I Fought the Law (2025) Movie Script
1
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.'
accessibility@itv.com
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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