Julia Quenzler/BBCFor someone who has lost nearly 40 years of his life to a crime he did not commit, Peter Sullivan strikes a remarkably optimistic tone.
When I met him last month, for what was his first interview since his release from prison in May, he was upbeat and eager to get to Anfield to see Liverpool play for the first time since he was arrested in 1986.
That was the year of the sexual assault murder of Diane Sindall in his home town of Birkenhead, an incident he said he only learned about because someone turned to him in a pub at the time and said: “apparently there’s been a murder.”
When he was convicted the following year at Liverpool Crown Court, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in some of Britain’s harshest Category A prisons, where he would be harassed for his sensational nicknames “The Beast of Birkenhead”, “The Mersey Ripper” and “The Wolfman”.
Before our interview, he was full of stories about how since his release he had to adapt to a completely different world.
When he was arrested, Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street, no one had heard of the Internet and Europe was still divided by the Iron Curtain.
He described watching the fall of the Berlin Wall from community television in prison.
Sullivan told me that trips to stores now show how “everything has changed”: from trying to figure out how self-checkouts work to realizing that “instead of having a checkbook, you have it on your phone.”
His incarceration means he has been oblivious to the way so many aspects of everyday life have changed, almost like someone who has been asleep since the 1980s.
“After spending so much time in prison and discovering that there is no DHSS [Department of Health and Social Security, now the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)] where you can collect your money, you’re thinking, ‘Wow, what’s going on here?'”
You now have a smartphone, after discovering that doctor appointments must be scheduled on something you now know is called an “app.”
He first became familiar with them when he was sitting on a bus shortly after his release and saw people playing on their smartphones. He only realized they were phones when he saw someone holding one to their ear.
Sullivan’s 14,000 days of detention have also led to an inevitable sense of institutionalization.
He recalled how, after his release, one morning in his apartment, he returned to his bedroom and sat on his bed, because he was unconsciously waiting for a prison officer to come and lock him back in his cell.
“You have to be at your door at a certain time, otherwise the officers will attack you,” he said.
“I was sitting there thinking, ‘What am I doing?'”
But Sullivan’s optimism is tempered by a longing for answers about how he ended up being accused of an infamous murder he didn’t commit, and a confusion about why he still hasn’t received an apology.
“I’ve lost everything,” he said.
“I lost all my freedom, I lost my mother since I was in prison, I lost my father.
“It hurts me because I wasn’t there for them,” he said.
“I can’t move on with my life if I can’t get an answer from them.”
“That’s all I want, an apology. [and to understand] the reason why they did this to me,” he said.
Merseyside Police said there would be “little benefit to be gained from a review of this matter today” due to “changes in investigative techniques and developments in the law over the last 40 years”.
The force referred some of Mr Sullivan’s allegations to the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which will now examine his claims that officers beat him and threatened to link him to other crimes if he did not confess to the murder of Diane Sindall.
When asked if it would apologise, the force did not respond directly, but as part of a lengthy statement said: “The force regrets that a serious miscarriage of justice has occurred in this case.”
Sullivan told me of his modest ambition, an ambition he said he had given up hope of realizing at times during his nearly four decades behind bars.
“The only thing I want to do now is get on with my life and carry on like before and live my time now.”
Their future may be facilitated by government compensation, paid to victims of miscarriages of justice.
This scheme is capped at £1.3m, a cap that its final payout is thought to be very close to.
But the process is not automatic and is long.
Andrew Malkinson, whose conviction for a rape he did not commit was overturned in 2023, only received interim compensation earlier this year.
Guilty prisoners who admit their crimes and are released on parole get a place to live and some help with living expenses. Mr. Sullivan, as an innocent man, has no right to receive that help.
And that’s why he lives a modest life, with his modest ambitions, although many believe he is a millionaire in waiting.
His lawyer, Sarah Myatt, said: “There is no figure you can say that is enough to lose 38 years of your life.”
