Inside heartbreak of Alan Farthing after his fiancée Jill Dando was murdered just months before their wedding day

Edmuns DeMarsSeptember 26, 2023

TRAGIC Alan Farthing suffered heartbreak when his fiancée Jill Dando was murdered just months before their wedding day.

TV star Jill’s partner has previously spoken of his trauma after she was shot on the doorstep of their home in Fulham, south west London.

Jill Dando and Alan Farthing had set a date for their wedding shortly before her deathPhoto credit: Rex Features

The unsolved case has been re-examined with the release of the new three-part Netflix documentary series “Who Killed Jill Dando?”

Farthing is a renowned gynecologist who later oversaw the births of Prince William and Kate’s three children, George, Charlotte and Louis.

He was also the late queen’s surgeon and gynecologist.

Crimewatch and Holiday presenter Jill, 37, was killed by a single bullet on April 26, 1999.

She and Alan had recently become engaged and were due to marry later that year on September 25th, almost five months to the day after her death.

Farthing, who turned 60 in June this year, has a private practice in London’s Harley Street.

He is also Head of the Gynecological Cancer Unit at Imperial College Hospitals NHS Trust.

He and Jill met on a blind date at a dinner party in 1997 before announcing their engagement on January 31, 1999 – less than three months before her murder.

On the morning of her death she had left Farthing’s home in Chiswick, west London, and returned to her property in Fulham by car alone.

As she approached the front door around 11:32 a.m., she was shot once in the head.

Alan told the BBC at the time how he was “devastated”.

He said: “I can’t believe what’s happened – I can’t understand what’s happened.”

“I don’t think for a moment what might be going through someone’s mind when they do something like that to a beautiful, caring, well-meaning person.”

He also described finding a notebook containing her handwritten draft of her wedding speech a week after Jill’s murder.

He recalled being called by her agent Jon Roseman around 1pm in a rare interview not long after the murder – and wondering if Jill was with him after reports she had been attacked.

After becoming increasingly concerned, he then went to Charing Cross Hospital and was taken to the emergency department where she lay.

Why did something like this happen?

Jill Dando’s fiancé Alan Farthing

He said at the time: “She was lying in a hospital gown and looked peaceful.”

“I held her hand, which was still warm, and confirmed to the officer that it was Jill.

“As I was led back through this eternal corridor, I thought: Why did this happen?” How could it happen?

Alan, who is originally from Winchester in Hampshire, later teamed up with Jill’s Crimewatch co-host Nick Ross to raise £1.5 million for an academic institute in her name.

On the second anniversary of her death, the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science was founded at University College London.

Barry George, who lived less than half a mile away, was convicted of murder in 2001 and spent eight years behind bars.

However, at a retrial in 2008 he was acquitted and his conviction overturned.

He appears in the new series and says in a trailer: “It makes me angry that they took eight years of my life.”

Various theories have been put forward to help solve the case.

The Metropolitan Police were contacted by a woman who claimed the IRA was responsible for Jill’s murder.

Speculation also suggests that it was an attack by a London underworld gang in revenge because Jill had reported on them for Crimewatch.

Some believe she was murdered by Serbian warlords after pushing a call for Kosovar refugees.

Reports last year suggested she may have been killed on the orders of a Russian Mafia don after she rejected his advances while filming a Christmas show in Cyprus.