A man who spent nearly four decades in a British prison in the killing of a bartender said he was not angry or bitter Tuesday as his murder conviction was overturned because of newly available DNA evidence.
Peter Sullivan put his hand over his mouth and appeared to become emotional as the Court of Appeal in London ordered his conviction quashed after years of attempts to clear his name.
He is the longest-serving victim of a wrongful conviction in the U.K., attorney Sarah Myatt said outside court. His release came 38 years, seven months and 21 days after his arrest, a total of 14,113 days in custody, the BBC reported. About a year of that time was spent in custody on remand as he awaited trial.
Sullivan, who watched the hearing by video from Wakefield prison in northern England, said in a statement that he was not resentful and was anxious to see his loved ones.
“As God is my witness, it is said the truth shall take you free,” Myatt read from the statement. “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.”
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Sullivan, 68, was convicted in 1987 of killing Diane Sindall in Bebington, near Liverpool in northwest England. He spent 38 years behind bars.
Sindall, 21, a florist who was engaged to be married, was returning home from a part-time job at a pub on a Friday night in August 1986 when her van ran out of gas, police said. She was last seen walking along the road after midnight.
Her body was found about 12 hours later in an alley. She had been sexually assaulted and badly beaten.
Sexual fluid found on Sindall’s body could not be scientifically analyzed until recently.
The court heard technology had only very recently been developed to the point where the semen sample, recovered from Sindall’s abdomen, could be tested for DNA, the BBC reported. A test in 2024 revealed it wasn’t Sullivan, defense attorney Jason Pitter said.
“The prosecution case is that it was one person. It was one person who carried out a sexual assault on the victim,” Pitter said. “The evidence here is now that one person was not the defendant.”
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson did not challenge the appeal and said that if the DNA evidence had been available at the time of the investigation it was inconceivable that Sullivan would have been prosecuted.
Merseyside Police said it reopened the investigation as the appeal was underway and was “committed to doing everything” to find the killer.
Detective Chief Superintendent Karen Jaundrill said more than 260 men have been screened and eliminated from the renewed investigation since 2023, the BBC reported.
“We have enlisted specialist skills and expertise from the National Crime Agency, and with their support we are proactively trying to identify the person the DNA profile belongs to, and extensive and painstaking inquiries are underway,” she said.
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The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examines possible wrongful convictions, had declined to refer Sullivan’s case to the appeals court in 2008, and the court turned away his appeal in 2019.
But the CCRC took up the case again when the new DNA evidence was available.
“In the light of that evidence, it is impossible to regard the appellant’s conviction as safe,” Justice Timothy Holroyde said.
Sullivan’s sister, Kim Smith, reflected outside the court on the toll the case had taken on two families.
“We lost Peter for 39 years and at the end of the day it’s not just us,” Smith said. “Peter hasn’t won and neither has the Sindall family. They’ve lost their daughter, they are not going to get her back. We’ve got Peter back and now we’ve got to try and build a life around him again.”
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