By BRD Investigations | November 2025
It is the stuff of nightmares, a scene ripped from the darkest fiction, but for Peter Sullivan, it was Tuesday morning for nearly 14,000 days.
This week, the man who holds the grim record for the longest wrongful imprisonment in British legal history finally broke his silence. And what he said should terrify every citizen in this country. Peter Sullivan didn’t just "slip through the net" of justice; he was violently shoved through it by a system that needed a scapegoat to close a file.
In his first broadcast interview since his exoneration in May 2025, the 68-year-old revealed the secret brutality that secured his conviction for the 1986 murder of Diane Sindall. He describes being in a police cell, terrified and alone, when officers entered.
"They threw a blanket over the top of me and they were hitting me on top of the blanket with the truncheons," Sullivan told the BBC. "It really hurt, they were leathering me."
Why the blanket? Any veteran of the 1980s legal system knows the answer: it diffuses the blow. It hides the bruises. It allows the police surgeon to sign a prisoner off as "fit" while they are internally screaming. It is a technique of torture, pure and simple. And it happened here, on British soil, sanctioned by the very people sworn to protect us.
The "35 Rapes" Threat: Psychological Warfare
Sullivan was the perfect victim for a miscarriage of justice. A vulnerable man with significant learning difficulties, he had no solicitor present for his initial interrogation. He had no appropriate adult Appropriate Adult: A mandatory safeguard in UK law. An independent person (often a social worker) who must be present when police interrogate a vulnerable person or minor to ensure they are treated fairly. to safeguard his interests. He was clay in the hands of officers desperate to close a high-profile murder case that had terrified Merseyside.
When the physical beatings didn't work fast enough, the psychological warfare began. Sullivan alleges officers gave him a chilling ultimatum: Confess to the murder of Diane Sindall, or they would stitch him up for 35 other unsolved rapes.
For a man with limited intellectual capacity, the threat was apocalyptic. Faced with spending the rest of his life labelled a prolific serial sexual predator, he broke. He signed the paper. "It was the bullying that forced me to throw my hands in," he said. "I couldn't take it anymore."
That signature, coerced through pain and terror, cost him 38 years, seven months, and 21 days of freedom.
Junk Science and The "High Priest"
The police brutality provided the script, but the courts provided the stage. To convict Sullivan, the prosecution relied on the "expert" testimony of forensic odontologist Forensic Odontology: The study of dental evidence (bite marks). Once trusted, it is now widely considered "junk science" because human skin distorts bite marks, leading to wrongful convictions. Dr. Gordon MacDonald.
Dr. MacDonald told the jury he had "no doubt" that marks on the victim’s body matched Sullivan’s teeth. In the theatre of the courtroom, his confidence was lethal.
We now know that bite mark analysis is little more than pseudoscience—reading tea leaves in bruised skin. Skin stretches, distorts, and heals; it does not record a perfect impression of teeth. Yet, because a man in a suit called it "science," the jury believed him. That "expert" opinion cost a man his entire adult life. It was not until 2025 that DNA evidence finally proved what Sullivan had screamed for decades: the DNA on the victim belonged to an "Unknown Male One."
Life in the Monster Mansion
While the officers who "leathered" him likely retired with full pensions, Peter Sullivan was sent to hell.
He was housed in HMP Wakefield, known as "Monster Mansion." This is the warehouse for Britain's most depraved criminals. Sullivan spent decades rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ian Huntley and Levi Bellfield. Because of the nature of his conviction—a sexually motivated murder—he was at the very bottom of the prisoner hierarchy.
He was a target. He was attacked, bullied, and forced to live in a state of constant hyper-vigilance. He spent decades looking over his shoulder, surviving in a concrete box while the world outside transformed. The Berlin Wall fell. The internet was born. His mother and father died. He never got to say goodbye. He emerged in May 2025 into a world of smartphones and self-checkouts, a 68-year-old man trying to learn how to live like a teenager.
Administrative Evil: A System Designed to Ignore Innocence
It is easy to dismiss this as a relic of the "Life on Mars" era of policing. But the Peter Sullivan case is not a history lesson; it is a warning siren about the state of British justice right now. The system that failed Sullivan is the same system operating today, and it is crumbling.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (
CCRC
Criminal Cases Review Commission: The state body responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice.
See our full CCRC investigation files.
) is supposed to be the safety net for the innocent. In Sullivan’s case, it failed him repeatedly. He applied in 2008, specifically asking for DNA testing. They turned him down, accepting the "expert" view of the time that testing was impossible. They didn't push. They didn't fight. They just closed the file.
This lethargy is an epidemic. In the 2023-2024 period, the CCRC received a record 1,629 applications from prisoners claiming innocence. Yet, they referred just 25 cases back to the Court of Appeal. That is a referral rate of just 1.5%.
If you are innocent in prison today, you have a better statistical chance of winning a scratch card than getting the CCRC to refer your case. Even worse, the backlog of "long-running" cases—those stuck in the system for over two years—has topped 100. That is 100 human beings sitting in cells while bureaucrats shuffle paper.
The Pattern of Failure: Malkinson and Campbell
Sullivan isn't an anomaly. He is part of a terrifying pattern.
- Andrew Malkinson: Wrongly convicted of rape, he served 17 years. Like Sullivan, he was failed by the CCRC twice (in 2012 and 2020) before finally being cleared in 2023. DNA evidence eventually proved another man did it, but for years, the system preferred to keep an innocent man in a cage rather than admit a mistake.
- Oliver Campbell: A man with severe learning difficulties, convicted of murder in 1991 based on a coerced confession. It took 34 years to clear his name. The CCRC rejected him multiple times before finally accepting that his vulnerabilities made his confession unreliable.
These cases reveal a system that is structurally incapable of distinguishing between "denial" and "innocence." In the UK parole system, prisoners are often required to "address their offending behaviour"—a euphemism for admitting guilt. Innocent men like Sullivan and Malkinson are caught in a trap: admit to a crime you didn't commit to get parole, or maintain your innocence and die in prison. Sullivan chose to rot rather than lie.
The "Innocence Tax" The "Innocence Tax": A controversial rule where the government deducts "saved living costs" (food and board) from a wrongfully convicted person's compensation for the time they spent in prison. : The Final Insult
Perhaps the most shocking aspect is what happens now. You might expect the state to write Peter Sullivan a blank cheque for stealing his life. You would be wrong.
Under the current compensation scheme, payouts are capped. Even with the government’s widely criticised increase to £1.3 million, the maths of injustice are sickening. For 38 years of torture, terror, and lost liberty, the government effectively values Peter Sullivan’s lost life at approximately £34,000 per year.
That is less than the average national wage. That is the price of a life in modern Britain.
Furthermore, to even get that money, Sullivan has to jump through a hoop no other citizen faces: he must prove he is "innocent beyond reasonable doubt." It is a reversal of the burden of proof that leaves many exonerated victims destitute. Until recently, the government even deducted "saved living expenses" from compensation—charging innocent people for the bed and board they were forced to endure in prison. While this was scrapped for new cases, it highlights the penny-pinching cruelty at the heart of the system.
The Killer is Still Out There
The tragedy of Peter Sullivan is also the tragedy of Diane Sindall. For 39 years, while the police congratulated themselves on a "job well done," the real killer was free.
The new DNA evidence belongs to "Unknown Male One." This man—a brutal sexual sadist—has been walking the streets since 1986. Did he kill again? Did he rape again? The police simply don't know. By pinning the crime on a vulnerable man to close a case quickly, they potentially left a predator free to create more victims.
A Call to Action
Peter Sullivan says he is "not bitter." He is a better man than the system that crushed him. But we should be furious.
We are looking at a justice system where police brutality was covered up for decades, where junk science was treated as gospel, and where the watchdog designed to save the innocent is asleep at the wheel.
We need three things immediately:
- Abolish the Compensation Cap: A life stolen by the state cannot be subjected to a budget cap set in 2008.
- Criminal Investigations: The officers who allegedly "leathered" Sullivan must be investigated. Torture is a crime, not a policing tactic.
- Reform the CCRC: The "real possibility" test must be scrapped. The watchdog needs teeth, funding, and the courage to challenge the courts, not defer to them.
Until these changes happen, there is one terrifying question we must all ask: Who is the next Peter Sullivan sitting in a prison cell right now?
Sickening. The UK is a failed state
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