Peter Sullivan, who spent 38 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, said: ‘I can’t forgive them for what they’ve done to me, because it’s going to be there for the rest of my life.’
Detectives hunting for the killer of a young woman have DNA tested hundreds of people after an innocent man spent 38 years in jail for her murder.
Peter Sullivan was wrongly accused of beating Diane Sindall, 21, to death in a frenzied sexual attack in Birkenhead, Wirral, in 1986. Mr Sullivan, 68, had his conviction quashed in May after claiming he made a false confession following abuse by Merseyside Police officers.
Speaking for the first time since his release he said this week: “I can’t forgive them for what they’ve done to me, because it’s going to be there for the rest of my life.” He said cops had beaten him and threatened to charge him with 35 rapes while he was refused a solicitor.
Merseyside Police said it “regrets” that there has been a “grave miscarriage of justice” but did not apologise to Mr Sullivan. The force reopened the investigation in 2023 after new DNA tests found a match for an unknown male on samples taken from the crime scene.
So far 456 men have agreed to take DNA tests and have been eliminated – including Diane’s relatives and her fiancé at the time of her death. A man arrested on suspicion of the murder at the time has also been cleared after being tested. He was released without charge in 1986. No match has been found on the national DNA database.
Merseyside Police said: “To date 456 men have been screened and eliminated from the investigation which was reopened in 2023. The investigation team has obtained most of the samples locally, however, screening has also taken place in Swansea, Perth, London, Hull and Newcastle with the provision of voluntary DNA elimination samples.”
Diane died of bleeding to the brain after her skull was fractured by multiple blows to her head from a 2ft crowbar. She also suffered a broken jaw, neck injuries, slashes to her face and possible bite marks. Diane’s shoes and her bag were missing but her jewellery had been left untouched.
Traces of semen were recovered from her body. On Friday Aug 1 1986, Diane, a 21-year-old bride-to-be and florist, had run out of petrol while driving home and is understood to have decided to walk to the nearest garage to fill up a jerry can.
She was 500 yards from the petrol station when she was set upon, sexually assaulted and beaten to death in an alley. Detectives described her injuries as the worst they had ever seen. After his arrest, Mr Sullivan was dubbed the “Beast of Birkenhead”. Some of Diane’s belongings were later found burnt in woodland on Bidston Hill, about five miles away.
On the night of the murder, Mr Sullivan, an unemployed labourer with a low IQ, had been playing darts at a local pub. He was arrested and repeatedly interviewed without having a solicitor present. Mr Sullivan initially made a confession but later retracted it.
The death led to Merseyside Police’s biggest murder led by the deputy head of Merseyside CID, Superintendent Tom Baxter and Superintendent Roger Corker, the head of Wirral CID. Mr Baxter later cleared detectives who fitted up four men for the murder of paperboy Carl Bridgewater, 13. They were wrongly jailed for shooting Carl in Stourbridge, West Mids, in 1978.
The ex-detective was also accused of suppressing evidence of flaws in an investigation into convicted wife-murderer Eddie Gilfoyle. Documents reportedly show how Merseyside officers withheld an internal report from Mr Gilfoyle’s defence team that outlined failings by the force at the scene where Paula Gilfoyle was found hanged at her home.
Merseyside Police said: “We believe there are people who have information, or suspicions, about the murder of Diane in 1986 and I would appeal to those people to come forward, as the information they have could be key to finding who the DNA belongs to.”
