Real Crime TV - GazetteLive online - Catching Britain’s Killers: The Crimes that Changed Us TV -
This woman has battled for 13 years to get justice for her murdered daughter [Julie Hogg]. She knows who the murderer is: this man [Billy Dunlop] who persuaded the courts to acquit him. Then, when it was legally safe, boasted he was the killer all along. Real Crime [with Mark Austin] s2e2: Justice for Julie, ITV 2002
The police soon had a prime suspect: Billy Dunlop who was lodging two streets from Julie’s house … In May 1991 Billy Dunlop went on trial in Newcastle for Julie Hogg’s murder … Julie’s housekeys were discovered under Dunlop’s floorboards and had his fingerprints on them, semen on the blanket around Julie’s body could have been his. ibid.
She’d had many lovers and her private life was splashed across the newspapers. ibid.
Dunlop had sex with Julie once in her home a month before she was murdered. This allowed him to explain away his fingerprints on her keys and his possible DNA on the blanket around the body. ibid.
The judge ordered a retrial. ibid.
Dunlop was formally acquitted of murdering Julie Hogg. ibid.
For almost 17 years, Billy Dunlop thought he had got away with murder.
And had it not been for his victim’s mum and her incredible battle to change the double jeopardy law, the evil killer could still be walking our streets.
Pizza delivery girl Julie Hogg was just 22 and a mum to three-year-old Kevin when she was killed in November 1989.
Her disappearance was initially treated as a missing person inquiry.
But 80 days later, Ann found her daughter’s decomposing and partially mutilated body behind a bath panel in the young mum’s Billingham home. GazetteLive online article 28th November 2013, ‘Crimes that Shook Teeside: Double Jeopardy Killer Billy Dunlop’
A murderer who walked free, inspiring one other to challenge an 800-year-old law. Her campaign would bring killers to justice who had until then been getting away with murder. Catching Britain’s Killers: The Crimes that Changed Us II, BBC 2019
Double Jeopardy: Julie Hogg: a forensic team went in to search Julie’s house … ‘Screaming: she’s under the bath!’ … The police began looking at Julie’s private life … ‘All the evidence started to point to one of these men as the prime suspect: and that man was Billy Dunlop.’ ibid.
In 1991, over a year since Julie’s body was found, Billy Dunlop stood trial for murder in Newcastle’s Crown Court … They had failed to reach a unanimous decision and couldn’t come to a majority verdict either. The judge discharged them and ordered a retrial … A new jury heard the defence call all the evidence into question once more. ibid.
‘Dunlop has told the court that he did kill Julie Hogg. Why then is he serving a six year sentence for lying and not a life sentence for taking the life of another human being?’ ibid. dude reading trial account