Changing one of the cornerstones of the British legal system was no mean feat - and it was a grief-stricken mother from Norton who took on the law… and won.
Julie, a pizza delivery driver, had been killed by Billy Dunlop, who stuffed her body behind a bath panel in her home. It was Ann who made the grim discovery, three months after she vanished.
Dunlop faced two trials in 1991 for her murder but was formally acquitted after juries failed to reach a verdict, and the double jeopardy law meant he could not be tried for the same offence.
And the smirking killer appeared to laugh at the law when he later boasted to a prison officer that he did kill the 22-year-old while in prison for a separate offence.
He was charged with perjury and jailed for a further six years, but Ann did not give up - and after 17 years of fighting, she managed to overturn the law and bring her daughter’s killer to justice.
Today marks 20 years to the day that Dunlop, the first person in Britain to face a retrial under the new rules, finally admitted killing Julie at The Old Bailey in London.
The Echo played a major part in helping amplify Ann’s 'Justice for Julie' campaign.
Armed with a petition signed by hundreds of Echo readers, Ann and her husband Charlie went to London in 2000 to meet then Home Secretary Jack Straw to demand change.
He promised that it would be reconsidered then - and in March 2001, the Law Commission concluded double jeopardy should be scrapped.
In July 2003, before the House of Lords debated the law for the last time, Ann travelled to London to make a final appeal to help see it through.
And she did.
Parliament eventually approved the new law, and it came into force in April 2005. Around a year and a half later, Dunlop stood before a court and admitted murdering Julie.
Former editor Peter Barron, who was at the helm of the Echo between 1999 and 2016, said it was one of the “most momentous campaigns in The Northern Echo’s history”.
“The whole time, I felt incredibly strongly about supporting Ann Ming,” he said, looking back 20 years to the day Dunlop finally confessed in court.
“She was one of the most courageous people I have ever met and what we did was to amplify her voice. It was her campaign.”
Mr Barron said the image of Dunlop smiling when he was acquitted still sticks out: “The picture on the front page was of him smirking. I remember feeling angry that he was laughing at the law.
“What got me is that if there had been a miscarriage of justice for someone [who was jailed for a crime] and new evidence came to light, they could be retried and found innocent.
“But it could not work the other way around. I just felt that was really wrong.”
Mr Barron said he remembers the Echo office cheering when the verdict came in on September 11, 2006: “I remember us all being in the newsroom.
"We campaigned so hard and we put a lot of resources and effort behind it and when the result came through I remember punching the air.
“Our headline that next day was: ‘Who's laughing now, Billy?'. It gave me more satisfaction than any headline I can remember.
“It was Ann Ming’s courage in standing up to the law and standing up for her daughter.
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“Now, I look back 20 years on and think that the campaign supporting Ann has changed the law and means people now, and in the future, won’t be able to get away with murder.
“It was one of the cornerstones of British justice that was smashed up. The world moves on and it is a newspaper's job to challenge the law when it is out of date.
“I think that is what we did and there are other examples of that.
“The fact that it is still being talked about today just underlines how significant a moment in British legal history it was.”
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