BBC1
This is the story of one woman's battle to overturn the 800-year-old double jeopardy law, and her fight for justice for her murdered daughter.
Julie Hogg was murdered in 1989 and her body left to rot behind the bath panel of her Teesside home. After weeks thinking Julie was missing, her mother Ann visited the house, only to be confronted with the stench of a dead body. As she followed the smell upstairs into the bathroom, Ann was forced to accept that not only was Julie dead, but that she’d been brutally murdered.
Julie’s neighbour Billy Dunlop was immediately marked as a suspect by the police. In what seemed to be a clear-cut case, he was later charged with murder. Ann was convinced he’d killed Julie, so when Dunlop was found not guilty (due to inconclusive evidence), her life fell apart.
Years later, Dunlop was imprisoned for a different crime and was overheard by a warder bragging that he’d killed Julie. When he came out of prison, he was heard making the same claims in his local community, and Ann soon found out what Dunlop was saying about Julie’s death. However, under the double jeopardy law, he was untouchable - the same person could not be tried twice for the same crime.
This powerful and poignant film charts Ann’s remarkable journey to be the first person in Britain to successfully challenge the archaic double jeopardy law. Almost twenty years after Julie was killed, the case returned to court, and the eyes of the world’s media was on Ann – a tenacious housewife from Teesside.
Getting Away With Murder follows Ann and her husband Charlie’s tough emotional journey over the months leading up to the case. Almost two decades after Julie’s death, they were forced to re-live the ordeal in the full gaze of the watching media. Dunlop’s taunts rang in Ann’s ears, and her nerves were tested to destruction under the ever-present possibility that he might again be found not guilty.
Ultimately, Dunlop was sentenced to life in prison. He became the first man in over 800 years to be tried for the same crime twice. Finally Ann could let Julie rest in peace.