Killer jailed in first double jeopardy case

LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - A man was jailed for life today for killing his former girlfriend 17 years ago in a case that made legal history after it became the first to be affected by the reform of the ''double jeopardy'' law.

Billy Dunlop, 43, was formally acquitted in 1991 of murdering Julie Hogg after two juries failed to reach a verdict.

However he admitted murder last month at London's Old Bailey before he was due to face a new trial.

He was jailed today to life and ordered to serve a minimum of 17 years in prison.

His case was the first to be affected since the 2003 reform of the so-called double jeopardy rule -- an 800-year-old law which stipulated that a person once acquitted could not be tried again for the same offence.

Hogg, 22, disappeared from her home in November 1989 and her body was found by her mother, Ann Ming, behind a bath panel at her daughter's house in Billingham, northeast England, 80 days after she went missing.

Dunlop, who police said was an ''evil and extremely dangerous man'', was re-arrested in 1999 and in an interview with detectives admitted Hogg's murder, describing in detail how he had strangled her in a drunken fury before hiding her body.

''It is hard to bring this back up,'' he told police.

''There is not a day goes by that I don't think about that night and what I done and not just what I done to Julie but like to the family.'' Because of the then double jeopardy law he could not be re-tried at the time and was instead jailed for six years in 2000 for perjury.

The amended law means suspects can go on trial again if new evidence came to light.

Last November, the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled Dunlop's should be the first case to be referred for a new trial because there was ''new and compelling evidence''.

Ming, who staged a long campaign to have the double jeopardy law changed, has said she hoped her determination to bring her daughter's killer to justice would help other families in the future.

REUTERS SHB VC1822