A man sensationally freed after spending 38 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit was denied parole just three months ago – because he steadfastly wouldn’t admit the crime he has now been cleared of.
The Parole Board’s report, obtained by the Mail, turned down Peter Sullivan’s bid to be freed in February this year, saying he had refused to confess his guilt.
On Tuesday, Mr Sullivan was vindicated as his conviction was dramatically overturned almost four decades after he was locked up as a young man, making it one of Britain’s longest ever miscarriages of justice.
Now aged 68, Mr Sullivan was just 29 when he was convicted of being a sadistic sex killer known as the ‘Beast of Birkenhead’, but DNA evidence proves he was not the man who brutalised and murdered young florist and barmaid Diane Sindall in 1986.
At the time of the Parole Board decision, in February, the likelihood of Mr Sullivan being declared innocent was obvious after the Mail had already revealed his shocking case to the world.
And even before he was formally cleared, Merseyside Police had made the decision to reopen the murder case.
Mr Sullivan was jailed for a minimum of 15 years, but he endured an additional 23 years on top because he kept being turned down for parole having repeatedly refused to ‘admit’ he was guilty.
February’s review by the Parole Board – his 11th review – stated: ‘The panel confirmed he maintains his innocence of the…offence.’
The report went on: ‘The panel established that there had been no recent concerns about Mr Sullivan’s behaviour in prison. He was described as polite, and he was said to engage well with professional staff.’
However the board said after considering ‘risk factors’ that ‘the panel was not satisfied that release at this point would be safe for the protection of the public’. The Parole Board’s assessment, only three months ago, flies in the face of this week’s Appeal Court ruling quashing his conviction as ‘unsafe’.
But the Parole Board report stated that, at the time, it had no choice but to ‘proceed on the basis that Mr Sullivan was rightly convicted’. The Parole Board said it ‘cannot reopen or reinvestigate previous convictions’, adding: ‘If a prisoner is denying their guilt, that is one part of a comprehensive risk assessment that the panel will conduct, based on all of the evidence available; the Parole Board cannot refuse to release a prisoner solely on the basis that they maintain their innocence, so it isn’t an automatic bar to release.’
Mr Sullivan is now in line for £1million compensation. But after spending most of his adult life behind bars, his supporters are putting pressure on the Ministry of Justice to lift the cap on its payout scheme for victims of wrongful conviction.
Lawyers said the money Mr Sullivan expect pales when compared with the millions handed out to actual criminals injured on the prison estate.
Former labourer Mr Sullivan was released from Category A Wakefield Prison on Tuesday night after his conviction for the brutal 1986 murder was quashed by the Court of Appeal.
The maximum possible compensation payout is £1million under current rules, meaning Mr Sullivan would get about £26,000 a year for his time in prison. Lawyers have called for Labour to review its own cap, which it introduced in 2008.
Toby Wilton, who is representing Andrew Malkinson in his application for compensation after he was wrongly jailed for 17 years for rape, told the Mail: ‘It is completely inappropriate to have any cap.
‘A payment of £1million in the most serious cases goes nowhere near to putting victims back in the position they would have been in had they not been put in prison.’
And he said the maximum payout would not properly reflect the reputational damage caused to Mr Sullivan, who was dubbed the Beast of Birkenhead for the Merseyside murder.
Drawing parallels with Mr Malkinson, whose conviction was quashed in 2023, he said: ‘They are both very high-profile cases, high-profile crimes… and both have had to live for decades being considered a registered sex offender and a murderer, and with all the difficulties and loss of reputation that goes with that.
‘Compensation for that should be taken into account, but the cap effectively means the compensation will not reflect that.’
He said Mr Malkinson – who has ‘struggled’ since his release from jail – had received only an interim compensation payment.
‘Mr Sullivan will be waiting months if not years to get his interim payment,’ he said. ‘The process of assessing his claim takes a very long time.’
Barrister Chris Henley KC, who led a review of the Criminal Cases Review Commission’s handling of the Malkinson case, told Times Radio: ‘It (£1 million) sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t.
‘We should be much more generous to people who’ve been through the sort of ordeal that Mr Sullivan has been through.’
Police are now reinvestigating Miss Sindall’s murder in the hope of bringing her killer to justice.
In September, a High Court judge awarded burglar Steven Wilson, 36, £5.4 million for the ‘life-changing’ injuries he suffered when he was stabbed while working in a prison canteen in 2018.
Epileptic Ryan St George received £4.7 million in damages for brain damage received when he fell out of an upper bunk bed during a seizure in jail in 2012.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘We are actively considering options to ensure any compensation properly supports people and will set out next steps in due course.’