Ann Ming to meet justice secretary over daughter’s killer’s parole

A mother who created legal history with a campaign to overturn the double jeopardy law is meeting the justice secretary to tell him her daughter’s killer should not be released from prison in her lifetime.

In 1989 Ann Ming’s daughter Julie Hogg was strangled and sexually assaulted, before her body was hidden behind a bath panel at her home in Billingham, Teesside.

Two juries failed to find killer Billy Dunlop guilty but Ms Ming helped overturn the 800-year old law which prevented people being tried again for a crime they had been cleared of.

She and her grandson will meet David Lammy later to discuss the family’s “endless trauma” during the “never-ending cycle” of Dunlop’s parole reviews.

Ms Ming, whose fight to change the law was recently revisited in ITV’s four-part series I Fought the Law, will tell Lammy the thoughts of victims’ families are often “overlooked and ignored” when deciding parole.

Dunlop’s third parole review in four years is currently under way and comes just five months after the former justice secretary Shabana Mahmood blocked his move to open prison conditions.

Ms Ming said: ”He destroyed our lives and I don’t for a second believe he’s changed.

“I’ll do all in my power to keep him behind bars.”

At last year’s public parole hearing, Dunlop said Ms Ming was the “bane of his life” and he used to “hate her” after her campaign brought him to justice.

But he said he was now a changed man and “he had a lot of respect” for what she had achieved and said he “deeply regretted” killing her daughter.

Dunlop was jailed for life in 2006, but he has now served more than the minimum term set by a judge so is eligible for parole.

He has been described as a “model prisoner”.

Ms Ming’s grandson Kevin Hogg, who was three when his mother Julie was murdered, said: “The scales of justice have never been balanced.

“Once you finish one parole hearing you’re already having to prepare the next one.

“Dunlop and his legal teams are always in charge of the narrative.”

A spokesperson for the Parole Board said: “The timelines for when a prisoner has a parole review and when a victim can submit a Victim Personal Statement are set by the Ministry of Justice.

“We appreciate the regularity of providing a statement can be extremely stressful and traumatic for victims, survivors and family members and we are sympathetic to that.”