A 68-year-old man who has spent 38 years in jail has had his murder conviction quashed at the court of appeal in what is thought to be the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British history.
Peter Sullivan was wrongly convicted in 1987 for the frenzied murder of a florist and part-time pub worker, Diane Sindall, 21, who was killed as she left work in Bebington, Merseyside.
It was alleged that in August 1986, Sullivan had spent the day drinking heavily after losing a darts match and went out armed with a crowbar before a chance encounter with Sindall.
Her florist van had broken down on her way home from a pub shift and she was walking towards a petrol station when she was beaten to death and sexually assaulted. Her body was left partly clothed and mutilated.
Sullivan has always protested his innocence and lawyers have tried twice before to get his conviction overturned.
In a statement read by his lawyer Sarah Myatt outside the court on his behalf, Sullivan said too many horrors had been inflicted on him to detail.
“As God is my witness, it is said the truth shall take you free,” he said. “It is unfortunate that it does not give a timescale as we advance towards resolving the wrongs done to me, I am not angry, I am not bitter. I am simply anxious to return to my loved ones and family as I’ve got to make the most of what is left of the existence I am granted in this world.”
New tests ordered by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) revealed that Sullivan’s DNA was not present on samples preserved at the time.
Duncan Atkinson KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service, told the court of appeal that analysis of the DNA showed it came from someone known as “unknown male one”, and that it was “one billion times more likely that the sample originated from unknown male one, rather than someone else, and it did not match the appellant”.
He said: “Had this DNA evidence been available at the time a decision was taken to prosecute, it is difficult to see how a decision to prosecute could have been made.”
Quashing the conviction, Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Bryan, said: “In the light of that evidence, it is impossible to regard the appellant’s conviction as safe.”
Sullivan, who attended the hearing via video link from HMP Wakefield, listened to the ruling with his head down and arms folded, and appeared to weep and put his hand to his mouth as his conviction was quashed.
As the judgment was read out, his sister Kim Smith tearfully declared: “We’ve done it.”
Outside court, she said: “We lost Peter for 39 years and at the end of the day it’s not just us, Peter hasn’t won and neither has the Sindall family. They’ve lost their daughter, they are not going to get her back.”
Merseyside police said the crucial DNA evidence was not available during the original investigation and officers were now “committed to doing everything” to find the person whose DNA was left at the scene where Diane Sindall died.
Det Ch Supt Karen Jaundrill said that more than 260 men had been screened and eliminated from the investigation since it was reopened in 2023.
She said: “Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Diane Sindall who continue to mourn her loss and will have to endure the implications of this new development so many years after her murder. We are committed to doing everything within our power to find whom the DNA, which was left at the scene, belongs to.
“Unfortunately, there is no match for the DNA identified on the national DNA database.”
But she said that, with the help of the National Crime Agency (NCA), officers were “proactively trying to identify the person the DNA profile belongs to”.
Holroyde said a decision by the CCRC in 2008 that scientific techniques at the time would not yield a DNA profile was “plainly correct”.
He said: “The brutal attack which ended Miss Sindall’s young life also blighted the lives of her fiance, her family and all those who loved her. We offer our condolences to the bereaved.”
James Burley, who led the investigation by the charity Appeal into the case of Andrew Malkinson, said: “Peter Sullivan’s exoneration today after nearly four decades of wrongful imprisonment provides further evidence that our current appeals system cannot be trusted to swiftly identify and rectify miscarriages of justice.
“Between them, Peter Sullivan, Andrew Malkinson and Victor Nealon spent over 70 years wrongly imprisoned before finally being exonerated by compelling DNA evidence. Each had their cases previously rejected by both the court of appeal and the CCRC – the institutions which are meant to act as our justice system’s safety net. The case for an urgent overhaul of the appeals system is now overwhelming.”
His comments were echoed by Prof Rebecca Helm, who runs the miscarriages of justice registry at the University of Exeter law school.
“The case underscores the importance of having a mechanism through which convictions based on evidence that is known to be misleading (including weak or incorrectly described forensic science) can be scrutinised even in the absence of ‘new’ evidence in order to protect others who have been wrongfully convicted, and to ensure that true perpetrators are brought to justice,” she said.
The prime minister’s spokesperson called it a “grave miscarriage of justice” and said: “We must carefully consider this judgment and look at how this could have happened, to get both him [Sullivan] and Diane’s family the answers they deserve.”
