The witnesses of Jill Dando’s murder described seeing a white man of a roughly similar age, height and build in dark, smart clothing acting suspiciously around the time she was killed.

Eight witnesses of Jill Dando’s murder have described seeing a man acting suspiciously during a crucial 18 minute period. Every one of them spoke of a white man of a roughly similar age, height and build wearing dark, smart clothing, who was near the crime scene in Fulham, South West London.

On the morning of April 26, 1999, five said he stood out because he was running in a suit, while two said he was sweating heavily. All of the sightings were made between the moment when Jill was last seen alive, at approximately 11.29am, and when her body was discovered at 11.47am.

In the weeks after the murder, they were the main focus of the police investigation, with officers releasing an efit of a “sweating man” they were hunting. Despite raising actions to “trace, interview and eliminate” the man or men from their enquiries, he or they, are still wanted 26 years on, reports the Mirror.

Detectives homed in on a local man with severe learning difficulties, Barry George, nearly a year after the murder. Crucially, none of the eight witnesses said George was the man they had seen. He was jailed for eight years for the murder before being cleared after a retrial.

Police are now being urged to launch a review after a van driver, one of the eight witnesses, said a man he nearly hit looked like ruthless Serbian assassin Milorad Ulemek. A female witness told us last year that she was certain she had seen Ulemek in the same stretch of the Fulham Palace Road at around the same time. Ulemek, who speaks good English, was of a similar age, build, height and hair colour to the descriptions given by the eight.

Now 57 and serving 40 years in a Serbian jail, he led a unit of hitmen and plotted assassinations for late Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Last year we named him for the first time in connection with Jill’s murder after a facial comparison expert said he was identical to a CCTV image of a man still wanted for questioning.

At the time Jill was shot, UK planes were bombing Serbia and she was one of the most famous faces on TV, presenting BBC shows such as Crimewatch and Holiday. It was feared Jill may have been targeted for fronting a BBC charity appeal for Kosovan refugees.

A third witness, Ken Williams, now 83, had just placed a bet when he reported seeing an athletic suspect spin off the bonnet of a moving car on the same stretch of road as the two motorist witnesses. Ken was waiting at a pelican crossing on the Fulham Palace Road with his black labrador Angie when the man appeared approximately 300 meters from where Jill lay dead outside her Gowan Avenue home.

The exact time that Jill was killed is not known for certain. Ken’s betting slip had a timestamp of 11.37.02, police files show, and the Tote bookies was less than two minutes walk from the pelican crossing. Jill had last been seen alive at around 11.29 getting into her car a few minutes drive from her home.

Her neighbour, Richard Hughes, then a 32-year-old financial trader, told detectives he saw the killer a few minutes after he had made a short phone call which billing records showed was at 11.33, police files reveal. Mr Hughes told detectives he thought the murder was “nearer to 11.40”.

But the only other person to definitely see the gunman, Goeffrey Upfill-Brown, then 71, estimated it could not have been after 11.29, a finding contradicted by the last known sighting. Jill’s body was not discovered immediately and the first 999 call was made at 11.47.

A sixth witness was standing at a bus stop eating an orange 120 meters from Ken on the Fulham Palace Road at approximately 11.40. The 34-year-old man told police he was joined by a “sweating man” in a dark suit in his 30s who was 5ft11 who crossed the road from the direction of Bishops Park Road.

An e-fit produced by this witness looks like Ulemek and features a mark across the bridge of his nose. The Serb has a similar distinctive mark. He said: “He was white but had what I call a foreign nose…it was prominent. It also had a very obvious mark across the bridge similar to somebody who would wear glasses a lot.” He said the man appeared “agitated as if something was wrong” and was sweating so much his collar was wet.

The sweating man failed to get on either the 74 or the 220 the only two buses that the stop served and the witness said this “registered this as a strange event”. He went to police as soon as he heard Jill had been murdered because he felt he had seen something important.

The seventh witness was a driver of the 74 bus who came forward after recognising the e-fit. He said it was just after 11.45 when he picked up a man in his 30s wearing a dark suit who was sweating. The passenger said “Putney Bridge station” in a quiet voice with no noticeable accent and got off at around 11.56.

The female motorist, one of the two witnesses who says she saw Ulemek, was driving north up the Fulham Palace Road around 200 meters from where Ken was. Her vehicle was captured on CCTV crossing Putney Bridge from south of the river at 11.24am and the prosecution at George’s trial claimed she was too early to see the killer.

But the woman, who said she knew the stretch of road well, believed it could have taken her up to 15 minutes, meaning she could have seen the gunman. She picked out the man she saw running in CCTV a month after the murder.

The suspect, in a dark suit and tie known as “Man X”, was pictured in Putney Bridge tube station at 12.00.32, close to the 74 bus stop where the driver said the man got off. In a report compiled for the Daily Mirror, facial comparison expert Emi Polito could find no differences between Ulemek and Man X.

The eighth witness was a 23-year-old aromatherapist who was at home on the Fulham Palace Road when she said she saw a man run past in a suit while talking on a mobile phone.