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Dando suspect ‘leapt out with machine gun to startle hotel guests’
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent12 Jun 2008
The man accused of murdering Jill Dando terrified hotel guests by dressing in combat fatigues and leaping out at them armed with a machine gun, the Old Bailey heard today.
Barry George pointed the gun through a window and made "SAS-style entries" creating panic, the jury was told.
He would also visit Hyde Park and Holland Park and follow women, the court heard. A friend told how he became envious when she was asked out for a drink by a member of the Red Devils parachute display team.
When George, 48, applied to join the Territorial Army under the name Steve Majors - an amalgam of actor and character from The Six Million Dollar Man TV series - he gave his occupation as "unemployed singer".
George is standing trial for the second time for the murder of BBC television presenter Dando, 37, who was shot dead on her doorstep in Gowan Avenue, Fulham in April 1999.
Statements from Janice Dobbins, who is now dead but knew George in the Eighties when he lived at the Stanhope Gardens hotel in Kensington, were read to the court today.
At that time George called himself Thomas Palmer, the name of a real-life SAS hero.
Mrs Dobbins told how she was in the hotel TV room with other guests when "all of a sudden from behind the curtain a man jumped out wearing combat gear, a gas mask, a ski mask, a belt with shotgun cartridges and holding a small machine gun about 2ft long in both hands. I screamed and jumped off the sofa. He ran but I recognised it was Thomas. Everyone went mad and started swearing at him. He just laughed."
She said George would regularly dress in combat gear and carry the gun around the hotel. He claimed he was a member of the SAS and had helped to free the hostages in the Iranian embassy siege of 1980.
George kept in touch with her after she moved to Fulham. "One night about 2am I was having drinks in the flat with friends when the window opened and a gun was pushed through into the living room," she said.
"I saw a figure holding it and just knew it was Thomas. He was wearing a ski mask ... Everybody screamed and panicked and the figure left."
Mrs Dobbins continued: "I was aware he would go to Kensington Park, Hyde Park and Holland Park where he followed women. He would be in my company and then just go off and follow women and I would not see him again until he was back at the hotel.
"This did not surprise me because he would often go up to women in the street and start chatting.
"He would hand out business-type cards and at one stage printed leaflets offering his services teaching English to Japanese girls."
Earlier the court heard that Mrs Dobbins's son David had said that George had forced his way into a basement flat dressed in a balaclava and pretended to launch an attack on friends. He fired a blank round from a handgun, according to Mr Dobbins, who has also died since making statements to the police.
The case continues.
