Peter Sullivan Walks Free After Decades Behind Bars
The numbers are staggering—38 years in prison, 14,113 days lost, all for a crime he didn’t commit. Peter Sullivan, once labelled the murderer of Diane Sindall in the late 1980s, has finally been cleared by the Court of Appeal. He now holds the grim record for the longest wrongful imprisonment in British history.
Sullivan, now in his seventies, appeared on a video link from Wakefield Prison as the verdict came in. You might expect a man in his position to be furious or broken. But Sullivan calmly told his lawyer he was neither angry nor bitter, keeping focus on the core tragedy: the life of Diane Sindall. 'I am not angry, I am not bitter,' he insisted. He recognized that the case isn’t just about his freedom, but a lasting wound for two families—his own and the Sindalls.
How DNA Testing Changed Everything
The quashing of Sullivan's conviction was sparked by a breakthrough in DNA evidence—something that barely existed when he was first convicted in 1987. Back then, forensics were more art than science. The case revolved around a bite mark said to match Sullivan, and a weapon prosecutors claimed was linked to him. Those methods were later criticized for being unreliable, but for years they kept him behind bars.
Things started to shift when the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) looked at old evidence again in 2021. Armed with better technology, DNA samples were retested. What they found was stunning: a new DNA profile at the scene pointed to someone else—someone who was not Peter Sullivan.
The CCRC's work was the turning point. Previous appeals in 2008 failed because the science just wasn't there yet. But as labs got better at handling tiny, degraded samples, the truth finally came out. The Court of Appeal agreed: there was no longer a shred of real evidence tying Sullivan to Diane’s murder. The case for a retrial disappeared, and Sullivan walked free after nearly four decades.
Sullivan’s family broke down outside the courthouse. His sister, Kim Smith, described it as both a relief and something deeply bittersweet. 'We lost Peter for 39 years,' she said. But their relief is complicated, because Diane’s family will never get her back. The two families, connected forever by a terrible night in Bebington, Merseyside, in 1986, were left with scars no court can heal.
The Diane Sindall case was famous even at the time. The BBC’s Crimewatch show, a fixture on UK screens in the 1980s, brought it to public attention. The pressure for a quick conviction was intense. That heat, plus the crude forensics of the era, led to Sullivan being wrongly singled out.
This story isn’t just about old mistakes. It’s a gut punch reminder of how slow the justice system can be to admit errors, and how technology keeps rewriting what we know about guilt and innocence. Cases like Sullivan’s keep piling up as DNA tools get sharper, with lives upended by the shortcomings of yesterday's forensic practices. The Criminal Cases Review Commission now has a sharper role than ever—sifting through old files, hoping to right more past wrongs before time runs out for others like Peter Sullivan.
