Peter Sullivan spent over 38 years in jail for the murder of 21-year-old Diane Sindall in Birkenhead in 1986, which is considered the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history. Sindall was due to be married and worked behind the bar at the Wellington pub in Bebington. She was walking along Borough Road when she ran out of petrol in Birkenhead. The sequence of events leading to her death was reconstructed by the BBC’s Crimewatch.
A taxi driver reported seeing a man and a woman arguing on Borough Road, and people reported hearing screams between 00:30 and 02:00. Her half-naked body was found in an alleyway off Borough Road the next morning. She had a fractured skull, facial lacerations, bruising, mutilated breasts, and lacerated genitals. It was thought she had remained alive for some time after the attack, but she died from a brain haemorrhage caused by multiple blows to the head.
Merseyside Police spoke to 3,000 people as part of its investigation, causing shock, revulsion, and anxiety, especially among women and girls. The attack led to the area’s first Reclaim the Night march across the River Mersey, which had been set up in Leeds in 1977 as a response to police advice that women should stay indoors.
Detectives were said to be considering interviewing every man in Birkenhead, but for weeks they appeared to have no leads or clues about how Sindall ended up in the alleyway, because nobody saw the attack take place.
Peter Sullivan was jailed for murdering Diane Sindall after he gave officers different accounts of his movements. He confessed to the murder but withdrew his confession later that day. He had not been given access to legal advice by that point and was later given access to a solicitor. His trial in 1987 was told about his apparent confessions and claims from dental experts that bite marks on Sindall’s body could be matched to Mr. Sullivan’s teeth.
On the night Sullivan was jailed for life for murder, BBC North West Tonight reported how he stood silently in the dock at Liverpool Crown Court, while his mother broke down and screamed. Det Supt Tom Baxter told the BBC Sullivan was “not an excitable person” and condemned him to be known by some tabloid newspapers as “the Beast of Birkenhead” and “the Mersey Ripper”.
Ms. Sindall’s killer has not been identified. An unsuccessful appeal hearing in 2019 heard various criticisms of the police investigation and the 1987 trial. In February, Merseyside Police reopened its investigation into Ms. Sindall’s murder and sent letters to people identified in 1986 asking them to voluntarily submit DNA samples.
Psychologist Dr. Harry Wood highlighted Sullivan’s limited intellectual capacity and suggestibility, which should have led to concerns about his answers in interviews and apparent confessions. Expert dentist Prof Iain Pretty also criticised the claims made in the trial, which linked bite marks to Mr. Sullivan’s teeth.
There is now renewed concern on Merseyside that a murderer has remained at large and unpunished for close to 40 years.