‘She’s under the bath! She’s under the bath!’: Devastating screams of the mother who found her daughter’s body behind bath panel – and how she changed history

Julie Hogg’s killer was so confident he would get away with murder, he not only threatened his ex-girlfriend he would do to her ‘what he did to Julie’, he bragged about his crimes to a female prison officer. 

William ‘Billy’ Dunlop – who was initially acquitted and freed after two juries failed to reach a verdict on the case – thought he was safe from prosecution due to an 800-year-old double jeopardy law. 

Under the controversial piece of legislation, Dunlop could not be tried again, even though he had confessed to killing the 22-year-old pizza delivery driver. 

However, Julie’s mother Ann Ming swore she would not rest until she got justice for her daughter – and launched a 17-year campaign that would end up changing history. 

The horror started in November 1989, when Dunlop – one of Julie’s neighbours in Billingham, County Durham – sexually mutilated and strangled her to death. 

To begin with, however, the case was treated as a missing person’s case. 

Then shockingly due to police forensics’ incompetence, it was Ann, now 79, who discovered her own daughter’s body hidden behind a bath panel in her home. 

The gruesome find was made by chance – and only after Julie’s estranged husband Andrew decided to move back into her house with their young son Kevin, three months after the murder in February 1990. 

Ann, whose story is due to be retold in a new four-part ITV dramatisation starring Sheridan Smith, gave her first interview to the Mail in 2006 – the year Dunlop was finally convicted of Julie’s murder. 

Recalling the moment she found her daughter’s body, she said: ‘We kept in regular contact — we shared Kevin’s upbringing — and Andrew, who was doing some tiling in the bathroom, phoned to say there was a terrible smell.

‘I told him to put bleach down the toilet, but he said the smell just got worse. So I went round. I walked up the stairs and the smell was putrid, like decomposing flesh. 

‘I knew it from my work as a theatre nurse. Inside I was screaming: “Please don’t let it be Julie”.

‘I leaned over the bath and knocked a loose panel with my knee. I glimpsed behind it and I started to scream hysterically: “She’s under the bath! She’s under the bath!”

‘Then everything went into slow motion. It was as if I was watching myself. Andrew ran up with a screwdriver to take off the panel. 

‘I heard him say: “Oh, Jesus Christ, no!” and I ran screaming into the street.

‘Suddenly, the place seemed full of police cars, and the inspector who had been in charge of the search arrived. 

‘I was screaming at him: ‘I told you she was there! You wouldn’t listen’.’ 

Dunlop was tried for the murder but walked free after the jury failed to reach a verdict. 

The circumstantial evidence against him was great: his DNA profile matched that found in her home and her door keys were discovered under floorboards in the house where he lodged. 

But the exact cause of Julie’s death could not be established because her body had decomposed so much.

Then nine years after Julie’s murder in 1997, Dunlop was found guilty of repeatedly stabbing his ex-girlfriend and beating up her new partner. 

He was sentenced to seven years in prison, and sent a death threat to the couple saying that when he was free from jail, he would do to them what he did to Julie.

Officers from Cleveland Police came to visit Ann and explained that Dunlop could not be tried for murder due to the double jeopardy law.

Julie’s family had to settle for a conviction of perjury and Ann said it was this that triggered her fight to scrap the legislation. 

Ann told The Telegraph this week: ‘Never mind that the law was 800 years old. That didn’t matter to me. 

‘If there’s been a proven wrongful conviction, I’d be first to say that person should be freed.’ 

Ann continued campaigning to repeal the double jeopardy law and was eventually successful. The 2003 Criminal Justice Act abolished the legislation for serious offences. 

It came into force in 2005 and Dunlop became the first person to be tried twice for the same crime. He was jailed in October 2006.

Speaking about the new drama, Ann added: ‘When Hera Productions approached me about doing the drama and suggested Sheridan Smith, I was thrilled.

‘I’m not just saying it, it’s the truth, nobody could have played me better.’

At the time of her murder, Julie was working as a pizza delivery driver. The mother-of-one was separated from her husband but still very close to her family.

On the night of her killing, Dunlop – who had once had a sexual encounter with Julie – turned up at her home.

When Julie refused to let him in, he forced his way into the house and attacked her.

After mutilating her, he wrapped her body in a blanket and then stuffed it under the bath.

Police sent a forensics team to search the house, but they did not check under the bath.

Ann told the Mail in an interview in 2006 that the officer in charge of the case had guaranteed that ‘nothing had happened to her in the house’.

 She said: ‘The inspector told me he could not guarantee nothing had happened to our daughter, but he could assure me nothing had happened in her house. But I knew better.’

After finding her daughter’s remains, Ann ran out of the house screaming. 

Ann went on to make a formal complaint to police and was given £10,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

Julie’s keys were found to have Dunlop’s finger prints on them, and hairs from his head were found on her body.

DNA tests also linked him with the semen stains on the blanket that he used to wrap up Julie’s body.

Ann’s campaign to scrap the double jeopardy law has changed the course of history. 

Since 2006, the law change has enabled more than a dozen convictions, including of the killers of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. 

I Fought The Law, starring Sheridan Smith, begins on ITV and STV at 9pm on Sunday 31 August