
These claimed alien bodies from Peru were displayed before a part of the Mexican Congress and are now being analyzed in Mexico.
And we're told tonight that a report about that is due out, and that report may vindicate everything that Jaime Massan has said, we are told.
Plus, don't forget, a couple of minutes ago here on this station, Talk TV, Jaime Massan made an offer to, I guess it goes to any research scientist in this country, maybe at a leading institution, but specifically to Oxford, that he will fund a couple of scientists to go over and take a look at these things themselves and satisfy themselves as to what they might be.
I think that's for some scientists.
I've known a lot of scientists, respect all of them, because I couldn't do what they do.
Isn't that an offer you can't refuse?
I don't know.
Let's get back to Jaime Hassan.
So, Jaime, you've made that offer.
I don't know whether we'll hear anything about that.
I suspect we might.
There's been an investigation, or there's been the beginnings of an investigation in Mexico.
What can you tell me about it so far?
About exactly what...
I didn't understand the question.
Well, I'm asking you about the scientific tests that have been done in Mexico so far.
Oh, yeah, okay, okay.
Just a week ago, September 18th, we made a live streaming from a laboratory with three different experts.
Two of them have never seen the bodies, an orthopedist, a radiologist, and a forensic expert who the forensic expert knows perfectly the case because he started the investigation in 2017.
But the other two didn't know anything.
You can watch this in Mount San TV, my channel.
It's going to be in Spanish though, but you can see the images.
If you understand a little bit of Spanish, you're going to understand the scientists and you will see how surprised they are.
And they are saying this is a living creature.
There is no question about that.
No, that's the reason I am so sure.
I mean, from before and now, and again, the University of ICA will present the results, everything they know in detail, and that also will prove that this case is absolutely real.
If these were living creatures, do you think that they came here from somewhere or were they here already a thousand years ago?
I don't know.
If they come from the space or they were here, we don't know.
We know there is no history of evolution to them and from them.
It's like if they came and they live.
That's all we know.
We have seen some figurines from the Dagu or Daju culture in Peru, in Japan, that are very, very similar to these bodies.
It's some of the things that are interesting.
But the real interesting thing is that these are physical bodies.
Physical.
They are not going to disappear.
It's not a picture.
It's not a video.
The bodies are there, either.
They are real or not.
We think they are real.
We are convinced they are real.
Let me ask you something.
You mentioned the Ministry of Culture that has a criminal investigation against me.
Okay.
And they are saying that the bodies were assembled.
How can these assembled bodies be a natural treasure?
It's something, it's some of the contradictions.
Because another contradiction is if these bodies were assembled, they are from 1,000 years ago.
You know, then there are many contradictions and they are going to have to answer all about that.
Let's go through some images that you sent this evening here.
And we've put them together in one image and we've numbered them.
I think we can get these on the screen now if the team can do that for me because I think this is going to add some light to this investigation.
Okay, we've numbered these one, two, and three.
And the first, of course, you can see the whole body.
Now at the top, around what would be, I think, the sort of thyroid area of the neck, the throat, you can see something that looks like maybe that metal you talked about.
But can you talk to me about the image that is on the left-hand side of your screen?
This is the skeleton.
Yeah, well, it's the skeleton.
Well, you can see the metal in the top.
You can see everything perfectly well built.
It's not assembled.
If we could see also the head and you can see the connection from the neck up and you can also see the eggs.
The eggs are very important because according to the St. Petersburg University, they investigated this in 2017, 18, 19, and 20.
And they found that the eggs had embryos inside, embryos inside.
How can you fake that?
You know, and the eggs are organic.
They are not stones.
You can see the hands.
There are ligaments in the hands.
That's how they move it.
And again, even if you don't see in the hip, it is like it is not connected.
But if you look closely, there is a capsule joining both bones.
It means that they were very, very flexible, very, very, probably they roam very fast.
I don't know.
There are some of the things that we can see in that demo.
And again, the metal in the chest.
So this is obviously a pregnant female.
There are eggs there with embryos, you say.
And you also say crucially that as far as you're concerned, and as far as the scientists are saying that you know so far, this is one integrated structure.
And you say that there is no way that that could have been put together by any kind of kit of business.
Nobody has proven.
Let me ask you something.
Why someone in the world, in the whole world, tried to do something like this, try to build it, let's see if they can do something similar to this or exact to this.
And you see that it's not going to be possible.
This is just natural.
Why were these preserved, do you think, Jaime?
How did they come to be preserved?
Obviously, some civilization.
I think they were loved.
They were loved by the inhabitants of Peru, inhabitants, because they were buried in this special place where there is this diatomia earth and the poison they put in the body and both things help to preserve them.
That was done by someone, probably humans, because they gave a special place to this.
Because there were at least 20 of those, 20.
I think they die all together with some kind of sickness or something, because the eggs had embryos.
They were okay, they were healthy, and suddenly they died.
I think something very, very terrible happened to them.
But you think that the people who were around then venerated them, maybe even worshipped them, because they made a big deal of burying them in a particular way that we can find them now.
And they also put small toys that were assembled.
Those were assembled by people and they were there.
Like something they put when they make these burials, you know, for the other life or something.
I don't know what.
But those are the ones that are being analyzed or were analyzed by the Ministry of Peru.
And that's confusion.
But they create the confusion.
They know they have never investigated these bodies.
The University of Ica has had the bodies for four years.
The Ministry of Culture never went there.
And now they consider this a natural treasure.
They are opening a criminal investigation when they never care about these bodies.
That's the reason they left Peru.
I think it's tragic, tragic, that more than 20 of these bodies left Peru.
Don't you think?
I'm reading here from 2015 that there was a bit of a controversy about involving yourself to do with mummified bodies.
And I'm just going to quote this line here from a piece from, well, it's an agency that compiles news reports.
But it was purported to be an alien.
Later, though, the alien discovery was debunked and the mummified corpse was shown to be that of a human child.
If that's so, you can understand why people are skeptical now, can't you?
Yeah, but it's not true.
I found the real body that was found by the archaeologist Palmer in 1897, and I have both pictures, and you can see that the body that was taken in a photograph in a museum is not the same than the finding of these archaeologists.
It's as clear as that.
We had to go to the files and through FOIA, and I received some help, and we found the picture, and The real body doesn't have anything to do with that.
You know, but that's the same thing.
I couldn't, I couldn't defend myself because it was just a picture.
What can you do with a picture?
And now we have a physical body, and the body is there.
That doesn't have anything to do with anything I did before.
I still believe that what I presented was real.
I am not backing from my words or my presentation.
And whatever the one I send to both pictures.
We have a saying here in the United Kingdom.
I think they have it in America too.
A gut feeling.
You know, your instinct.
Does your instinct lean towards saying that these are aliens?
Or there's a question mark over what they might be.
We know that.
But do you think in your heart that these are aliens?
Yes, because they have technology.
And that technology was not known a thousand years ago.
And because they remember, I present the DNA.
Why nobody has read the DNA?
Why nobody has told me that the DNA doesn't show anything?
Why never, never anybody has told me that DNA doesn't prove anything?
And it's there.
It's open to the public.
We have about 30 seconds.
That's one of the downsides of television like this.
What's going to happen next?
Oh, we will continue.
I'm traveling to Peru.
I'm going to the University of ICA.
I hope they will do a press conference without me.
I don't need to be there.
But they can present this to the world.
That's going to be one thing.
And I think when we have everything ready, the University of Mexico has been asked by the Congress to investigate this.
Then I hope we will have a new public audience to present everything to the people and you will decide then.
You've been hearing Jaime Massan.
That was an exclusive to the show.
And if you are a scientist, you'd like to take up that offer or you know one who might, then please get in touch with me and I will pass your message on to Jaime in Mexico.
Interesting times in which we live.
Item number two is about antimatter.
Now you know that television shows always talk about it, but I wonder how many of us understand it.
Well, we might understand it a little bit more now.
Here's Dr. Chris Smith, the man they call in the United Kingdom the naked scientist.
So what is antimatter?
And this discovery that it behaved like everything else, what does that mean?
Does that mean that we can stop dreaming that one day antimatter will power the next generation of spacecraft?
You know, I'm not a scientist, but I know a man who is, Dr. Chris Smith, the naked scientist.
He's online to us now.
Chris, thank you for doing this.
How are you?
I'm very well.
How are you?
Very good, thank you.
Nice to see you, Chris.
Likewise.
Antimatter.
What is it?
Well, if we wind the clock back 13.8 billion years to the origin of the universe, our physics principles and theories suggest that when matter got made in the first place, there should have been an equal amount of its mirror image counterpart, antimatter.
The big question is, where's it all gone?
Because when we look out in the universe, all we see is matter, the stuff that we're made of.
This means you have atoms, and in the middle of those atoms, you have a nucleus, which has protons that have a positive charge, and around them are negatively charged electrons.
But we know antimatter can exist because we can make it.
And in fact, we use it all the time in medicine.
When we do a PET positron emission tomography scan, you are using the fact that when matter meets antimatter, the two mirror images of each other annihilate one another and produce a burst of energy, which we see as light.
So we know this stuff can exist, but we just don't know where it's all gone in the universe.
So what is it?
It is basically the mirror image of matter.
And this means if you're zoomed in on the nucleus of an antimatter particle, instead of having positively charged protons, it has negatively charged antiprotons and positively charged antielectrons.
But to all intents and purposes, it otherwise should, our theories say, behave just like matter does.
And that's what the crux of this experiment was all about, to try to find whether the theory is correct, that it really does get pulled down by gravity.
Because if it doesn't, then that could explain where it's all gone in the universe.
Because unlike matter, which is being drawn together, if gravity had some kind of repulsive effect on antimatter, it could have pushed it all away.
And that could be why we don't see it.
But because of the alpha team's experiments announced this week in the journal Nature, we know that isn't true.
And just like normal matter, an Isaac Newton apple made of antimatter would fall on Isaac Newton antimatter's head in the same way that a normal matter apple did all those hundreds of years ago.
Here comes a dumb layman's question for you, and you're looking at a dumb layman here.
Does this mean that all of the speculation and dreaming that one day antimatter might be a mode of propulsion, because in my small brain, I think of antimatter as being something like almost reverse magnetism.
And you put positive magnet, negative magnet together, you get a force.
And I always thought, well, maybe we could use antimatter as some kind of propulsive technology.
Does the fact that it behaves like everything else does rule that out?
I think probably it was the preserve of science fiction for a long time because people were kind of seduced by some of the qualities.
If you touch matter with antimatter, it will annihilate.
The two will cease to exist and there'll be a burst of light.
So a weapon that was capable of doing that would be a pretty powerful thing.
But because it's drawn down by gravity, it's useful in the respect that we now know it does obey the normal rules of physics and our theories are correct in that respect.
It also means we know how to control it and guide it.
In fact, the team who did this experiment, they were using magnetic fields to confine and constrain and control where their antimatter went because obviously if it touched the walls of the container, it's not going to last very long.
But it doesn't rule out using it in useful ways in the future.
It just means that our understanding of the physics has become that bit less uncertain.
So where do you think the research will go next, Chris?
Who knows?
I mean, watch this space, I suppose I could say, if I was fond of dodgy Puns, which I am.
But the answer is that physics is all about kind of broadening our horizons, isn't it, and understanding how the universe works.
We have only just scratched the surface at the moment.
If you think we know that matter makes up about 5% of the mass of the universe, and the real thing we want to get to grips with is, well, where's the other 95%?
And that's locked up in dark matter and dark energy, both of which we infer to exist, both of which we have varying levels of evidence for, but we don't actually know what they are.
And I think that's the really big challenge right now is to try and unlock what dark matter and dark energy are.
And then we can ask, well, what's the antimatter equivalent of those?
Natasha Ineltam has just texted me to say something that I was going to say at the end of this anyway, but Natasha has put it much better than me.
Unsurprisingly, this man, Dr. Chris Smith, has such a great brain in a great way of explaining things.
I agree with Natasha Ineltam.
Chris, thank you so much for that.
Thank you, and thank you, Natasha.
Dr. Chris Smith talking about anti-matter.
And I think I understand it a little bit more than I did, but I can always understand more, as they say.
Okay, final item from my television show now, the story of the killing of Jill Dando as reflected in a television series that's been airing, or rather been online in the United Kingdom in the last 10 days or so.
It's still available on Netflix where it is.
A very disturbing story, and I thought I would talk about it and get some recollections about Jill Dando and the people who knew her and the investigation with a man that I know very well, Michael Cole, the BBC's former royal correspondent, a man who was working at the BBC around that time, but right up to date, knows a lot of the key people in this story at the BBC or who've in the last decade or so left the BBC.
So this is my conversation with Michael Cole.
April 1999, I was working as a broadcast journalist on the biggest radio show in London, one of the biggest radio shows in the country, one of the biggest in Europe.
A breakfast show, a morning drive show.
That's where you get the audience.
And later on in that day, an enormous story broke that shook me and everybody who heard and saw it.
The shooting on her doorstep in Fulham, southwest London, of Jill Dando.
Now, I think most people watching this will know who Jill Dando was.
But if you didn't, Jill Dando was a television newscaster, but so much more.
She transcended the TV news milieu, if that's the word.
She started to do general programs, travel programs, entertainment programs.
And she had the ability, very rare, to adapt to all of them.
Now, not many people, and I'm here to tell you this, find it easy to step out of news into other kinds of programming.
And those who do it well, and I don't say that I ever did, but Jill Dando did, those who do it well are prized because there aren't many of them.
Back in the 70s, we had Angela Ripon, who was able to do a similar thing.
But Jill Dando was heading for big things.
So her life was cruelly cut short by an assassin on her doorstep on that day in April 1999.
And for all these years, it's been in the back of so many of our minds.
How did this happen?
Who was behind this and why?
Why being the biggest question of all?
Why would anybody want to end the life of this person who was so prominent?
There were a bunch of theories and a man went to prison, of course, Barry George, the first and only man to be put on trial for the murder of Joel Dando.
He was previously described as being a loner and other things.
He was convicted of the murder, spending eight years in prison after a particle of gunshot residue that was found inside his jacket pocket microscopic.
An appeal that was spearheaded by his sister essentially cast considerable doubt on this evidence and its importance in the case, and his conviction was quashed and he was freed.
There have been various theories, though, that the criminal underworld might be involved in this because Jill was fronting a TV program called Crime Watch that outed and found and took pride in finding criminal behavior, criminals, people who perpetrated it.
Then there was the theory of the Serbian hitman.
Two days after Jill Dando's murder, a theory appeared that she had been gunned down by a Serbian hitman because 20 days before she died, she presented a Kosovo crisis appeal that raised about a million pounds in a day in support of refugees fleeing from the Balkans.
Just days before her murder, NATO bombed a TV station in Serbia.
16 people died, and it was claimed and still is that this was some kind of retaliation.
Plus, those who knew her, those who were close to her, were questioned, just as anybody in any investigation is questioned.
I mean, look, on a trivial level, there was a fire, as regular followers of my show will know, in my apartment.
It was a terrifying thing to go through, but I was put through the third degree about that because the people who were investigating the cause of it wanted to have the definitive cause of what made my apartment go up in flames.
And that meant questioning me.
And I didn't like it, but I understood why they had to.
So there were four strands of this inquiry.
There are probably more.
There's the theory that sometimes pops up on various social media outlets and on YouTube that maybe Joledando knew something.
Maybe because she associated with higher echelons of society, she'd found out some terrible secret.
And that somebody somewhere had wanted her silenced.
So that's five now.
And I guess there are more.
Now this week, on Netflix, a documentary series debuted about the Gildando case.
It's a lot of years, but people haven't forgotten.
And I think the documentary series is proving that point.
It made an impact on all of us who were around then.
I think we can see a little bit of the trailer for that.
Cronon networks, mafia, Russians, jilted lovers.
Is this an assassination?
Is this an execution?
The Crime Watch presenter may have been assassinated by a Serbian gunman.
Speculation focuses on a possible stalker.
This was one of the largest murder investigations the Metropolitan Police ever had to face.
Well, indeed, and that's just a little taster of that documentary.
And I can understand why they wanted to go there again.
I've been asked repeatedly over the years on this show to investigate it.
And to tell you the truth, I didn't think there was anything new we could say.
And that's why I haven't done it until now.
But I think now is probably the time.
So how do we do this tonight?
How do we talk about this in a different way?
I racked my brains this week and came up with somebody who I used to have a lot of contact with in those days of being on Capitol Radio in London.
Michael Cole, former BBC Royal correspondent, very well-known journalist and a friend and former colleague of Jill Dando and knew all of the principles involved, certainly on the BBC side.
So let's bring Michael on.
Michael, thank you for doing this.
Good evening, Howard.
Yes, at the end of three hours, the question, who killed Jill Dando, was still unanswered.
And that's the sadness, that's the tragedy, because she had a loving family, many friends, many good colleagues of whom I was one.
And millions of people want to know why she was killed and who she was killed by, and to see that person brought to justice and properly punished.
I watched this with some interest.
Most of the people who appeared, apart from Barry George and the policeman who led the inquiry, I personally know.
Strangely enough, Howard, I happened to be on the very first date that Jill Dando had at the age of 26 with Robert Wheaton, Bob Wheaton.
They then lived together for seven years.
But when I left the BBC in 1988, Bob asked me to lunch at Langan's just off Piccadilly.
And we were having lunch.
And we got to the end of the lunch.
And then suddenly down the aisle came Jill Dando.
And she said, oh, hello, Michael.
Hello, Bob.
I was having my hair done in Albemarle Street and I just happened to be passing by.
And I said, Jill, please sit down and have a drink.
But don't tell me you were just passing by because I don't believe you.
And I said, if Bob is having a relationship with you and you're having a relationship with him, I can only feel envy of him and wish you both well.
So she laughed and being a good Christian girl, she couldn't but admit her little white lie.
And of course, Bob Wheaton, who I knew very well, he was originally from Rhodesia.
He's a BBC editor, we have to say.
Yes, he was.
He was the editor of Six Scott News.
I knew his parents in Rhodesia.
They had to come to Britain after Rugabe took over.
And I knew Bob very well.
And he, like you, being closely questioned after your fire.
He was very closely questioned because when he bought a house, Jill Dando, and they'd been living together for seven years or so, loaned him £35,000.
And that loan had not been repaid at the time of her death.
And by that time, she'd moved on and she'd become engaged to the royal gynecologist, Mr. Farthing, and they were going to get married.
And so because the loan hadn't been repaid or whatever, the police thought that he was a suspect.
And he obviously submitted in the same way as you did, not unwillingly, with some degree of concern to the questioning.
But you know, in all of this, I listened to that very carefully.
The person who made most sense to me was Michael Mansfield, KC, was Queen's Counsel, of course.
He was the barrister who defended Barry George in the original trial and in the two appeals, the second one being successful, which got Barry George out of jail after eight years.
And Michael Mansfield, who I know very well and respect, I have very few heroes in the legal profession, but he is certainly one of them.
He said early on, he said the key to this is in the murder scene.
And there was a bullet case.
And the bullet case was unique in the sense that it had crimping around the rim where the bullet was held into the cartridge case.
And he said that that was very characteristic of bullets that were used and employed by the forces in Serbia at that time.
Very, very unknown in this country, unique to that theater of war at that time.
Now, this, of course, it's all theory, but if you asked me to speculate, what I think, and I do know Serbia reasonably well, the Serbs are very proud people.
And when they lost Kosovo, it was like if Britain had lost Kent, because it was the center of their culture, the center of their religion, it was the scene of a very famous battle.
And losing Kosovo meant and still means a great deal to the Serbs.
And of course, Jill Dando, in all innocence, trying to do something good for the world, fronted this appeal from the refugees from Kosovo shortly before she was murdered.
And at that time, the Serbians weren't playing around.
It was a very, very vicious war with many, many massacres.
And it was exacerbated by the fact that NATO had bombed buildings in Belgrade, in the capital of Serbia.
It also bombed the Chinese embassy by mistake.
But when they hit the television center, innocent people, including a make-up woman, were killed.
And that went down extremely badly.
It was like Russia bombing BBC television center or where you are sitting now At London Bridge.
It was very, very badly taken by the Serbians.
And it's quite possible because those people were fighting for their lives at the time that they did undertake this contract killing.
Because, Howard, the terrible thing about this murder was how it was done.
It takes a certain sort of man to go up closely so he could hear her breathing and shoot a woman in the head and then walk away or walk away at speed and disappear.
And you know, the interesting thing to my mind, Howard, is this.
In the London underworld, the British underworld, people talk, they talk about these things, but nobody ever has come out and said, I know who killed Jill Dando.
That points to my mind, I'm not a policeman, that somebody was brought into this country, somebody who was well equipped, was well prepared to carry out this vicious, terrible murder, and then was able to disappear like Scotch Mist, disappear and has never been found.
And of course, the other tragic element is that once they'd arrested Barry George, the Metropolitan Police stopped investigating.
They thought that they had their man.
And even after he'd been acquitted on the second appeal, the man who was leading the Scotland Yard inquiry, the police inquiry, when asked, he had to be coaxed a bit, but he said that he still believed that Barry George, that they got the right man at the time.
So therefore, there was no police incentive to look for the murderer.
But of course, subsequently, on appeal, that evidence was found to be very tenuous, the evidence of the gunshot residue, and Barry George is now a free man.
And the hunt, well, supposedly the search goes on for whoever really did this.
And that's the great disturbing factor of it.
Because it seems to me, and I wonder if it's, it must have occurred to you, Michael, that however good in inverted commas somebody might have been at carrying out an operation like this, and as you say, slipping out of the country unseen and unknown, is it possible to do such a thing?
And I don't expect you to have the answer to this because we've been asking it since 1999.
Is it possible to leave no trace, to be able to briskly walk away from the scene and disappear completely?
We know there weren't the amount of cameras and that kind of thing then.
You know, we didn't quite have that technology.
But everything and everybody leaves a trace.
And people talk.
Somebody must have known.
But it seems that nobody really has.
Yeah, there was never the killer clue at all.
I mean, the police were at sea.
They had a few leads.
A blue Range Rover seen going over Putney Bridge.
And of course, they dragged the river either side of the bridge in case a weapon had been thrown.
They never found the weapon.
They never found any trace of the car, even though it was on more than one camera.
They couldn't find it.
And this residue, this was one grain of explosive that was found in the pocket of a long coat that belonged to Barry George.
And it was established by Michael Mansfield that the evidence had not been kept in a completely sterile area.
In other words, it had been in an area where there were other exhibits in other cases.
And at least there was the possibility.
And there you see Barry George during his police interview.
And there we see in her prime Jill Dando.
You know, she was a very nice person.
I never bought the fact that she was sort of that girl next door.
She was very worldly.
She was very switched on.
She was career-minded.
There she is with in the background, her fiancée, who unfortunately she never royal gynecologist.
It's an absolute tragedy, made all the worse for her family and her friends by not knowing.
But one thing we do know, at least I believe, is that Barry George, when you see him, he could not have done it.
He was not that sort of person.
It took a certain sort of murderer and somebody with some experience, I would say, because that was the mafia at its very worst, the way that that was.
As you rightly say, this was an assassin's bullet.
This is a bullet that had been prepared for a job, and that was the job.
Well, that's precisely it.
And this crimping around the rim of the bullet casing, that was a telltale thing.
But the police seemed to disregard all that.
They felt they had Barry George.
I mean, the absurdity of it was, I mean, his flap was an absolute tip.
I'm sure he would even admit that.
And there were literally thousands of magazines and old newspapers piled up all over the place.
So the police in evidence said, oh, yes, they'd found four articles about Jill Dando.
He'd had four articles about Jill Dando.
But what they didn't say was that it was among thousands of other articles in thousands of other magazines and newspapers.
And she was always in the press at the time.
She even had a magazine cover, I think, in that week or around that time.
More than one.
I mean, it is appalling.
It is appalling.
And the people who did come forward and gave what evidence they could, who had glimpses of him, who were around, who heard the shot, all of those people have got a real stake in it.
But people who knew her, people who worked with her, people at the BBC, people around the world, people who watched the programmes, not to mention her family down in Western Supermare, parents, you know, who obviously went to their graves Not knowing who killed their beautiful daughter.
And it's an appalling thing.
It's a terrible thing to think that we won't know.
But I'm quite sure that when the jury acquitted Barry George, they did the right thing.
So that does leave the question of who did it.
Now, I don't know where you go from there.
I think it was her brother, who is a journalist himself on the Bristol Evening Post, was at the time.
He said he hoped that somebody coming towards the end of their life, maybe to clear their conscience, would come forward.
Now, I think that is a realistic hope.
I think it is something that we maybe would hope for.
Somebody, even on their deathbed, who had nothing to lose, might actually come forward because this word closure, overused many, many times.
But in this case, it really would be closure because I never walked down Gowan Avenue.
And I do sometimes do that because I'm a Fulham supporter, and it's quite close to the ground.
And I was a Fulham director of the club.
Been a Fulham supporter since I was the age of 12.
Everybody's got that.
And that is 68 years, I think.
Yes, that's right.
It's a long, long time.
So I occasionally do walk down that road.
In fact, after the death, I took an alternate route.
I didn't actually want to go past her house.
And I'm sure many, many people feel the same way about that.
And I'm sure that my dear friend Bob Wheaton would really love to know because I know he was in a very loving relationship with her and they were devoted to each other for a long, long time.
And it was appalling for him to suffer this blow and for him to be questioned.
Well, I'm sure he took it as part of the job of the police that he had to submit to that questioning, but it must have been very uncomfortable and very disturbing to him.
Which brings me to this, Michael, as we come to the end of this, and thank you for helping me here.
What was it like to be at the BBC and around the BBC in the aftermath of this?
I'm saying this for a reason because I've been looking back at footage of some of the people who presented this news, people who I respected hugely.
And, you know, I was not in the same league as them, but I was left in awe by their ability.
I'm talking about people like the late Peter Sissons, you know, who had to present that news.
Jenny Bond, who was presenting news at that time, who I'm sure is, you know, a hardened journalist, but had to go in front of the camera and do this.
She looked somewhat shocked, obviously, as she went on air to do that.
I think Kate A.D. was reporting from Gowan Avenue at the time.
Her colleagues, the people who saw her every day.
As far as you know, how did they come to terms with it?
Well, I think you just go into journalism mode.
You know, you've stood in front of the camera, you've stood behind the camera.
When needs must, you act professionally.
You have to report it.
Of course, you're shocked.
But it's no time for tears.
It's no time for emotion.
The information is all important.
I had, in fact, retired from the BBC.
I retired and left in 1988.
So this was almost more than 10 years later.
I was actually in this room here when our daughter rang me.
She was working at the Daily Mail in the newsroom.
And obviously, she knew that I knew Jill Dando and I knew other people there.
And she'd actually told me, and said, it's unbelievable.
The newsroom is completely and totally shocked.
We're still working out whether it really is her, but the rumor has gone round that she's been murdered in Fulham.
So that's how I heard.
But all the people that you mentioned, Sisters and so on, are seasoned professionals.
You just have to carry on.
You know, there's no time to think about it.
The job has to be done.
The information has to be imparted as quickly, smoothly, impartially, and unemotionally as possible.
There's no time for that.
I mean, even when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and people like Walter Cronkite on CBS, who knew JFK, I mean, all he had to do was pause like this.
He took his glasses off and he said, the death of the president is reported at 12.36 or whatever it was.
And then he did that and he put his glasses on and he went on with the program, as indeed, goodness gracious, we don't want it to happen.
You would do if you had a major breaking story in the middle of your show and it involved somebody you knew or you had a close relationship with or you admired.
You would carry on because that's part of the job.
Because that's your job.
And I remember a very, very small part of this story, but I was broadcasting to London and I broke, well, I passed on that news as other people did.
And I did my job, Michael, as you've just said.
But I remember going home that day and I didn't know Jill Dando.
I think I might have known a few people who knew her.
I didn't know her.
I'd never met her.
I probably would never have met her.
But I felt I knew her from the TV and I can remember going home and crying that day because I thought it was so senseless.
And all these years on, it makes no sense.
Until we get that deathbed confession, people are still going to be talking about it.
It may bring a little degree of closure for those who were close to her.
But a terrible tragedy.
I'm glad we talked about it because I don't think she should be forgotten.
And Michael, thank you very much indeed.
Well, Howard, I think there were noble tears.
I hope so.
Back, Glenn.
Thank you so much, Michael.
Take care.
Michael Cole and Jill Dando still sorely missed by all of us, and the sense of shock around that story I don't think will ever dissipate.
What do you say?
Before that, you heard Dr. Chris Smith talking about antimatter.
And before that, you heard the exclusive appearance of Jaime Massan about the claimed alien mummies that were demonstrated recently in Mexico.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained.
So until we meet again here, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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