I don’t know what made me think of the bath panel, I really don’t. I didn’t think of the bath, but anyway I did and I went downstairs, got a screwdriver, undone the bath panel and tried pushing her behind with me feet against her, with me back against the sink, pushing her under with me feet. I went downstairs, picked her clothes up and put them in a bag and I’d stripped off as well when I was downstairs. I was wrapped in the blanket so I couldn’t get none of my clothes on the blanket, my fibres. I went back to Patton’s. It was getting light by this time. I didn’t know what time it was. Went back to Patton’s, put the black bag outside with the clothes… for the bin men to pick up… went inside and went to bed.
Q: Did you ever go back to that house?
A: No.
Q: Did you ever move the body?
A: No.
Q: Just remained there until it was found?
A: Yeah, that’s why I couldn’t understand the council workers and all that not finding her.
Q: OK, because of your injuries you say that you’ve got that night, and other injuries, she starts taking the mickey out of you? Do you remember what she was saying?
A: Just laughing and saying it looked like I was the one who’d been filled in and there’d be nothing wrong with the other lad.
Q: Did that upset you?
A: Yeah, because I was concerned about the other lad. I was more concerned that I was going to get arrested for it, for what I’d done.
Q: How long did this go on, her taking the mickey out of you before you snapped?
A: Just a couple of minutes.
Q: You put up with it for a couple of minutes, then you just lost it?
A: Yeah.
Q: You strangled her in the living room?
A: Yeah.
(Asked what he had done with Julie’s door keys once he’d locked the house behind him, Dunlop said that he separated them from the key fob and put them under the floorboards. He then recalled two detectives, Detective Inspector John Tough and Detective Sergeant John Matthews, arriving at the house he shared.)
Q: Did you think you would get caught?
A: Yeah, yeah. It was the first time I’d spoke to the police and if something hadn’t have happened, I honestly think I would have confessed at that time, if they’d took us in at that time. The thing that stopped me when they come to interview us and asked us if I wanted interviewing at home or down the police station is the fact that me eldest son was there, four at the time, four and a half, maybe five, called Richard. He seen me going out with the policemen and he started screaming and crying and went under the stairs and said, ‘You’re not coming back, are you, Dad? You’re not coming back.’ And screaming and that’s when I decided there was no way could I admit to it because of me son. I would have admitted it if they’d got me down the police station but as soon as he said that to me, I couldn’t for me kids.’
However candid the confession, it was tempered with Dunlop’s confidence that he could not be charged with Julie’s murder. Behind the charade of overwhelming guilt lay a cynical, calculating, evil mind. Ever the manipulator, he claimed the reason he didn’t confess in the first place was that he wanted to protect his innocent children from the truth about their father.
Here was the moment that Ann and Charlie had waited for so long. Ten years of desolation and bitterness, of hopes raised and hopes dashed, a roller coaster of conflicting emotions. And ten years during which Ann could not get the stench of her daughter’s violated corpse from her nostrils.
Whatever toll it took on her physical and mental health, and whatever obstacles were cast in her way, Ann pledged that one day she would sit in court and see Billy Dunlop caged for her daughter’s murder. For once and for all, she would get the law of double jeopardy overturned.
Backed by her local Labour MP, Frank Cook, together with a vociferous ‘Justice for Julie’ campaign supported by her local newspaper, the Northern Echo, Ann turned to Parliament to help her in her fight.
As Billy Dunlop returned to jail in 2000 for another six years, convicted of two counts of perjury over the false evidence he had given in the Julie Hogg murder trial, she bombarded politicians, peers and legal experts with demands for a radical redrafting of the law she saw as a charter for justice-dodging criminals.
It didn’t matter a jot to her that she stood four-square against the forces of history, an entrenched legal establishment, an elite milieu of men and women with law degrees from the country’s top universities, or politicians schooled in slippery evasions.
First, she badgered the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, who promised to give his full backing to her campaign at a meeting.
‘Dunlop had just been sentenced for perjury,’ Ann said. ‘I took along a photo of Julie and one of Dunlop. I showed them to Jack Straw and said, “This is my daughter. This is the man who killed her. I’m not happy with the law. What are you going to do about it?”
‘He answered, “Retrospective law is a very grey area,” and he reached for a volume on criminal law. I said to him, “Don’t bother looking at that. There are no precedents. Nobody who has already been acquitted has confessed to murder in a court of law before. This is a test case.”’
Ann then wrote a forceful letter to the Law Commission, the body charged with reviewing the laws of the land. Back in the post came an encouraging reply, which confirmed her emotional campaign was gathering strength. The Commission stated that hers was the most compelling case in the country because of Dunlop’s confession. They asked to meet her.
Despite being in the presence of some of the nation’s finest legal brains, Ann was not overawed. ‘I didn’t feel nervous,’ she stated. ‘I told myself, “They are all parents, like me.” They asked if they could use my letter as evidence to take to the government. I said, “No, you can use me.” I wanted to put the human side across, to appeal to the mother and father in these people who had the power to change the law.’
The government’s most senior law officer, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, promised her he too would do all in his power the bring Dunlop back before the judge. On a visit to the northeast, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, also gave his wholehearted support during a conference speech to the victims of crime.
‘During the lunch break, I got hold of Lord Falconer’s hand, pulled him into the seat next to mine and said, “Can you help me?” I asked if I could speak to the House of Lords committee debating the double-jeopardy law. Lord Falconer said, “Would you do that?” I replied, “I’ll give you a week to organise it.”’
‘So I went to the House of Lords. I took along a seven-page statement but, in the end, I threw it away and just spoke from the heart. In front of me were lords, ladies and baronesses, but I looked across the table and said to myself, “They’re also parents and grandparents.” And that gave me strength.
‘I thought too, if I can do this for Julie, I will be opening the door for other families to obtain justice.’
At the meeting in Westminster, the battling mum swept away reservations raised by the group of peers, who warned her that even if the law was changed, it might not be backdated to nail Julie’s murderer.
‘Make it retrospective,’ she demanded. Her MP, Frank Cook, who was at her side and had been there from the moment she walked into his local constituency office, told the Lords it was only down to Ann’s relentless determination that new evidence was being put before the House of Commons ready to debate key changes to the Criminal Justice Act.
In May 2003, Ann’s sheer force of will finally bore fruit. In an extraordinary testament to one woman’s refusal to be cowed, MPs voted to change the double-jeopardy rules. It