A ‘Walter Mitty’ fantasist close to being cleared of a brutal sex murder after 38 years in jail begged to see a psychiatrist after initially confessing to the killing.
Peter Sullivan, a vulnerable man with learning difficulties, wrote a lengthy statement to police saying he thought he was ‘daft’ and could not understand why he kept telling lies.
Details of his extraordinary cry for help can be revealed after a landmark Mail on Sunday investigation revealed a shocking catalogue of police mistakes, alleged misconduct and other official blunders that has seen the former labourer and father-of-one robbed of most of his adult life.
Sullivan was 30 when he was convicted of being a sadistic sex killer known as the ‘Beast of Birkenhead’ who murdered a young florist and part-time barmaid, Diane Sindall.
A jury convicted him of murder in November 1987 after a forensic dentist said he was ‘certain’ bite marks on the victim’s breast came from the defendant.
Now after some 14,000 days in jail, and aged 67, Sullivan is set to be declared innocent in the UK’s longest-ever miscarriage of justice case after ‘newly discovered’ DNA suggests he was wrongly jailed for the murder of Ms Sindall, 21, in August 1986.
The DNA belongs to a mystery suspect whose details are not on the National DNA Database or linked to any other unsolved offences. Even before Sullivan’s conviction is officially quashed at the Court of Appeal, which is set to examine his case in the next few months, Merseyside Police has begun a fresh investigation into Ms Sindall’s appalling death.
There is said to be ‘incontrovertible’ evidence that Sullivan – who has been described as a ‘village idiot’ and ‘not the full shilling’ – is innocent and his conviction unsafe.
Detectives allegedly forced a confession from the oddball, initially barred him from seeing a solicitor and denied him support from an ‘appropriate adult’, who, it is said, should have been appointed to safeguard his interests as a vulnerable person.
Ms Sindall was brutalised and sexually mutilated in Birkenhead, across the Mersey from Liverpool.
The part-time barmaid had been working late to pay for her forthcoming wedding when her van ran out of petrol. While walking along a road, she was ambushed and dragged into an alleyway where she was killed.
Now, amid further suggestions that detectives exploited Sullivan’s vulnerability, the Mail can reveal how he pleaded to see a psychiatrist after he retracted his murder ‘confession’.
‘I need to see a doctor, or a psycho (sic),’ he told detectives days after his arrest. ‘I need to find out what is wrong with my mind because I think I’m daft. I keep going on with all these lies, but I never killed Diane. If I had killed her, I would have come straight forward and handed myself in.’
The jury at his murder trial in Liverpool in 1987 was told how Sullivan had referred to wanting to see a psychiatrist in a 13-page statement he penned in his cell during the early hours of October 1, 1986 – when he had been questioned for more than a week.
He told police: ‘I want to help you out over this murder and clear myself. I don’t mean any harm to anyone. My father has told me to help you with all your questions, so please help me from doing any harm to myself.’
The psychological assessment of Sullivan conducted six years ago, when he made a failed bid to clear his name, highlighted his ‘limited intellectual capacity and suggestibility’.
Defence expert Dr Harry Wood, a consultant psychologist, said this gave ‘rise to concerns about the applicant’s answers and confessions in his police interviews’.
In his 2001 memoir, Cause Of Death, senior Home Office pathologist Dr Geoffrey Garrett – who worked on the Sindall murder – described petty criminal Sullivan as an attention seeker and a ‘loser, a jailbird and a man with few friends’.
He added: ‘He was never bright and probably a little backward. His chances of achieving anything worthwhile were about nil but he dreamed of being a success. Living in a typically ‘Walter Mitty’ world, he boasted of being friendly with his heroes, world darts champions Eric Bristow and Jocky Wilson.
‘Another time he claimed to have had soccer trials with Wolverhampton Wanderers.’
Dr Garrett, who has since died, added: ‘Once he smashed a window and just stood there waiting to be caught. Another time his stolen car broke down, so he stopped a policeman to help him get it started again. The policeman arrested him.
‘The only way Sullivan could get attention was by misbehaving and being caught misbehaving. Here, surely, was one of life’s victims.’
Merseyside Police confirmed a new investigation had been launched following the DNA’s discovery. It told the Mail: ‘There is no match for the DNA profile from the crime scene on the National DNA Database.
‘The investigation team has been obtaining voluntary DNA elimination samples from persons identified during the original investigation for comparison with the unidentified DNA profile.
The investigation team is also obtaining voluntary DNA elimination samples from people across the country for specialist DNA examination.
‘Letters have been sent out by the investigation team to assist with tracing individuals identified from the original investigation to request voluntary DNA elimination samples.’
No date has yet been fixed for Sullivan’s appeal. The previous longest miscarriage of justice was 27 years served by Stephen Downing, whose conviction in the ‘Bakewell Tart’ murder case was quashed in 2001.