It’s rare to hear a convicted murderer talk about his crime, but we hear a lot from Dunlop over the course of five hours.
But at no point does he appear on screen, the cameras carefully angled to show only a couple of lawyers and the four panelists.
He talks about the “terrible” man he was, how he brutally abused women, fought men when he felt challenged and flew into a rage, and how Julie Hogg was the unfortunate person he finally went too far with in 1989.
He says he deeply regrets what he did and is a changed person, leading to taunts from Hogg’s mother and son, the latter only three years old when his mother was murdered by Dunlop.
They are clearly disgusted when Dunlop says he has a lot of respect and time for them and bears them no ill will.
He had not wanted this meeting to be open to the public, claiming it caused him stress and anxiety, but although the “normal position” would still be for the probation board to meet in private, the organisation’s chairman Caroline Corby previously ruled the interests of justice, external in this case outweighed Dunlop’s own.
