BARRY George has vowed not to follow women anymore, after being cleared of the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando, for which he served eight years in prison.
The 48-year-old said he was a reformed character after being found not guilty of murder at the end of an eight-week retrial at the Old Bailey.
Dando was shot dead on her doorstep in Fulham, west London, and detectives investigating the killing b
ecame increasingly convinced George was the gunman after they discovered he had followed numerous women and taken thousands of pictures of them.
During three weeks of surveillance before his arrest George, who also lived in Fulham, was seen to approach 38 women and try to engage them in conversation.
In an interview with a Sunday newspaper, George said he realised his history of pestering women had fuelled police suspicion about him, and promised to change his behaviour.
"I don't want to spend any more time in any of Her Majesty's holiday camps… I won't follow women anymore. I know it's wrong," he said.
"I will be vigilant from now on. I am never going to give anyone the chance to send me away again. I have changed."
George said he could not have killed Dando, 37, because he was stalking another woman at the time of the shooting.
He insisted that at the time she was murdered he was following another woman after leaving a disability centre in Fulham.
The Crimewatch presenter was shot dead on her doorstep in Fulham, west London, at around 11.30am on April 26, 1999. Between 10.30am and 12.33pm George insists he was either at the centre or walking beside the woman.
"I walked with her for a bit, and from her perspective maybe it was unwanted attention. But she didn't make that clear," he said.
"It didn't seem like she was telling me to go away. If she'd told me to leave I'd have done so straight away.
"That was at 12.33pm. I know because just a minute before I'd made a call from my mobile to check how much credit I had left."
He said he hoped his life would return to normal now that he had been released from custody. "I don't want people to always say: 'There's Barry George, he killed Jill Dando'," he said. "I want them to say: 'There's Barry George, he didn't kill Jill Dando'."
A central plank of the original case against George was a single speck of firearms residue found in the pocket of his coat.
A first appeal was rejected, but in November last year his conviction was quashed after it emerged that the residue, although of the same type as that found on Dando, could have come from other sources.
George said he believed the police planted the residue.
"The police made it up. They're responsible for the gunpowder. I've got pictures of police going in my flat with guns – that's how it got there," he said.
After eight years in prison for the crime and eight weeks in the dock during his retrial, George said the end of his ordeal came as a surprise.
"I can hardly believe I'm a free man at last. I am well relieved. When they said 'not guilty' I was really shocked," he said.
"I was shocked that there was any verdict at all. At my first trial the jury took five days and I thought it would be next week.
"I was preparing myself for another weekend in my cell. Even my legal team was about to leave the court for the day, and then we got the phone call to say there was a verdict."
George is now expected to seek compensation for the eight years he spent in prison, which experts believe could be at least £250,000.
The full article contains 646 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
