I was wrongly jailed for murder like Beast of Birkenhead & saw horrific sight that could break any man… how I kept sane
WHEN the man dubbed the ‘Beast of Birkenhead’ comes blinking into the sunlight after almost 40 years of being wrongly imprisoned, he will find the world a very different place.
Peter Sullivan was jailed for the murder of 21-year-old barmaid Diane Sindall in 1987, when the Bee Gees were top of the charts, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and only city yuppies owned mobile phones.
As his conviction was quashed this week, a statement from Peter's lawyer said he was “not angry…not bitter” but eager to “make the most of what is left of the existence I am granted in this world”.
Now 68, he described being “stripped” of his youth, mobility, sight and hearing, and the cruelty suffered as one of the few men jailed for decades for a crime he didn’t commit.
It is a living nightmare few of us can comprehend, but one man who knows such horrors only too well is Raphael Rowe.
Like Peter, the 57-year-old was wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, as well as robbery, as part of the so-called ‘M25 Three’ in 1990.
It took 12 tireless years of fighting before his convictions were quashed, during which time he went on hunger strike, witnessed the brutality of prison first hand and spent long stints in solitary confinement for refusing to accept his guilt.
“When Peter Sullivan’s lawyer reflected his words about no longer being bitter and twisted because now the nightmare was over, it resonated with me,” Raphael tells The Sun.
“You spend so many years consumed by anger while inside that when you get out, you can’t allow it to dictate your life from then onward. You need to finally live your life.
“You don’t ever stop being angry, but you don’t allow it to consume you or dictate your life from then onwards.
“I chose to move on. I was never going to let myself be consumed by anger, the brutality in prison and the psychological experiences I had to overcome.”
Raphael still remembers the moment armed police stormed the bedsit he was sleeping in dressed in balaclavas, pointing guns at him and yelling loudly in 1990.
“It was a terrifying, terrifying experience to have guns pointed at me, frogmarched down the stairwell and into the streets. Moreso because I didn’t know what it was about," he says.
“The whole experience was horrible, made worse by the fact that police didn’t believe me from the offset. I wonder now why their minds were so set on trying to achieve convictions.
“Did those responsible for my prosecution - police, CPS, witness and everyone else involved - know I would spend 12 years in prison for a crime I didn’t commit, the same way that Peter served 38 years?”
Despite having an alibi - he was at home in bed with his girlfriend at the time the attack took place - they believed the South East Londoner, then 19, was guilty of a heinous attack two years prior.
Raphael, alongside Michael Davis and Randolph Johnson - dubbed the ‘M25 Three’ - were suspected of targeting two male lovers in a Surrey car park, in December 1988.
Peter Hurbugh and Alan Eley were forced out of their vehicle at gunpoint, stripped, beaten and robbed by the gang, who then poured a line of petrol around them and threatened to ignite it by lighting a cigarette.
The ordeal caused Alan to pass out and when he awoke Peter, who sustained five fractured ribs and a fractured sternum, was dead having suffered a fatal heart attack.
All three maintained their innocence and police pressed on despite discrepancies in eye-witness statements - including Alan insisting only one of the assailants was black, when all three of the charged men were black.
In 2000, it would emerge that perjured evidence had been used in the case, including a police informant offered £300 at the conclusion of the case.
Another witness, Joanne Ceasar, then 21 and six months pregnant, claimed police pressured her, put words into her mouth and scared her into believing she would be jailed.
“'They did threaten me, saying that if I didn't turn up in court I would go to prison, they pumped me,” she told the Court of Appeal.
Joanne claimed cops “kept on and on at me” for up to eight hours at a time and claimed the stress led to her child being born five weeks premature.
'Uncomfortable memories'
It was only Raphael’s tireless work that would lead to his freedom - with him spending much of his sentence in solitary confinement studying the law and finding holes in the police’s case.
“There was never a moment in all of those years that I thought I was going to give up or accept the wrongs done to me… I had time on my hands to fight every line of the document that led to my conviction,” he says.
“I knew I would never stop. They lit a fire deep inside of me, set something off that wouldn’t allow me to accept what had happened.”
But unsurprisingly, the battle did take its toll and has left “scars” and haunting memories that still affect Raphael to this day.
Evidence was being ignored, people knew that were innocent standing in the dock yet were still prepared to watch us go to prison for life for crimes we didn't commit
Raphael Rowe
“There were moments when I couldn’t get out of bed to function because I was so depressed by my experiences and having to challenge and convince people of my innocence in there," he says.
“There are scars mentally and physically. It’s harrowing and those life memories are extremely uncomfortable memories.
“Not only did I see people take their lives but I witnessed extreme violence - a prisoner throwing boiling sugared water on to a prisoner and the skin peeling from his face.
“At one point, as a cry for help I went on hunger strike in pure desperation to bring attention to my plight and I was hospitalised.”
Towards the end of the Nineties, he argued he did not get a fair trial based on undisclosed evidence - including the police informant’s financial reward being an incentive upon the conclusion of the case.
In February 2000, 21 judges unanimously ruled in his favour, which - alongside concerns from the Criminal Cases Review Commission - led to Raphael’s case being referred to the Court of Appeal.
Five months later, three judges found there had been a “profoundly disturbing” conspiracy between police and their informant and ruled all the convictions unsafe.
Raphael was finally free in 2000 and while he has forged a successful career as a journalist, including reporting on others wrongly convicted, questions still haunt him.
“Evidence was being ignored, people knew that we were innocent standing in the dock yet were still prepared to watch us go to prison for life for crimes we didn't commit,” he says.
“Even the witnesses and victim of the crime must have had reservations about our convictions, they saw two white men and all three of us were black, two with dreadlocks.
“If they had seen what they saw they must have known we couldn’t be the perpetrators, to say they were ‘mistaken’ was an easy way to answer for agreeing to something untrue.
“The judge in my case said it was misleading and for obvious reasons, for the jury to ignore this was a mystery - either they did or didn’t do it.”
5 questions from Peter Sullivan's case
By Blaise Cloran and Josh Saunders
Why did Paul Sullivan confess?
Rebecca believes the back-and-forth nature of his admission made the confession “look unreliable”.
She adds: “There is evidence that it was relatively suggestible and he might have been placed under pressure to confess.”
Were there problems with the ‘bite mark’ evidence?
Rebecca is keen to point out bite mark evidence is “distinct from DNA” and in this case was especially problematic.
She believes the expert who took orthodontic impressions from Peter to match with the marks on the body hadn’t seen the actual wounds and that it was “based on a photograph”.
“So the expert making the assessment hadn’t even seen the real-life bite mark but based on the photograph he was willing to say he was completely sure,” Rebecca added.
This was then presented to the jury in a way that seemed “completely reliable when it wasn’t” and now this type of evidence is considered “unreliable forensic science”.
“A bite mark is not like a fingerprint,” Rebecca adds. “We can’t tell conclusively whether a print left on a body, which may have been distorted or left at an angle, is a match to a particular person's mouth.”
Why did DNA take so long to be retested?
When Peter approached the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2008, DNA evidence was reanalysed due to forensic experts believing there “wasn’t a prospect of finding anything”, according to Rebecca.
But since then massive technological advances have been made - with experts now using CPY23 DNA testing, which became available in 2015, and allows for more reliable extraction of male DNA.
Previously, it was more tricky to detect the “very small amount of male DNA” surrounded by female DNA in sexual offence cases.
Regarding Peter, Rebecca adds: “They were able to extract the DNA reliably enough that they could exclude Mr Sullivan as a source of the DNA which they hadn’t previously been able to do.”
Can police catch Diane’s killer?
Sadly, Rebecca isn’t hopeful about cops being able to find the unknown perpetrator who has “evaded justice for 40 years”.
One obstacle is that the individual may have died and another is that while the quality of DNA was sufficient enough to exclude Peter, it may not assist future investigations.
Rebecca says: “[This] doesn’t mean it is going to be reliable enough to link somebody else to the crime.
“You need to find a suspect and finding a suspect 40 years later is going to be really really tough.”
Will new DNA test lead to more miscarriages of justice being overturned?
DNA evidence has been crucial in the exoneration of Raphael and Peter as well Andrew Malkinson and Victor Nealon, whose rape convictions were quashed.
Rebecca says it’s “really promising” that DNA evidence is being used more effectively and it’s “happening more and more”.
However, it won’t help everyone, she notes, adding: “The gap that it leaves is for the people who do not have access to DNA evidence.”
In the case of Peter Sullivan, now 68, whose conviction was quashed this week, it was DNA evidence that led to him being freed - fresh analysis of semen samples found at the crime scene pointed towards an unknown attacker.
For years, the 68-year-old argued bite marks found on victim Diane Sindall’s body were not credible evidence to assist his conviction because the expert, who matched his dental impressions with the imprints, had only seen photographs of the wounds.
Additionally, Peter’s confession to the crimes were believed to have been coerced due to his admission being preceded by strong denials and afterward a retraction of his confession.
In both his and Raphael’s cases, the real perpetrators are still on the loose and according to DNA expert Rebecca Helm it’s “going to be really tough” to catch the criminals now.
Yesterday Peter made it clear he longed to see “the right thing done for this horrible crime” - the true killer being jailed - so that Diane’s family can finally “find peace”.
Rebecca isn’t so hopeful, telling us: “The person who actually committed the crime has been evading justice for 40 years. The chances of finding the person who did it aren’t great now.”
But for others who have been wrongfully convicted, Peter’s exoneration could serve as a beacon of hope.
Rebecca says: “This signals that the CCRC are becoming more proactive and alive to the power of DNA and how it can help people. It is a promising sign.”
