Peter Sullivan to be released from prison after 38 years as murder conviction quashed

Peter Sullivan will be released from prison after 38 years after the Court of Appeal quashed his conviction.

The now-68-year-old, was given a life sentence in 1987 for the murder of 21-year-old Diane Sindall who was found dead on August 2, 1986. Ms Sindall was found in an alleyway in Birkenhead after leaving her place of work in Bebington.

Peter Sullivan is believed to be the UK’s longest-serving victim of a miscarriage of justice, after his conviction was overturned - 17 years after his first appeal bid.

Mr Sullivan’s case appeared before the Court of Appeal today (May 13), on the basis of new DNA findings relating to semen found on Ms Sindall’s body. Lord Justice Holroyde ruled that, at the time of his conviction, “the evidence as a whole would have been considered as insufficient to charge” had the new evidence been available.

Lord Justice Holroyde, sitting with Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Bryan, stated they had “no doubt that it is both necessary and expedient in the interests of justice” to accept the new DNA evidence.

Mr Sullivan attended the hearing via video link from HMP Wakefield and appeared to weep as his conviction was quashed.

Peter Sullivan Court of Appeal hearing

In written submissions for the hearing, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the new DNA evidence is “reliable” and “provides a clear and uncontroverted basis to suggest that another person was responsible for both the sexual assault and the murder.”

The CPS added: “It positively undermines the circumstantial case against Mr Sullivan as identified at the time both of his trial and his 2021 appeal.”

It was alleged that Mr Sullivan had spent the day drinking heavily after losing a darts match, and went out armed with a crowbar before a chance encounter with Ms Sindall.

Her florist van had broken down on her way home from a pub shift and she was walking to a petrol station, when she was beaten to death and sexually assaulted, and her body left partially clothed and mutilated.

Peter Sullivan, who was 29 at the time of the attack, was found guilty in 1987 of her murder but has long maintained his innocence. Now 68 years old, Mr Sullivan has served 38 years in prison for murder and has tried twice before to get his conviction overturned.

However, it wasn’t until last year that the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) said that Sullivan’s conviction had been referred to the Court of Appeal on the basis of DNA evidence.

Mr Sullivan applied to the CCRC in March 2021 raising concerns about his interviews by the police, bitemark evidence presented in his trial, and what was said to be the murder weapon. After consulting experts, the CCRC obtained DNA information from samples taken at the time of the offence and found a DNA profile which was not his. The profile is not on the national database.

Mr Sullivan watched the Court of Appeal hearing in London via video link from HMP Wakfield today (May 13). His legal representation stated that the new evidence showed Diane Sindall’s killer “was not the defendant”.

Jason Pitter KC, for Mr Sullivan, told the Court of Appeal that semen had been left on Ms Sindall’s body in what was “a grotesque offence”. At the time of the murder, and in the years since, there was not the scientific capability to properly analyse the sample and get a DNA profile.

Mr Pitter said had the analysis been carried out earlier than last year, there was a risk that the sample itself could have been destroyed completely. After the sample was analysed in 2024, it was found that the DNA profile was not Mr Sullivan’s.

He said: “The prosecution case is that it was one person. It was one person who carried out a sexual assault on the victim. The evidence here is now that one person was not the defendant.”

Mr Pitter argue that the evidence could not now pass “the threshold with which a prosecution could take place”, adding that bite mark evidence used in the original trial, which the prosecution claimed at the time matched Sullivan and were found on Ms Sindall’s body, were no longer viewed as reliable evidence of identification in criminal cases.

The CCRC previously stated that “there was also evidence to suggest there were possible breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), which regulates police activities, in relation to the interviews, as Mr Sullivan was not provided with an appropriate adult and was denied initial legal representation”.

Mr Sullivan had been denied access to legal advice in the first seven interviews despite requesting it, but later “confessed to the murder” in an unrecorded interview a day after his arrest.

He later repeated the confession in a recorded interview, but Duncan Atkinson KC, for the CPS, told the court this “was inconsistent with the facts established by the investigation” and inconsistent with Sullivan’s earlier interviews. Sullivan then retracted his confession later that day.

Mr Pitter stated that these “significant admissions” and “incriminating statements” made by Sullivan at the time of the killing were “inherently unreliable” due to his “vulnerability”.

He said: “The appellant was extremely vulnerable in an interrogative situation, because of his limited intellectual functioning, combined with his problems with self-expression, his disposition to acquiesce, to yield, to be influenced, manipulated and controlled and his internal pressure to speak without reflection and his tendency to engage in make-believe to an extreme extent.”

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Duncan Atkinson KC said had the new 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.”

But, he said the CPS rejected the grounds for appeal linked to bite mark evidence and the conduct of police interviews, telling the court that the way Sullivan was questioned was “robust but not more than that”, and that he was initially denied legal representation amid fear that information might be leaked, but this was in line with guidelines at the time.

Once Sullivan had a solicitor he continued his pattern of making apparent confessions and then retracting them, Mr Atkinson said. He added that while the bite mark evidence should not have been presented to the jury in such “emphatic” terms, there was still circumstantial evidence against Mr Sullivan.

Referring to the bite mark evidence, he said: “It was part of the evidential picture that even if that was put to one side, the jury would nevertheless have had the remainder of the, at that time, cogent circumstantial case to consider.”

Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Goss and Mr Justice Bryan overturned Mr Sullivan’s appeal on the grounds of the new DNA evidence. Lord Justice Holroyde said: “In the light of that evidence, it is impossible to regard the appellant’s conviction as safe.”