Triumph for mother as double jeopardy murderer jailed for life

Ann and Charlie Ming outside the Old Bailey after the conviction of their daughter's killer William Dunlop
13 April 2012

A mothers 15-year battle to have her daughters' brutal murderer retried has ended with a conviction.

William Dunlop has been jailed for life for the double jeopardy murder of young mother Julie Hogg.

Dunlop was told he would serve a minimum term of 17 years for the 1989 killing of 22-year-old pizza delivery woman Julie Hogg.

The case made legal history last month when Dunlop, 43, pleaded guilty to murder at the Old Bailey.

He is the first person to have been charged twice with the same offence after the 800-year-old double jeopardy laws was changed.

Miss Hogg's disappearance in November 1989 was initially treated as a missing person inquiry until she was found 80 days later.

Mrs Ming found her daughter's decomposing and partially mutilated body behind a bath panel.

Dunlop was formally cleared of murder after two juries failed to reach verdicts.

But he was jailed for another assault and confessed in 1999 to a prison officer, boasting that there was nothing anyone could do about it.

The following year, he was jailed for six years for perjury - and charged with the murder again this year after the law was changed.

Mrs Ming and her husband, Charlie, 81, travelled to London from the family's home in Billingham, Teesside, to see Dunlop jailed.

She sobbed as prosecutor Andrew Robertson, QC, described Ms Hogg's injuries.

He said: "The overwhelming inference is that the deceased rejected him and was subjected to a violent sexual assault."

Dunlop had said he strangled Ms Hogg after she taunted him about a black eye, but this was not accepted by the prosecution.

Mr Robertson had told the court: "Now the law has changed, in large part due to the long and persistent campaign by Mr and Mrs Ming who felt they and their daughter were being denied justice."

In a statement read to the judge, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith, Mrs Ming said the shock and after-effects of finding the body after police had failed to discover it during a search "verges on the indescribable".

"To this day, I can still smell the putrefied smell which was our daughter," she said.

Ms Hogg, who was separated from her husband, had a son, Kevin, who was three when she was murdered.

He was not in court but in a statement he described how his grandparents had tried to shield him from the truth by telling him his mother had died in the bath.

He only discovered what happened when he was 13 and was taunted by other children at school.

He said: "I have missed out on a mother's love. I have missed out on a childhood.

"I have never been able to understand why the man who killed my mother had not been caught by police and sent to prison.

"I wish I could remember more what my mother was like. All I have are a few photographs."

Timothy Owen QC, defending, said Dunlop had confessed through remorse and because he wanted to make a clean breast of his crime.

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