“We are doing a life sentence. You are living and breathing it all the time.”
After 17 years of tirelessly fighting to overturn the double jeopardy law, Ann Ming finally got justice when Billy Dunlop admitted murdering her daughter in court in 2006.
But 20 years after the smirking former labourer was jailed for life with a minimum term of 17 years, Julie's family say they are the ones serving the sentence as another parole hearing looms.
Dunlop is once again bidding for freedom, with his fourth review due to take place next month - and this time, he is seeking a full release from prison.
Ann, now 80, and her grandson Kevin Hogg, 40, say the prospect is simply “terrifying” - saying the hearings are “absolute torture” and mean the family is constantly reliving their trauma.
“There's a lot of people in Billingham who are really frightened at Dunlop,” Ann told The Northern Echo this week, looking back on 20 years since he confessed to the 1989 murder.
“Would you like him living next door to you?
“We don't want him back in Teesside. I wouldn't wish him to be next to anybody. He should stay in prison till he dies. He took a life and his life should be just taken.
“I wonder if the parole board would like him living next door to them.”
In the most recent parole hearing in 2024, Dunlop said he “hated” Ann, calling her “the bane of his life”, while also admitting that he “has a lot of respect” for her.
He even told the court that, if he hadn’t been jailed for life, people would have been in danger because he was an angry and violent man.
It’s for this reason that Ann would fear not only for her safety but the safety of the wider public should Dunlop be freed.
“He's pure evil,” she said.
“He should never be allowed to be out, never, for public protection.
“We want him kept behind bars for public protection, the safety of me, my family and anybody who he comes across in his life.
“He said at the last parole hearing [that] he hated me for years for what I did, but then he admires me because of me he got a long sentence.
“It is terrifying. Yeah, you can get an exclusion on his license not to come anywhere in Teesside. Do you think he's going to take notice of that? No.”
At the last hearing, the parole board recommended Dunlop be moved to an open prison, but then-Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood blocked the decision.
“When you get a life sentence, it should mean life,” Ann said.
“It shouldn't be a tariff because the family has to go through it all again. All you're doing is just reliving it.
“We are doing a full life sentence and any victim's family will tell you that. To go through these parole hearings it's absolutely torture for victims' families.”
Parole hearings are ‘crazy’
Dunlop was tried twice for the murder of Julie but was acquitted, and the 800-year-old double jeopardy law meant he could not be tried twice for the same offence.
He laughed at the law when he boasted to a prison officer that he had killed Julie while in jail for another offence, and was later done for perjury.
But Ann’s determination, backed by The Northern Echo, saw her spend 17 years demanding change - and the law was abolished in 2005 under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
He admitted the killing in September 2006 and the following month Ann watched as Dunlop was jailed for life at The Old Bailey in London.
Kevin, who was just three-years-old when his mother was killed in 1989, said it “feels like yesterday” that Dunlop was jailed for life, largely because of the recent string of parole hearings.
“All it does is it just takes you back each time,” he said.
“The word that's used amongst professionals is re-victimisation. You're constantly having to relive what you went through 20, 30 years ago.
“What I don't understand and really struggle with is we had a parole hearing less than 18 months ago. Very little can have changed in those 18 months.”
He believes the fact that Dunlop is now preparing to enter his fourth parole hearing proves that the way it is run is “outdated”.
He said: “A life sentence isn't a life sentence for the offender, it's for the victims and the family.
“I made the decision as I've got older and that little bit wiser is I don't want him to consume any more space than he needs to in my mind because I've got to function.
“If I let him consume the time, I feel as though that he's won again.
“It is inevitable that he will be released or he will die in custody. They are the only two options. However, if he is released, there is an exclusion zone. Will he abide by it? I think not.”
Kevin said he still has nightmares of the day his grandmother tragically found Julie’s body stuffed behind a bath panel in her own home.
“I was in the house and he started a nightmare that you live [with] permanently,” he said. “I don't know what his nightmares might be.
“But my nightmares are a situation of I wake up with screaming and shouting and sweats because I'm having the flashback of my nan finding the body and me being at the bottom of the stairs.
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"He's 63 and all we hear is he's an old man. He's not an old man. He's not stupid.
“He had a choice. In the first 90 days that my mum was under the bath, he had a choice to open his mouth. He could have made an anonymous phone call.
“He could have ended that nightmare of those 90 days. But then instead he stayed quiet. My nan had to find the body."
Dunlop's next hearing is scheduled for October 21.
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