The pain never goes away, you just learn to live with it
stress after discovering
Julie’s body.
The jury failed to reach a verdict, so the judge ordered a retrial. Once again, they were unable to reach a verdict and Billy Dunlop was acquitted.
“He was bragging in pubs for weeks that he’d got away with the perfect murder.”
Ann was at her lowest ebb.
“I couldn’t believe my daughter had been taken from me. I felt so guilty for all those weeks being angry at her for not calling.”
It didn’t take long for Dunlop’s violent streak to resurface and he was arrested several times over the following years. Then in 1997, nine years after Julie’s murder, he was sentenced to seven years for grievous bodily harm after stabbing his ex-girlfriend with a carving fork and beating up her lover.
He continued to threaten his ex from prison, sending her a letter saying that when he got out, he’d do what he’d done to Julie – and kill her.
His ex took the letter to the police, but as Dunlop had been acquitted, their hands were tied. This was because of an 800-year-old law – the double jeopardy law – which states a person cannot be tried again once acquitted. The best police could hope for was to convict him of lying under oath.
A prison officer secretly recorded Dunlop saying when he called round to Julie’s house, he’d told her about a fight he’d been in. She’d nervously laughed, which annoyed him, so he strangled her. Dunlop was convicted of perjury but sentenced to only six years.
Ann was at breaking point. She wrote to her MP, who got her an appointment with then home secretary Jack Straw. He gave her the address of a judge on the Law Commission who she could write to.
“It was just so unjust. I wanted them to hear what I’d been through.”
The Commission recommended an amendment to the law, allowing people to be tried again if there was “new and compelling” evidence.
The amendment was approved and passed to the House of Lords – and Ann asked if she could give a speech there.
“As I stood up, I thought of Julie, and all the mothers like me in the future who otherwise might not get justice,” she says.
A few weeks later, the bill was passed. And it applied retrospectively, meaning Dunlop could be tried again. In May 2006, Dunlop’s acquittal was quashed by the Court of Appeal. And that October – 17 years after Julie’s death – he was found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey.
“To hear the judge say Dunlop was guilty was unbelievable,” says Ann.
Dunlop, then 43, was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years.
Since Ann’s campaign, the new law has been used to secure 13 convictions, including Stephen Lawrence’s killers.
For Ann and her family, they live with the loss of their beloved Julie every day.
“I believe in life after death, so I’m sure she’ll be waiting for me.”
I thought of my daughter and all the mothers like me in the future who’d otherwise not get any justice