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Police, friend, anybody.

Just let us know you're alive, Julie. That's all.

REPORTER: Julie, whose maiden name is Ming,

was driven home in the early hours

but had vanished when her family called in the morning.

I drove down to the house.

My gut feeling straight away said there was something wrong.

KNOCKING She's knocking on the door,

the window, no answer.

I've gone up the stairs to the bathroom.

I'm screaming, "She's under the bath.

"She's under the bath."

REPORTER: Today, detectives launched a full-scale murder hunt

involving 40 officers.

The prime suspect was local man... Billy Dunlop.

REPORTER: The opening of the murder trial today

follows a high-profile police investigation.

I can picture him just sat down there.

Dunlop walked out of court a free man.

You've got no justice for your daughter,

and you've got a man out in local pubs bragging he killed her.

All I wanted was justice for Julie.

MAN: All right.

SHERIDAN SMITH: I admire Ann so much.

Rolling.

Everything that she's gone through

that we're having to re-enact and relive every day.

I mean, I can only imagine, you know,

so I'm only scratching the surface, and it's very emotional for me.

She's just an incredible woman.

Thank you so much for today, Ann.

If you need a break at any point, just say.

OK.

REPORTER: It's hard to believe

that nearly 17,000 people work here, but they do.

Many of them are on shifts, of course,

because Billingham never stops.

SHEILAGH MATHESON: Billingham was quite a close-knit community,

and still is, the kind of place where you know your neighbours.

Most people would be employed in a big chemical plant, ICI Billingham,

or they might commute into Middlesbrough.

But it was very much

your traditional working-class population.

This is where Ann Ming grew up in the 1950s.

At 16, she fell in love.

I said to my friend's boyfriend, "Who was that?"

He said, "Oh, it's Charlie."

He said, "His mother's English, his father's Chinese."

I thought, "Oh, he looks full of Eastern promise, I'll have him."

SHE CHUCKLES

That was the start of Charlie.

Ann and Charlie married, and they soon started a family.

We'd bought a new house,

and the neighbour came to the door with a letter.

She said, "We don't mind you being here

"cos we see how clean you are,

"but when your husband's friends come to visit him,

"it lowers the tone of the area."

They had to put up with slurs and questioning about, you know,

mixed-race children,

and Ann just stuck it out.

The couple had three children.

Julie was the middle child.

She was fairly quiet. She did gymnastics.

She'd been in the Brownies and then in the Guides.

She'd stand up for herself if she thought she was in the right.

At 18, Julie met and married a local painter and decorator.

I mean, she was a young girlie.

She was happy, she wanted to get married.

Julie and her new husband found a house

just five minutes from her mum and dad.

Not long after, they had a son, Kevin.

My mum was a family-oriented person, quite a happy person.

Loved music, loved to dance.

If I didn't see her every day, she was on the phone every day,

but most days, I saw her.

By 1989, the couple had split up.

Julie's husband moved to London,

while she stayed in the Billingham house with Kevin.

She worked in a local pizza shop.

Cos they work late, she had Kevin used to come and stay

with me and his grandad, stay overnight.

Let's get you ready, or Mam'll be late for work.

Will you ring us in the morning?

We need to leave around nine, so can you call me at 7:30?

You be a good boy for Nana, OK? Mm-hm.

'The last contact I had with my mum was November 15, '89.'

I was going to stay at my grandma's for the evening

cos my mum was working,

and the following day, she was...

going to court for her separation.

She's not picking up.

You know our Julie, she'd sleep through a bombing raid.

When Julie didn't pick up, Ann and Kevin went round to check.

I have very little memory of from when we went down to the house,

apart from being in the car.

When I got there, all the curtains were closed,

doors were locked, and I didn't have a key.

I shouted through the letterbox - nothing at all.

My gut feeling straight away said there was something wrong.

She's knocking on the door, the window,

and, again, no answer.

Ann went to find her son, who was working nearby.

'He came round the house.'

And the back door had, like, narrow glass panels.

'We broke in that.'

It's all right, stay there.

'I was stood there with Kevin,

'who was obviously crying for his mammy.

'My son opened the curtains, opened the front window.

'He said, "There's something wrong in here, Mam." '

"Everywhere's really tidy."

She was quite untidy, Julie.

There was nothing.

No sign of her at all and no keys anywhere.

She's probably got home from work, decided to go to a nightclub.

Maybe she got drunk, she's sleeping it off somewhere.

I think the police didn't take it too seriously at the time

because initially it was within a 24-hour window.

In today's terms, a misper's not really a priority

until, I think, it's 48 hours.

It was very frustrating because, I mean,

it was totally out of character for her not to be there,

especially the fact that I had the young little boy with me.

There'd been no arguments, there'd been nothing, you know?

Julie was officially listed as missing

two days after she disappeared.

REPORTER: Julie, whose maiden name is Ming,

is five feet, three inches tall and slim with hazel eyes.

She was driven home in the early hours of November the 16th

but had vanished when her family called in the morning.

When Julie disappeared,

it was a front page story in the local press.

Everybody around here would have known about it,

but maybe not further afield.

Four days later, following pressure from Ann,

police sent in a forensics team.

There was fingerprint dust all over the place.

Then we went... At one point, we were in the bathroom.

There was me, my daughter, the head of the forensics

and the police lady.

And on the window was Julie's make-up bag.

I said, "You're suggesting she took off to London?

"She wouldn't go to the end of the road without her make-up on."

The police searched for five days...

..but found nothing suspicious.

The inspector came to see us, and he said...

he couldn't guarantee us

that our daughter hasn't come to grief somewhere in the country

but could guarantee us

that nothing untoward has happened to her in the house.

So I said, "Well, if that's what you're telling me,

"me, as a mother, I'm telling you -

"I know something's happened to her."

Weeks had passed with no news of Julie's whereabouts.

Ann turned to the media.

She sat in front of the cameras, in front of the press,

giving this appeal from - definitely from the heart -

very emotive.

'And beside her, the most poignant thing was,

'there was Julie's little three-year-old boy.'

She would never just go off and leave Kevin, never at all. Never.

REPORTER: And were you and the rest of the family close?

Very close. Like I say, she saw us every day.

The last thing she said to me was,

"Don't forget to phone me at 7:30 in the morning to wake me up."

Just please phone anybody.

Police, friend, anybody.

Just let us know you're alive, Julie. That's all.

We, as a family, got the keys back.

Myself and my dad were to move back into the property.

I went down to the house with my son-in-law

to go and bring our Julie's things out.

And then my son-in-law was gonna go down the next day

and start to clean the fingerprint dust,

which was all over the place,

and to switch the central heating on.

There was a strange smell

from the bathroom.

My dad rang my gran.

I said to him, "It might be the toilet.

"Put some bleach down the toilet and don't use the toilet."

So the next day, I drove down to the house.

When I got to the house,

he opened the door, and I said, "Have you got rid of the smell?"

'I've gone up the stairs to the bathroom.'

Inside, I'm screaming to myself,

"Please, God, don't let it be Julie."

'I leaned over the bath to smell the wall,

'hoping that smell would be from the tiles being taken off.

CLATTERING

'The bath panel was loose. It was loose at one end.

'The smell had come up,

'so I just bent down and pulled it open.'

CLATTERING

'I'm screaming, "She's under the bath!

'She's under the bath." '

SOBBING

I was at the bottom of the stairs when...

she had discovered... my mum's body.

What? SOBBING: She's under the bath.

It really was horrible.

I just wanted to get out the house and it not to be true.

That was the start of a living nightmare.

REPORTER: 22-year-old Julie was last seen alive

in the early hours of November the 16th last year.

SHERIDAN SMITH: But three months later,

Julie's mother found her body under the bath.

Horrendous.

I sort of realised then she was never coming back, but...

I'd been proved right.

I'd said all along something had happened to her.

The police had said, you know, "No news is good news."

Cleveland Police had searched the house for five days

and found nothing suspicious.

Julie had been there all along.

I, honestly and truthfully,

they were in that house all day for five days, I...

Even to this day,

I still do not know what they were doing in that house.

And in that moment I found her...

..any hope of anything had all gone.

And I just wanted to know what had happened to her

and who was responsible.

SHERIDAN: You doing OK, Ann? Yeah. Yeah, I'm all right.

KEVIN: When the police were in the house after the body was discovered,

they found articles, my mum's diary,

bank cards in the loft -

which were missed on the first search.

Human error.

That's the only reason why I can think that something...

you know, the body wasn't found sooner.

The way the search was handled was catastrophically bad,

not just in terms of the way that Ann was left

and found her own daughter's body behind a bath,

but not least because they lost three months of forensic evidence

with a body that, unfortunately, had decomposed.

REPORTER: Today, detectives launched a full-scale murder hunt

involving 40 officers.

MARK BRAITHWAITE: Well, going back to 1989,

I was a young detective sergeant.

I was 30 years of age.

When the missing person investigation became a murder case,

Mark Braithwaite joined as case officer.

Well, it was clear that she'd been killed.

It was clear that her body had been badly mutilated.

And it was clear that her body had been concealed behind the bath panel

by whoever was responsible.

Our job was to identify who that person was.

Mark here will be your family liaison officer.

This must be a very... difficult and frightening time for you both.

Difficult?!

Our daughter has been murdered. This is hell.

Ann was understandably still traumatised and upset...

completely untrusting of Cleveland Police.

Detectives began with the most recent men in Julie's life.

As the investigation moved forward,

there were several people of potential interest to us.

Some of the men had links to a local rugby club.

But DNA from the blanket Julie was wrapped in

ruled out all but one.

One of these individuals came out as the prime suspect.

Local man - Billy Dunlop.

Well known in the area.

Played rugby... but with a fearsome reputation

as a violent, so-called hard man.

Dunlop lived two streets away from Julie,

and her keys were found hidden

under the floorboards at the house where he was staying.

WOMAN: Yes! Who's drunk?

Right here at the beat. Whoo!

All right, Billy? On my radio!

On the night that Julie met her death,

Dunlop had been at the rugby club at Billingham with his pals.

They'd been drinking to excess.

There'd been strippers there, so they were sexually aroused.

He'd been involved in a nasty altercation with another man.

He had to be pulled off him to prevent him hurting him further.

And he'd received an injury to his eye

for which he required some hospital treatment.

After leaving hospital, Dunlop went to his friend's house -

next door to Julie's.

He'd indicated to his pal that he might pop around Julie's.

The witness evidence of his friend was that he left the house,

but he didn't see him go next door,

but he clearly did.

We were told by the police of him being arrested and charged...

with Julie's murder.

We didn't know anything about him, really.

I mean, just that he'd been involved with it...

in a fight, the night...

of the night Julie had been murdered.

More than a year later,

Billy Dunlop went on trial for murder.

REPORTER: The opening of the murder trial today

follows a high-profile police investigation.

The accused, William Dunlop,

is said to have gone round to Julie's house expecting sex.

I can picture him just sat down there.

'Then when it went to the court at Newcastle...

'you couldn't believe, you know, the evidence they had against him.

There was the fingerprints on the key fob.

On the blanket, there was sperm that matched his.

There was fibres from his jumper he wore the night at the rugby club.

As a prosecution team, we felt the evidence in the case

was, although not conclusive,

was sufficiently strong to satisfy a jury as to his guilt.

In court, Ann had to relive finding Julie's body.

Even though she was wrapped in a blanket,

I knew that it was her, our Julie.

'The smell was unspeakable.

'It was in my lungs, it was everywhere.'

It was terrible, that.

Because the bloomin' defence barrister, he said to me,

"You know, which hand did you put behind the bath pan?

"Your right hand or your left hand?"

And all the time, I'm in the bathroom, getting flashbacks.

REPORTER: Julie Hogg is described as having been a promiscuous woman

who had previously had sex with the man now accused of her murder.

The way that the defence team ran... Dunlop's defence

was to effectively slurry Julie's character...

drag her reputation through the mud.

Dunlop didn't need to prove that he hadn't murdered Julie.

All he needed to do was get enough doubt into the minds of the jury.

While the defence attacked Julie's character,

they also had another strategy.

The defence case was effectively

that he'd possibly been framed by the police,

but it was not him.

He demonstrated in the witness box

the same careful, thoughtful,

manipulative approach

that I'd taken from the interviews.

Dunlop had sown enough doubt in the jury's mind.

They were unable to reach a verdict.

The judge had no option but to order a retrial.

'At the second trial, the defence team was seeking

'to convince the jury, effectively,

'that Julie may have died a natural death.

'Through engaging in a consensual act,

'she had met her death in that way.'

Absurd though that seemed to us at the time.

It worked.

After 13 days,

the second jury were also unable to reach a verdict.

The judge ordered that Dunlop be acquitted.

HE GASPS

Yes! Oh! JUDGE: Order.

He's getting away with murder.

Get away from me! Look, I know...

No, he wasn't... I know...

But in another blow to the family,

an 800-year-old law called double jeopardy

meant he could never be tried again.

Dunlop walked out of court a free man...

..effectively knowing that even if he admitted to Julie's killing,

we couldn't charge him with murder again.

Ann had to watch the man

who she knew in her heart had murdered her daughter walk free.

Not only that, he was living in the same community as her.

To everyone else, Dunlop was now a victim,

wrongly prosecuted.

And now he wanted to tell HIS story.

I was so... so relieved, but, er...

I'm so confused,

you know, with everything that's gone on in the last 20 months.

I don't know. I just, er...

Just... It is just a relief that it's all over with now.

What do you think of the murderer?

Well, I haven't got words that, er,

could explain, er, express that-that person.

Off camera, Billy couldn't help bragging

that he'd gotten away with murder.

After his acquittal, his family held a party for him.

And within weeks, he was bragging in pubs.

People were telling my grandparents of what he was saying.

The morning after the party, and everyone is recovering.

You've got no justice for your daughter.

And you've got a man out in local pubs bragging he killed her.

Billy's laid there feeling ill.

It was just awful.

This is when the trees are all...

Yeah, the gardens are all nice, and the flowers are out. Yeah. Yeah.

SHERIDAN SMITH: Kevin Hogg was just three when his mum was murdered.

Growing up, I knew something was wrong.

I was 13...

..and I'd heard rumours.

A friend had told me that she'd slipped in the bath,

and I didn't know what to believe.

Like, my natural instincts were to believe my parents.

And then I really didn't know what to do.

It must have been really damaging for him.

The family, presumably, trying to put on a brave face

and look after him

and remember that they mustn't upset him too much.

Ten years later, he came across the truth.

By then, Dunlop was in prison for attacking another woman.

But he couldn't be charged with Julie's murder again

because of the double jeopardy law.

Finding out the news

that my mum had been murdered was absolutely horrific.

Having to digest what had actually happened to my mum

and being told that my...

the person who had killed my mum was in prison

but not for the offence

was just phenomenal on my mental health,

level of understanding of how a person can kill someone

and not be convicted of that crime.

I wanted justice for, like, for all the family,

and I wanted justice for Kevin,

because it was difficult to him to comprehend.

It seemed cut and dried, you know. They had evidence against him.

And because of a jury failing to reach a decision,

he was walking free and bragging he'd killed his mam.

It was awful, really.

Knowing that his mother hadn't received justice left Kevin scarred.

Between the ages of 18 and 20,

I went completely off the rails with alcohol, drugs.

Erm... It just really wasn't pleasant.

I... I had no respect for... or regard to my family.

And it was just going to end in a bad way.

It's only in subsequent years, as time's gone on,

I've learned to understand and become at peace with certain things.

Dunlop thought he was untouchable,

and he still couldn't keep quiet about what he'd done.

At some point, Dunlop decides, for whatever reason,

that he's going to write a letter to an ex-girlfriend,

then he wrote a letter to one of his friends.

And both these letters had the same thing in common -

that he was admitting to the murder of Julie Hogg.

By lying about Julie's murder in court,

Dunlop had perjured himself.

But detectives needed more evidence.

Well, that was the problem.

That's all he was basically saying.

"People know I've killed Julie, but I've actually killed her."

So they weren't very sort of detailed, anything like that.

It was just a simple admission.

Dunlop was speaking with a prison officer who wore a wire.

She recorded 90 hours of material with him.

Over a three-month period, he admitted to killing Julie again.

A bit more about what had gone on, but nothing in any detail.

But that was enough.

Dunlop was arrested and taken to Stockton Police Station.

He's very, very calm and collected.

Didn't rush anything.

I suppose you'd say his normal demeanour.

At some point, he states

Julie starts winding him up about his injuries.

And I suppose you could say that's like a red rag to a bull.

He just lost it, and then he strangled her and killed her.

The police came to see us, and they said,

"We've got... We're telling you now,

"we can charge him with two counts of perjury."

So at that time, I mean, perjury was a poor substitute for murder,

but it was better than no conviction at all.

REPORTER: Today, he spoke only twice.

That was to plead guilty to each charge of perjury.

On the count of perjury,

you will be imprisoned for six years

to be served consecutive to your current sentence.

MUTTERING

You murdering bastard! Ann.

Six years for murdering my daughter!

I'll see you rot in hell, you bastard.

REPORTER: Today, Mrs Ming had listened in tears

to the harrowing details of her daughter's death

and had made an angry outburst in court

when the judge passed sentence.

I came out that court that day, and I said to me husband, I said,

"I am not gonna sit back

"and let them do nothing about this double jeopardy."

I think it was a pivotal moment for Ann.

This nightmare was just going to continue.

And so, suddenly, her campaign to get justice for Julie

focused not on individual trials,

but a really fundamental, important thing,

which was changing the law.

Ann went straight to the top,

asking her MP to help her and Charlie meet the Home Secretary.

REPORTER: Stockton MP Frank Cook

is personally handing a letter from the family to Jack Straw.

It worked.

Within days, they were walking into the Home Office.

I said, "This man's making a mockery of the British justice system."

I said, "You can confess in a court of law in England

"that you're responsible for a murder,

"and you can only be charged with perjury

"because of an 800-year-old law."

I said, "That's not right."

OK, well, tell me this.

What would you do if you were in our situation?

If you're to have any chance of success,

you'll have to get the Law Commission on your side.

All right, well, give me the name of the person

I need to speak to there, then, please.

You've got grit. I'll give you that.

We've been wronged, Jack. How can I stay silent?

SHERIDAN SMITH: Ann's daughter Julie was murdered in 1989.

The prime suspect had walked free from court, officially innocent

but later boasting about his crime.

That's the one where you made the request to meet the Law Commission,

and they'd written back. Oh, yeah.

Alan Wilkie. Judge Alan Wilkie, yeah.

Ann was now fighting to change the law so he could be tried again.

Ann's approach to this was to be utterly committed

and utterly selfless.

If someone showed interest in Ann's case,

she was happy to talk to them,

and she made sure that this was never far from the headlines.

Not everyone wanted double jeopardy scrapped.

Critics worried that innocent people could be tried again and again.

MAN: Stand by, please.

Ann faced Imran Khan,

who had exposed police failings in the Stephen Lawrence murder case.

With all its power and resources,

the State shouldn't be permitted to make repeated,

theoretically unlimited attempts to convict a man

when he doesn't have the analogous resources

to find the evidence that clears him.

MAN: Would you agree, Mrs Ming?

Would you be happy with a perjury sentence

because of an 800-year-old law?

As a person, I don't mean as a lawyer.

KHAN: No, no, no. I agree with you...

Would you be happy with a perjury sentence?

Of course I wouldn't.

Well, that answers it all.

I think you should stop the cameras now because that answers it all.

Ann was invited to meet the legal experts reviewing double jeopardy -

the Law Commission.

She knew this was her chance.

When we got there, it was the full panel.

They were absolutely lovely.

They said, "Off the record, you know, we're all fathers."

There wasn't a dry eye on the panel.

"Cos we're all fathers, how would we feel?

"Would we be happy with a perjury sentence?"

No, they wouldn't.

We know there are several other families around the country

in your situation, and we were hoping...

35. I beg your pardon?

Other cases, that is.

I've met most of them.

They are just as desperate for the law to be changed as us.

He said, "Can I use your letter to go to government?"

I said, "You can use me, never mind my letter."

He said, "It's the most compelling case in the country,

"cos you got the confession in court."

Dunlop had confessed to Julie's murder

and laughed at the law that protected him.

But after 13 years, Ann's campaign was finally breaking through.

This white paper is designed to rebalance

the criminal justice system

in favour of the victim and the delivery of justice for all.

On the morning that Ann was going to hear the decision,

I was on a train with Ann, filming her.

In the white paper,

we are praying that the recommendations

to the changes to the double jeopardy law

will be made retrospective,

which is what we desperately need to obtain justice for Julie.

You can imagine, we were all nervous,

and we had an inkling that the law was going to be changed,

but we didn't know if it was going to be changed retrospectively.

'As David Blunkett stood up in the House of Commons...'

Hello. Hello there, my name's Ann Ming. I'm here...

This is for you, Mrs Ming.

'..Ann collected a copy of the white paper,

'desperate to know if the changes would apply to older cases.'

SHE EXHALES

It's retrospective!

The double jeopardy law is gonna be retrospective.

God, I can't believe it. SHE SOBS

13 years of fighting and campaigning, oh, God.

I just can't believe it.

Oh, God. For once in my life, I'm speechless.

She was crying, Kevin was crying, Charlie was crying.

I was crying, the cameraman was crying, everybody was crying.

We were absolutely overwhelmed

to think that all her battling and all her hard work had succeeded.

The law had cleared its first hurdle,

but the House of Lords could stop it all.

They're a bunch of old conservative white men in the main.

They're not generally keen on dismantling ancient English laws.

We got our appointment to go to the House of Lords.

I wasn't nervous about addressing the House of Lords.

It was the fact that I wanted to win them round

to see that the common-sense approach

with the double jeopardy reform was the way forward.

Look, I'm gonna tell you how it feels to lose a child...

..and how it feels to be shafted by the law.

My daughter had a right to life, Dunlop took her life away.

We have a right to justice.

And for us and other families who have had acquittals,

the only way forward and to make this happen

is to change the double jeopardy law.

They agreed.

And in April 2005, an 800-year-old law was swept away.

Billy Dunlop's protection evaporated.

REPORTER: Ann Ming heading for London

to see Billy Dunlop in the dock at the Old Bailey.

The extraordinary thing was that Ann had got Billy Dunlop,

the man who she believed had murdered her daughter,

into the dock of the Old Bailey, Number One Court.

She looked him straight in the eye, and he could not look at her.

The judge, David Calvert-Smith,

asked Dunlop was he guilty of killing Julie.

I can't tell you what it felt like to hear him say "guilty".

It's taken nearly 17 years,

but we've finally heard Billy Dunlop confess in court

that he's murdered our daughter.

It was hugely emotionally charged.

I suspect, one of immense relief and satisfaction

that she, Ann, fundamentally had championed this change

and that she'd been able to secure justice

for the murder of her daughter.

In the end, the man who'd mocked the law for 17 years

was sentenced to life behind bars.

'I've carried this case for 18 of my 32 years' police service

'in some shape or form.'

It's been my privilege to support Ann and the family throughout.

I think Ann's legacy is the fact

that she had an 800-year-old law changed.

But also, she didn't stop.

She's gone round to police conferences all over the country

trying to explain what it's like to be a victim

and relatives of the victim.

Obviously, this case has been a privilege to work on,

as far as I'm concerned.

It's Ann's case.

Ann deserves all the praise.

She's highly, highly motivated

and obviously an inspiration to everyone that meets her.

She'll never, ever give up at all.

I think she portrayed me really well, absolutely,

because it was like...

it was like watching myself, actually, watching it.

I cried all the way through it

because I was feeling all the emotions that I was feeling

at the time when she was taking the part.

She's so resilient now because she's been through so much.

Even in your darkest moments, you get through them, and...

she's just a prime example of that.

She's amazing.

A lot of people seem to think

I had a team of lawyers backing me all the way, but I didn't.

I was like... you know, family support and Kevin,

but I was like a one-man band.

Me against the world. LAUGHS

That's what I felt like at times.

She kept on fighting for all those years,

and eventually she got the double jeopardy law changed.

She's made such a big impact.

I hope that my mum would be proud of what my nan has achieved

for something that's so natural as a parent, to fight for your child.

I've got lots of things that I remember about Julie.

About a year before she was murdered,

we'd gone into town.

She had about five-inch orange high heels on.

"Mam, swap shoes, my feet are killing me."

So I'm walking around the town

with a pair of five-inch orange shoes on, you know.

She was, erm...

No, she was one on her own, was Julie, you know? Yeah.

'Ann refused to give up.

'She made history by rewriting British law

'and opened the door for justice for other families.

'All for the love of her Julie.'

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