On 28 May 2000,
Barry George (aka Barry Bulsara) was charged with the murder of Jill Dando, and on 2 July 2001 he was found guilty at the Old Bailey. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In November 2007, he successfully appealed his conviction for her murder and was held in custody pending retrial. Following an eight-week hearing, he was acquitted on 1 August 2008. His initial conviction was found to be unsafe as it had largely rested on a tiny particle of gunshot residue in a coat of his which matched the kind of gun used at the scene of the murder, but experts could not say for sure that it was from the same gun, and it did not prove he was at the scene, let alone pulled the trigger, as the particle could have contaminated his coat in other ways. The judge in the retrial said it was therefore inadmissible as evidence against him.
