A murderer who was brought to justice after his victim’s mother campaigned for a key change in the double jeopardy law should be moved to an open prison, the Parole Board has said.
William Dunlop, 61, strangled pizza delivery woman Julie Hogg in Billingham, County Durham, in 1989 and hid her mutilated body behind a bath panel where it lay undiscovered for more than two months.
The killer subjected the 22-year-old, who had a three-year-old son, to a violent sexual assault after she rejected him, in what prosecutors called a “premeditated and truly horrendous” attack.
Julie Hogg was killed by William Dunlop in 1989 (PA)
Now, the Parole Board is recommending he be moved but the final decision will be made by Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
He had initially hoped to be released into the community but withdrew this application last year and agreed he would be better suited to open prison conditions.
When the parole panel chairman told Dunlop during a public hearing that professionals had unanimously agreed he was unfit to be released and should instead be moved to an open prison, he said: “I have to agree with the professional judgment.
“I do think they are right.”
Speaking about his period of serious offending between 1988 and 1998, he told the hearing: “I was a violent, hideous, unpleasant person”.
Dunlop, known as Billy, was tried twice for the murder but both juries failed to reach a verdict.
Three years later, while in jail for another crime, he confessed and admitted lying in court, boasting there was nothing anyone could do about it because of the double jeopardy rule in place at the time.
But Miss Hogg’s mother, Ann Ming, campaigned for 15 years to get the 800-year-old law changed so that he could be charged with the same crime twice, and in 2006 he became the first person to be tried under the new rules.
He was convicted of murder and jailed for life.
In a published decision, the Parole Board said it was “satisfied” that Dunlop had made “sufficient progress” during his sentence.
“William Dunlop is assessed as presenting a low risk of abscond,” the report added.
His conduct in prison showed a “marked and consistent change for the better since 2010”, the report continued.
“William Dunlop has worked extensively over the years on the factors that led to his offending.
“He has shown he is able to address and replace many negative beliefs and attitudes with better ways of thinking.
“Overall, he has a very much improved understanding of himself and the world around him.
“The panel is satisfied that he could not have maintained the behaviour he has shown since 2010 unless there had been a very substantial change in his degree of self-knowledge and self-control.”
In 2022, then Justice Secretary Brandon Lewis blocked a previous bid to move Dunlop to an open prison, in the interests of public protection, despite a parole panel recommending the plan.