George 'was outside Dando's home hours before killing'

A City trader told a court today that she saw Barry George acting suspiciously outside Jill Dando’s house hours before she was shot dead.

Susan Mayes said she was sure the man she saw was George even though she saw his face for only five seconds.

He was standing by a maroon car which was double-parked in Gowan Avenue, Fulham, west London, where she and television personality Miss Dando lived, on April 26, 1999.

As she approached, he put his head down and started to clean the windscreen, she told the Old Bailey.

Miss Mayes said she had made a point of “clocking” his face because a man had been acting suspiciously near her home.

She picked George out of a video identification parade 18 months later.

She said: “I was certain that was the person I had seen.”

Miss Mayes rejected a defence suggestion that she may have mistaken the man with George whom she might have seen walking around in Fulham.

“I am satisfied he was the person I saw that morning,” she said. “I do not believe I have ever seen him in the neighbourhood.

“The reason I clocked him was that two days before, I had seen someone acting suspiciously outside our house.”

Miss Mayes said she was going to work at 7am when she saw George parked outside number 28 and looking across at the odd numbers.

She said: “As I walked nearer to him, he started cleaning his windscreen in a strange way. he was looking towards the ground as I drew alongside him.

“I thought at the time this man definitely does not want to be seen.”

George, 48, of Fulham, denies murdering BBC television presenter Miss Dando, 37, who was shot through the head on her doorstep at 29 Gowan Avenue at 11.30am.

The prosecution allege that loner George had obsessions with celebrities and guns.