The tragic case of the missing woman found dead under her bathtub

Jul 01, 2024 05:10

When Julie Hogg’s phone repeatedly rang out in 1989, her mother Ann was hit by a wave of anxiety. She had a gut feeling something was wrong.

Julie’s three-year-old son, Kevin, had stayed with Ann and her husband, Charlie, on November 15, as his 22-year-old mother had a late shift delivering pizzas across Teesside. She was dropped home by a colleague around 1.30am on November 16.

That morning, Ann called her daughter and received no answer.

Julie, who lived in a three-bedroom terraced home on Grange Avenue in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, was due in court for a meeting to seek a legal separation from her ex-husband Andrew. Worried at the radio silence, Ann raced to her daughter’s home and, with the help of her older son Gary, broke down the door.

‘Room by room, everywhere was very, very tidy which was out of character for Julie’, Ann told ITV’s Real Crime in 2002. ‘She was quite an untidy person. But the bed was made, everything was tidy. That aroused suspicion even more.’

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Ann reported Julie missing to the police and officers suggested her daughter had left of her own accord. However, her family were convinced Julie wouldn’t abandon her son, Kevin. Four days after the 22-year-old vanished, police agreed to investigate further.

After five days of wider investigations at her home on Grange Avenue, detectives reported nothing amiss. A police cordon was taken down and house keys returned to Julie’s family. Her ex-husband, Andrew, moved in with their son Kevin to try to provide some stability to the young boy.

However, Andrew soon noticed a ‘nauseating stench’ which got worse whenever they put the heating on. On February 1, 1990 – three months after Julie was reported missing – Ann visited Andrew to help him rid the house of the unpleasant odour. Noticing the smell was worse in the bathroom, Ann tentatively pushed a loose bath panel, only to find her daughter’s decaying body beneath the tub, wrapped in a blanket.

Ann, a nurse who worked at Middlesbrough General Hospital, told ITV’s Real Crime: ‘I ran down the stairs and screamed at Andrew “she’s under the bath! She’s under the bath” Kevin stood next to me crying, he didn’t know what was wrong. I was absolutely hysterical. I kept seeing her, kept smelling her, I couldn’t get the smell out of my nostrils.’

Police, who had been less than two feet away from Julie’s body when they searched her home months before, discovered Julie had been sexually assaulted before she died.

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Investigations led them to labourer William ‘Billy’ Dunlop who had been living just two streets away from Grange Avenue. The former boxer had a history of violence and previously had a brief relationship with Julie. Detectives searched his home and discovered her house key under the floorboards.

Dunlop was charged with his ex-girlfriend’s murder on February 13, 1990. But, to Ann’s shock, the jury was unable to reach a verdict. A hastily organised re-trial was held but, again, the jury could not come to a conclusion. Dunlop walked free.

The ‘sticking point’ for the jury was Julie’s badly decomposed body, explains Diane Ivory, a former Scotland Yard fingerprint expert and crime scene examiner. She worked across London, Norfolk and Suffolk until hanging up her hazmat suit in 2016.

Diane, who now runs the Forensic Minds event company, tells Metro: ‘Questions as to why Julie wasn’t found straight away are multiple. She was eventually discovered under the bath, but we don’t know the exact circumstances of how concealed she was or exactly when she was put there.

‘During the original search by police, it would have been unlikely that there was any smell [to lead them to the body]. This was November and the heating may not have been on while the house was empty, meaning the body wouldn’t decompose as fast as it might in the summer.

‘By the time they did find Julie, her body was so badly composed that an exact cause of death couldn’t be established; this was a sticking point for the jury. Had they found her earlier, I think they might have reached a verdict of guilty far quicker.’

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Diane also explained how police who initially had entered Julie’s home were sent there for a missing person case, not a murder inquiry, which would have impacted the initial searches of the house.

After years of escaping justice, Dunlop was finally thrown behind bars in 1997. However, it wasn’t for Julie’s murder, it was for attacking his pregnant girlfriend with a toasting fork. While serving his seven-year sentence, he revealed to a prison officer that, nearly a decade before, he had killed Julie Hogg.

Dunlop talked about the murder brazenly, knowing that he could not be tried again because of an ancient law which dated back to the Middle Ages. Double jeopardy – which had been in existence for 800 years – ruled that a person acquitted by a jury could not be tried again on the same charge, even if new evidence came to light.

In a recorded interview with police, he explained he had gone to Julie’s house after being involved in a fight at a strip club. Dunlop told the detectives: ‘She [Julie] just started taking the mickey out of me and ridiculing me because I had a black eye and my eye was split open.

‘I just lost it and got up and strangled her.’

Dunlop was convicted of perjury for lying in his original trial and sentenced to six years in jail. But due to double jeopardy, he could not be charged with Julie’s murder.

With support from local newspapers, Julie’s parents fought for change in the law. For more than 15 years, Ann in particular worked tirelessly to get justice for their daughter – writing letters late into the night and working with former Home Secretary Jack Straw to put pressure on law-makers.

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Speaking in 2002, Anne said: ‘I’ll never ever give up. I want the law to be changed, but even if it isn’t, I’ll be one step behind him [Dunlop], like my daughter’s ghost. A constant reminder of what he did to me and my family.’

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On April 4, 2005, Julie’s family got the news they were dreaming of. The double jeopardy law had come to an end in England and Wales as Part 10 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The change allowed retrials where ‘new and compelling evidence has come to light’ for very serious offences.’

Legal history was again made on September 11, 2005 when Dunlop became the first killer to be convicted under the new legislation. He was sentenced to 17 years behind bars; ‘a year for every year Julie’s murder had lain unavenged.’ Julie’s father Charlie died in 2013, safe in the knowledge his daughter’s killer had been punished.

However, Dunlop continues to mentally torture Julie’s family. The killer, now in his sixties, has attempted another bid for freedom and applied for a parole hearing which will investigate whether he should be moved to a lower security jail or released entirely despite his callous crimes.

Although proceedings were due to start on June 25, they were adjourned abruptly after an eleventh hour request by the Parole Board. Julie’s mum Ann branded the delay a ‘disgrace’ as her battle against Dunlop continues.

Meanwhile, this August, filming is expected to start on a new ITV drama called ‘I Fought A Law’, starring Sheridan Smith as Ann. The series will bring Julie’s story – and wider legacy – to a new generation.

For Diane, the wider impact of Ann’s fight cannot be understated.

‘Without what happened, we wouldn’t have seen the double jeopardy law overturned and so many others retried for murder,’ she explains.

‘Julie’s mother had tenacity and determination. Many other people might have given up. Or, as we sometimes see, people sadly pass away and often don’t have anyone to take over their fight.

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The tragic case of the missing woman found dead under her bathtub