Tycoon hits back at Dando murder claim
A FRENCH fashion boss who is accused in legal papers of hiring a hitman who allegedly murdered Jill Dando in a case of mistaken identity has dismissed the allegations as “fanciful nonsense”.
Gerald Marie, 72, is alleged to have used the Russian mafia to try and kill former BBC journalist Lisa Brinkworth, now 55.
But their gunman may have assassinated TV presenter Ms Dando by mistake, according to extraordinary allegations in legal papers filed in Paris.
The papers filed are part of an enquiry into multiple rape complaints against Marie, ex-husband of supermodel Linda Evangelista.
Ms Dando was 37 when she was shot dead outside her home in Fulham, west London, in a notorious cold case dating back 23 years.
Now Ms Brinkworth claims Marie, former boss of the Elite agency, wanted her dead because she claimed he sexually assaulted her in 1998 while she was working undercover to expose crimes in the fashion industry. In the court papers, Ms Brinkworth’s lawyers reference an alleged conversation witnessed by a former Elite executive in which Marie considered hiring Russian gangsters to “dealwith a problem”.
The papers read: “Shortly afterwards, in April 1999, Jill Dando, another BBC journalist, was shot dead.”
France’s statute of legal limitations for prosecutions at the time stated that sexual assault had to be reported within three years, and rapes within 10 years.
Marie claims that the links with the Dando case have been “made up so as to try and get the statute of limitations removed”.
His legal spokesman said yesterday: “It’s fanciful nonsense, aimed at suggesting that Lisa Brinkworth was in fear of her life, and so was too scared to report the alleged attack within a reasonable time limit. In fact, Lisa Brinkworth made no effort to report any kind of sexual abuse at the time, and only started to take action decades later.”
Ms Brinkworth had pretended to be a fashion model for the BBC’s MacIntyre Investigates.
In the legal documents, Ms Brinkworth is described as being “blonde, and of the same height and similar build as Jill Dando”.
They also said Ms Brinkworth and Ms Dando were neighbours in Fulham.
A spokesman for the Paris prosecutors office confirmed that the enquiry into Marie was “ongoing” and that nobody had been arrested or charged.