The harrowing story behind the Sheridan Smith drama

On 16 November 1989, 25-year-old Billy Dunlop strangled 22-year-old pizza delivery girl and mother-of-one Julie Hogg to death, and hid her corpse behind a bath panel in her home in Billingham, County Durham.

- Lydia Spencer-Elliott, The Independent

She was found decomposing by her mother Ann Ming 80 days later and, despite evidence against Dunlop, juries twice failed to find him guilty of the crime. He was acquitted and released. While in jail for another violent offence, Dunlop boasted to a prison guard about getting away with the killing. He was sentenced to six years in jail for perjury — but couldn't be prosecuted again due to the double jeopardy law: 80-year-old legislation, which protects individuals from being tried for the same crime multiple times if new evidence emerges. Ming vowed to overturn this law, to win justice for her daughter. “It was horrible — he was bragging in pubs about committing the perfect murder,” she said. “I was absolutely incensed.”

The infamous case is being dramatised in I Fought the Law, a new four-part ITV series, based on Ming's book, For the Love of Julie. It stars Sheridan Smith as Hogg’s mother, who embarked on a 15-year-long fight to change Britain’s double jeopardy law and put Dunlop behind bars. Ahead of the show's launch, here's the real-life story...