A Quiet House, A Deadly Secret
When Julie Hogg went missing, it would be weeks before she was found — entombed in her own bathtub.
Julie Hogg
On November 16, 1989, 22-year-old Julie Hogg took her son, Kevin, to her parent’s house. Kevin was three-years-old and loved seeing his grandparents Ann and Charlie.
Julie was going through a difficult time, being in the process of leaving her husband Andrew, and needed to get to court early the next morning to apply for separation.
The next morning, Ann telephoned her daughter at 7.30am, but didn’t get an answer. Worrying her daughter might have overslept, she went to the house, which was very close to her own, but there was no answer when she tried the door. The house was locked and there was no sign of Julie.
Ann had an awful feeling and called her son, who arrived at Julie’s house, and together they broke in through the back door.
Despite there being no sign of Julie, something strange stood out to both of them. The house was unusually clean. It might have been nothing, but something in Ann’s gut told her things weren’t right and she rang the police.
Julie was an adult, and it had been less than 24 hours since Julie had been seen, so what were they to do? Mobile phones weren’t being used, Facebook didn’t exist — the only way to contact someone was by letter, or through the landline telephone.
Although the time hadn’t been long, Ann knew her daughter, and knew it wasn’t right that she would leave her son without telling her parents.
As times goes by…
After four days, and still no contact from Julie, the police finally relented, and a forensic team was sent to the house. The entire property was combed, but nothing suspicious was found within. To all appearances, Julie had simply vanished.
Weeks went by, and as they began to turn into months without Julie returning home, the mystery continued. Christmas came and went, with little Kevin struggling to understand why his mum wasn’t there.
Ann tried to hold onto the hope that Julie had ran off somewhere, and was safe, wherever she was. But this led to anger, and Ann was upset with Julie for having walked out on her life, leaving her son behind. In February 1990, Julie’s husband Andrew, who worked in London, planned to move back into the home in order to take care of Kevin.
A discovery is made
When he went in to clean up the fingerprint dust and other mess left behind by the police, he smelled something awful, and telephone Ann to come round straight away. As soon as Ann walked in, she felt instantly sick, and recognised something was seriously wrong.
Ann began to go up the stairs, and as she approached the bathroom the smell worsened. Leaning in over the bath, she smelt near the wall, and as she leaned her weight touched the bath panel, and she realised it was slightly loose. Ann pulled at it, and a horrific smell erupted into the room. Ripping the panel off the bath, she recoiled in horror as the naked, badly decomposed, and partially mutilated body of her daughter was revealed. Julie had been stuffed in the small gap behind the panel all this time.
All those months of anger at thinking Julie had ran away, turned to instant pain and grief as Ann realised her daughter had been in the house the entire time.
The search for a murderer
Julie had been strangled and showed injuries which prosecutors would describe as ‘gross violent sexual injury’, injuries they believe most likely happened after death.
Following this horrific discovery, a murder inquiry was launched and Cleveland Police assigned around 40 officers to the case. Now retired Detective Chief Supt Mark Braithwaite was part of the murder team at the time, and he recalls the fear that was sweeping throughout the town.
Initially, police had a large list of suspects, with several men on the list. One of those names was Billy Dunlop.
Although details around the process are slim, and in particular, why they focussed in on Billy, this is the evidence they found:
Dunlop’s fingerprints were on Julie’s keys. Keys which were found under the floorboards at a house where Dunlop had been living.
There wasn’t much more about actual forensics that they had to link Billy, but on February 13, 1990, shortly after Julie’s body was discovered, police arrest Billy Dunlop on suspicion of her murder.
Billy Dunlop
Who is Billy Dunlop?
Billy Dunlop was born William Dunlop, in 1963. He was a labourer, and originally from Stockton on Tees. Billy played football for Billingham Black Swans in the 1980s, and was also the treasurer and secretary for the club over three seasons. He moved onto rugby though, and in 1987, went on to play for Billingham Rugby club, describing how his life was ‘ruled by sports at the time’.
A Tale of Two Trials
In 1991, he was tried TWICE at Newcastle Crown Court for killing Julie, but on both occasions the jury could not decide if he had done it or not. Following the second trial, he was formally cleared. At the time this gave him the protection of the double jeopardy law, that is, the principle that you cannot be tried twice for the same crime.
Ann, Julie’s mother, collapsed as the verdict was read out and the judge acquitted Dunlop.
To add insult to injury, following the acquittal, Billy began to brag in local pubs for weeks afterwards, telling anyone who would listen that he had ‘got away with the perfect murder.’
The Fight Was Not Over
Things we far from over for Billy, and years later, when he was in prison serving time for a serious assault, he boasted to a prison officer that he had, in fact, been the one who had killed Julie.
Having stabbed an ex-girlfriend with a carving fork and beating up her new lover, he had continued to harass her from prison, sending letters stating he would do to her exactly what he ‘did to Julie.’
Dunlop’s ex-girlfriend took the letters to police, but as he had already been tried for murder, there was nothing they could do. An 800 year old law was preventing them from putting a killer away for life.
Dunlop knew this, and bragged about the fact there was nothing anybody could do about it, because of his protection under the double jeopardy law. The worst that could happen to him would be a charge for perjury, which is hardly anything compared to that of murder is it?
BUT that’s exactly what happened, when, in 1999, Dunlop was given 6 years for two counts of perjury, which he would serve following his then 7 year sentence for that attack on his ex-girlfriend.
What Dunlop hadn’t bargained on though, was the strength of a mother’s love, and how much of a warrior Ann is. Ann refused to give up on her murdered daughter. They knew that Dunlop had killed Julie. The police knew it. Everyone knew it, and here he was getting away with it. That didn’t fly with Ann and so she embarked on a campaign to get justice for Julie.
Local MP Frank Cook, and officers from Cleveland Police all helped Ann as she started on what was to be a huge struggle as she attempted to get the double jeopardy laws scrapped.
So what is double jeopardy?
Double jeopardy is the principle that you can’t go on trial for the same crime more than once.
Originally, it was designed to protect the innocent against being convicted arbitrarily by a tyrannical system, even if they’d been found not guilty by a jury.
There have been numerous campaigns over the years from family members of victims without justice. One such campaign was by the family of Stephen Lawrence, a teenager who had been murdered in 1993. In the initial investigation, 5 suspects were charged but not convicted. There was a public inquiry in 1999 led by Sir William Macpherson which concluded that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist. As a result of this inquiry he recommended that double jeopardy be repealed on murder cases where extraordinary evidence later emerges.
In 2005, the Labour government repealed the law which persuaded senior judges and legal figures that a more nuanced approach was needed in complex cases. The law came into effect in 2005, and since then retrials have been allowed in cases where ‘new, compelling, reliable and substantial evidence’ has come to light.
The THIRD trial
Now that double jeopardy was kind of scrapped, a retrial for Dunlop was ordered and he was tried for Julie’s murder at the Old Bailey, becoming the first person to be re-tried for a murder following the removal of double jeopardy. Officers from the original investigation attended to watch from the gallery as he stood trial.
On Monday September 11, 2006, Dunlop plead guilty to murdering Julie, and on October 6, 2006, he was sentenced to life, with a minimum tariff of 17 years.
It took Ann 16 years to bring her daughter’s killer to justice, but they had finally done it. A murderer was behind bars. Quite rightly so.
David Blunkett, who as home secretary oversaw the change in the double jeopardy rules, welcomed Dunlop’s guilty plea saying:
I’m glad that the heartfelt campaign of Julie Hogg’s family, and others like hers, have been vindicated.
There was enormous controversy and difficulty in getting this change through parliament — including with the opposition voting against. But this legal milestone demonstrates how right it was to ensure that justice is done, and the truth obtained at last.
Three years ago people argued about the medieval right not to be tried twice, as though fraudulently getting off was some sort of game in which, if you’ve fooled the justice system once, you had got away with it for ever. I hope that more unsolved murders, rapes and other heinous crimes will now be resolved.
So what actually happened that night?
Dunlop spent the evening at a stag do at a rugby club in the town. After the party finished he went to a friend’s house which was next door to Julie’s. He told friends as he left that he was going to pop in and say hello, as he noticed her lights were still on. Dunlop was the last person to see Julie Hogg alive.
Dunlop had called round her house and Julie, allegedly, made fun of him for injuries he’d sustained in a fight earlier that night, and in a rage, he attacked her. He strangled her, before sexually assaulting her and then attempted to hide her body. He wrapped Julie’s body in a blanket, and tried to dispose of it in the loft, before giving up and hiding it behind the bath panel. He stuffed Julie into that tiny space, and then left.
His release
In 2018, articles appeared in the papers talking about the potential release of Dunlop. Julie’s family received correspondence from the Probation Service notifying them that he was up for a possible transfer to an open prison, and would be eligible for parole in 2021. Julie’s family were livid, with her now adult son Kevin, describing it as ‘heart-breaking’, detailing the toll that the whole ordeal had taken on his entire family. In 2019, his application to move to an open prison was rejected, and he remains in prison at present.
Kevin told the Evening Gazette that it doesn’t get easier as time goes on. He’s now 34, and says that you just learn new coping mechanisms. He describes how the grief over time gets worse, talking about his 11 year old son is a reminder of all the things his mum missed out on. All the things his family didn’t get to celebrate together because there’s always a piece missing.
Sources: The Guardian, BBC News, The Sun, GazetteLive, Mirror, Daily Mail, Northern Echo.
