Within hours of Jill Dando’s murder, wild rumours had spread about who could have been responsible for killing the Crimewatch presenter.

Today, as Barry George adjusts to life as a free man cleared of the journalist’s murder, speculation and theories about who had a motive for the shooting are rife again.

With in hours of her body being found in a pool of blood on her doorstep, police considered the possibility that a criminal gang had sought revenge after being featured on Miss Dando’s Crimewatch programme.

Through the BBC television series, Miss Dando and her co-presenter Nick Ross had been pivotal to the conviction of numerous criminals and organised gangs whose crimes they had featured.

Detectives looked at the possibility that a contract killer had been hired to assassinate her in revenge for someone’s conviction. However, they eventually ruled out that scenario.

One of the most dramatic theories emerged in court at the first trial when George’s barrister, Michael Mansfield, QC, revealed a plot that included Radovan Karadzic and his enforcer Arkan.

They produced a National Criminal Intelligence Service report suggesting a hitman was following the orders of Arkan, the Serbian warlord, who wanted retaliation for the Nato bombing of a television station in Belgrade. Miss Dando was also thought to have angered some Serbs after she presented a programme raising money to help Kosovan orphans in 1998. She even received hate mail about the broadcast.

The fact she had been forced to her knees and executed with a crimped bullet, a device that can prevent blood splashing on the gunman, suggested the work of a professional hitman.

Other theories focused no whether a jealous ex-lover had harboured murderous intent after she announced her engagement to Alan Farthing a few months earlier. Again, police ruled out that suggestion.

Her brother, Nigel, had also told detectives she had been concerned about “some guy pestering her.” And, who was the supposed ’fan’ called ’Julian’ who had approached her days before her murder and fitted the description of the suspect seen near the home? Was he the man seen loitering near Miss Dando’s house, wearing a trilby hat and baggy suit on the day of the killing.

Whoever murdered her could never have known she was about to arrive at her home, 29 Gowan Avenue, on the morning of April 26, 1999.

Her hectic working life, as well as her obligations to travel the world filming for the Holiday Programme, and habit of spending most nights at her fiance’s home in Chiswick, west London, meant she only went to the Fulham property periodically to check the post and messages on the answer machine.

Times Recommends

• In Margot Fonteyn's footsteps
• Forget beautiful people, let's have wonky Brits
• Fundamentalist brew: faith and power