The Incident Room | Preview (Channel 5)

Take a deep breath and step inside the Incident Room, the beating heart of a murder investigation where cold-blooded killers are brought to justice.

Murder victim Julie Hogg’s body is found decomposing behind her bath, after she was reported as missing for three months. Homicide detectives take us back to the Incident Room, the nerve centre of the murder investigation, to reveal how this harrowing case unfolded.

Former senior investigating officer Mark Braithwaite puts us in the thick of the action revealing how the Incident Room operated and how officers worked tirelessly around the clock to catch the murderer. We live through the investigation step by step as detectives hunt down her ruthless killer, in a case that would change British Law forever.

Julie was murdered by Billy Dunlop in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees, in 1989 but at first, detectives couldn’t find the evidence to bring him to justice, and Dunlop was acquitted twice for the murder.

It wasn’t long before he was back on the police’s radar when the remains of another woman, Tina Bell, who was last seen with Dunlop were found. That death remains unsolved but Dunlop was soon sent to prison for a violent attack on an ex-partner and her new boyfriend.

Believing he was protected by the 800-year-old ‘Double Jeopardy’ law, which states that you cannot be tried twice for the same crime, Dunlop later confessed that he’d murdered Julie.

But he made a fatal mistake by underestimating Julie’s mother Ann Ming, who fought a tireless campaign for years to change the law so Dunlop could be tried again. She eventually succeeded and 17 years after Julie’s death, Dunlop was finally convicted of her murder, in a case that made British Legal history.

The Incident Room begins Wednesday 29th November on Channel 5.