A man who served nearly four decades behind bars for a murder he did not commit has had his conviction quashed.
In what is deemed one of the biggest miscarriages of our times, Peter Sullivan went down for a gruesome crime he did not commit.
He was just 30 when he was sentenced for killing a 21-year-old barmaid and now - aged 68 - is set to be a free man after three senior judges quashed his conviction for the killing, 17 years after his first attempt to have it overturned.
Following his release he has said he is “not angry” and “not bitter” about the miscarriage of justice, describing what happened to him as “very wrong” but said the ruling did not “detract or minimise” a “heinous and most terrible loss of life”.
Here’s all we know about the case:
What happened in the Peter Sullivan case?
Diane Sindall, a 21-year-old barmaid, was found dead in Bebington, Merseyside, in August 1986, with Mr Sullivan arrested the following month and convicted in November 1987, but has remained behind bars despite being given a minimum term of 16 years.
The barmaid was well-known where she lived in the Wirral where her family owned a flower shop.
She was saving to get married in 1986, so took on a job behind the bar at the Wellington pub in Bebington, five miles south of Seacombe.
She was working there on 1 August 1986, the last night she was seen alive.
It is reported how she left the pub following her shift at 23.45 but ran out of petrol on the way home.
The BBC Crimewatch put out an appeal and a taxi driver came home saying he saw a woman and man arguing on the side of the road, and others reported hearing screams just after midnight.
Her half-naked body was found in an alleyway off Borough Road by a dog walker the next morning.
She had a fractured skull, facial lacerations and bruising, mutilated breasts and lacerated genitals, according to court documents seen by the BBC.
She died from a brain haemorrhage thought to have been caused by multiple blows to the head.
What happened after her death?
Merseyside Police opened an investigation with the the brutality of the murder causing nationwide shock.
Officers spoke to 3,000 people as part of its investigation and a march was organised by locals about safety for women and girls in the area.
But for weeks they appeared to have no leads, and no clue about how Ms Sindall had ended up in the alleyway, because nobody saw the attack take place.
How was Peter Sullivan arrested?
The day after the murder some of her clothes were found burning in a small fire, and a passing couple told police they saw a man, running out of bushes, whom they recognised as "Pete".
But when officers organised an identity parade, they failed to pick him out.
More witnesses contacted officers after the Crimewatch reconstruction aired on the television which led to police suspecting Peter Sullivan.
Officers arrested him on suspicion of murder and it is reported how he gave officers a number of "completely different" accounts of his movements before “breaking down in tears” and confessing to the murder.
He withdrew the supposed confession that same day, but reinstated it soon afterwards.
It has since been revealed that Sullivan had not been given access to legal advice which had been withheld by police on the grounds that it would have caused a "hindrance to the enquiry".
When he was given access to a solicitor on 25 September, he retracted his confessions and told police he had made them up.
In his trial in 1987, the court heard about his apparent confessions, as well as claims from dental experts that bite marks on Ms Sindall's body could be matched to Mr Sullivan's teeth.
However, it was later revealed that he gave these confessions after he had been assaulted by the police.
What happened after his trial and conviction?
He first tried to challenge his conviction in 2008, with the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) declining to refer the case to the Court of Appeal, before he lost his own appeal bid in 2019.
He again asked the CCRC to refer his case in 2021, and the commission found that DNA samples taken from the scene did not match Mr Sullivan.
What has happened now with Peter Sullivan?
At a hearing on Tuesday May 13, 2025, lawyers for Mr Sullivan told the Court of Appeal in London that the new evidence showed that Ms Sindall’s killer “was not the defendant”.
Barristers for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the court that there was “no credible basis on which the appeal can be opposed” related to the DNA evidence, as it was “sufficient fundamentally to cast doubt on the safety of the conviction”.
Quashing the conviction, Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Bryan, quashed the conviction, stating they had “no doubt that it is both necessary and expedient in the interests of justice” to accept the new DNA evidence.
