Peter Sullivan. When justice misses

Peter Sullivan was condemned in 1987 for the death of Diane Sindall following a ‘forced’ confession and marks of bites found in the body. After 38 years in prison and science evolution, new DNA tests were performed that proved their innocence, something that always guaranteed despite the first and only confession. It was now dismissed and released, in the one that is already considered one of the largest judicial failures in the United Kingdom.

The year was 1986. August, in the English city of Birkenjead, in Merseyside County. Diane Sindall, a 21 -year -old woman, was murdered after her van was left out of fuel at the end of a day at work and walked to home. He was the target of violent sexual aggression and ended up losing his life. After all these years, your tombstone still fills with flowers. There it is written: «Murdered on 08/8/1986 for being a woman. In memory of all our sisters who were violated and murdered. We will never let this be forgotten.

Diane was a florist but worked at a bar to get extra money for her wedding that would happen the following year. Marriage never happened because Diane never came home.

Police set up a real man hunting with all the means they achieved and reached the speech with more than three thousand people.

On September 23 of the same year, the authorities arrested Peter Sullivan for allegedly given several versions to the police about their movements at the time of the crime. It has not left prison so far, almost 40 years later, when its innocence was proved.

But let’s go to the facts. Everything indicated to have been Sullivan to commit the crime. The day after Sindall’s murder, some of his clothes were found to burn in a small fire in Bidston Hill, and a couple passing by told police that he saw a man running out of the bushes, whom he recognized as ‘Pete’. This is how the police had the first contact with Sullivan.

Questioned by the police, he will have « fallen into tears » – according to the reports – and confessed the crime. He said yes and said not a few times. Perhaps because it did not have access to legal support – which was denied to it. But as soon as he succeeded, he removed the confession and told the police that he had invented it.

His trial took place a year later and was mainly based on his apparent confessions as well as the allegations of dental experts who said that the marks of bites in the victim’s body could correspond to the alleged killer’s teeth.

The night Sullivan was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, BBC North West Tonight reported how silent on the Liverpool Crown Court defendants, while his mother was screaming. The sister passed out and needed to be revived. No one expected this outcome.

After Sullivan was sentenced, Superintendent Detective Tom Baxter told BBC that Sullivan « was not a busy person, » he seemed to be a quiet boy – but what kind of person commits these crimes?  »

Sullivan was 30 years old. Today there is 68. Despite confirming the violation in the first instance, he removed this testimony shortly thereafter. He says he was pressured, he was « exhausted, confused and scared », he did not have a present lawyer – which was common at the time in cases of great repercussion – and from there he tried for years that they heard him: it was not him.

The DNA tests at the time were not as developed as they are today. For decades the biological samples of the crime scene have not been reevaluated and only much later, with the advance of forensic science, this evidence was subjected to DNA tests.

Over the years several requests for revision of the case have been made that, either they were rejected or too long to be analyzed. Everything was tried: the lawyers claimed that Sullivan’s confession was illegally obtained and that new evidence could prove its innocence. And in 2010 the defense really began to press for a new analysis of the evidence, claiming that DNA tests evolved. Moreover, today it is known that the analysis of tooth marks is not a reliable test. It was then in 2020 that the defense requested a new analysis of the biological material collected at the crime scene, including semen and saliva samples that were kept. The result? Sullivan is excluded from the perpetrator of the crime because the DNA found does not correspond to him.

After a long judicial battle in May this year, the UK Appeal Court officially nullifies its conviction.

This is already considered one of the biggest judicial failures in the UK, taking into account the time that Peter Sullivan spent in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Now the man still needs to look for financial compensation for the time he has unfairly spent in prison.

From here two conclusions are drawn: Justice also fails and Diane Sindall’s real killer is still on the loose.