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A man who has been in prison for more than 35 years for murder will have his conviction re-examined after DNA evidence emerged.

Peter Sullivan was found guilty of killing Diane Sindall after she left work in Bebington, Merseyside in August 1986 and has been in prison since the following year.

Sullivan, then 29, had spent the day drinking heavily after losing a darts match and went out armed with a crowbar.

That’s when he came across 21-year-old florist and part-time barmaid Ms Sindall as she walked to a petrol station when – according to his conviction – he beat her to death.

Sullivan was dubbed the “beast of Birkenhead” or the “wolfman” because of bite marks found on the victim’s body and was unanimously found guilty.

But in Sullivan’s third attempt to overturn his conviction, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has confirmed the case has been referred to the Court of Appeal.

The CCRC said Sullivan applied to the body in March 2021, citing concerns over police interviews, bitemark evidence given at his trial and the murder weapon.

After consulting experts, the commission said DNA information from samples taken at the time of the offence formed a profile that did not match Sullivan.

There may have been breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the CCRC added, as Sullivan was denied initial legal representation.

Sullivan has also claimed he had not been provided with an appropriate adult during interviews.

He previously applied to the body in 2008, raising questions about DNA evidence, but forensic experts said further testing was unlikely to reveal a DNA profile.

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In 2019, he applied to the High Court for permission to appeal against his conviction over bite mark evidence, but this was rejected in 2021.

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Liverpool parade collision: Why police released ‘unprecedented’ details about man arrested

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Liverpool parade collision: Why police released 'unprecedented' details about man arrested

Merseyside Police knows – better than any force, perhaps – that in a social media age, an information vacuum can become a misinformation cauldron.

They have learnt from the aftermath of the Southport stabbing attack, where the force was criticised for being too slow to release information that could have calmed the riots that followed.

So, it feels like things have been done differently this time.

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Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street near the Liver Building in Liverpool.
Pic: PA
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Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street. Pic: PA

The incident happened just after 6pm on Monday.

Videos – captured by fans on their phones – were online within moments. Shared and speculated upon, with guesses as to the attacker’s identity and motive.

But alongside the huge and immediate police investigation, the communication machine moved equally fast.

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Within a few hours, police released a description of the man they had arrested – a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.

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Moment car drives into crowds in Liverpool

A few hours after that, we had an extensive press conference during which police ruled out terrorism as a motive.

Again, they appealed for videos not to be shared online and for people not to speculate.

Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said Merseyside Police “handled the situation fantastically” given how quickly footage of the incident was shared online.

He told Sky News that online misinformation can set “a lot of false narrative”.

The mayor added: “And we all know that speculation and social media are a wildfire of different vantages, and some of it is for nefarious reasons.

“So, it was right, of course, that the police reacted as quickly as they did to dampen down some of the types of posts that we were witnessing, you know, saying that there were other things happening throughout the city.”

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‘These were utterly tragic scenes’

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Police commentator Graham Wettone also told Sky News the force had done well to quickly combat misinformation spreading online.

He said: “That’s always a problem in today’s day and age, social media taking over so much news reporting, with so many people as well present at the scene where that awful incident took place, mobile phones out, people recording it, and then posting it almost straight away.”

Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent, also highlighted it was “unprecedented” that the force “very quickly” gave the ethnicity and race of the suspect.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there’s a conspiracy theory.”

Mr Babu agreed that Merseyside Police appears to have learned lessons from what happened after the Southport stabbings.

He added: “The difficulty we have is in the olden days, when I was policing, you would have a conversation with trusty journalists, print journalists, radio journalists, broadcasting journalists, you’d have a conversation and say look can you please hold fire on sharing this information and people would listen.

“We don’t have that with social media, it’s like the Wild West and anything goes and so puts the police in a very, very difficult position.”

Meanwhile, the police investigation continues.

In central Liverpool, Water Street is cordoned off with police officers and vehicles in place.

Flags, sprays of paint flares and empty bottles still cover the road. Whereas they have been cleared elsewhere along the parade route, here they remain. Chilling symbols of the party, that within moments became a scene of utter horror.

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King Charles urged to seek Canadian apology for historical abuse of British children

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King Charles urged to seek Canadian apology for historical abuse of British children

King Charles and Queen Camilla are being urged to use their visit to Canada to seek an apology for the abuse of British children.

Campaigners have called on them to pursue an apology for the “dire circumstances” suffered by so-called “Home Children” over decades.

More than 100,000 were shipped from orphan homes in the UK to Canada between 1869 and 1948 with many used as cheap labour, typically as farm workers and domestic servants. Many were subject to mistreatment and abuse.

Canada has resisted calls to follow the UK and Australia in apologising for its involvement in child migrant schemes.

King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA
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King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA

Campaigners for the Home Children say the royal visit presents a “great opportunity” for a change of heart.

“I would ask that King Charles uses his trip to request an apology,” John Jefkins told Sky News.

John’s father Bert was one of 115,000 British Home Children transported to Canada, arriving in 1914 with his brother Reggie.

“It’s really important for the Home Children themselves and for their descendants,” John said.

“It’s something we deserve and it’s really important for the healing process, as well as building awareness of the experience of the Home Children.

“They were treated very, very badly by the Canadian government at the time. A lot of them were abused, they were treated horribly. They were second-class citizens, lepers in a way.”

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John Jefkins
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John Jefkins

John added: “I think the King’s visit provides a great opportunity to reinforce our campaign and to pursue an apology because we’re part of the Commonwealth and King Charles is a new Head of the Commonwealth meeting a new Canadian prime minister. It’s a chance, for both, to look at the situation with a fresh eye.

“There’s much about this visit that looks on our sovereignty and who we are as Canadians, rightly so.

“I think it’s also right that in contemplating the country we built, we focus on the people who built it, many in the most trying of circumstances.”

The issue was addressed by the then Prince of Wales during a tour of Canada in May 2022. He said at the time: “We must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.”

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King Charles and Queen Camilla are on a two-day visit to Canada.

On Tuesday, the King will deliver the Speech from the Throne to open the 45th session of Canada’s parliament.

Camilla was made Patron of Barnardo’s in 2016. The organisation sent tens of thousands of Home Children to Canada. She took on the role, having served as president since 2007.

Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.

A spokesperson for the Canadian government said: “The government of Canada is committed to keeping the memory of the British Home Children alive.

“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada deeply regrets this unjust and discriminatory policy, which was in place from 1869 to 1948. Such an approach would have no place in modern Canada, and we must learn from past mistakes.”

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Ministers considering scrapping two-child benefit cap, education secretary says

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Ministers considering scrapping two-child benefit cap, education secretary says

Ministers are considering scrapping the two-child benefit cap, the education secretary told Sky News.

Bridget Phillipson, asked by Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast if the cap should be lifted, said: “It’s not off the table.

“It’s certainly something that we’re considering.”

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The policy means most families cannot claim means-tested benefits for more than their first two children born after April 2017.

Ms Phillipson’s comments are the strongest a minister has made about the policy potentially being scrapped.

Analysis by The Resolution Foundation thinktank over the weekend found 470,000 children would be lifted out of poverty if parents could claim benefits for more than two children.

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However, Ms Phillipson said the government inherited a “really difficult situation” with public finances from the Conservative government.

“These are not easy or straightforward choices in terms of how we stack it up, but we know the damage child poverty causes,” she added.

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The education secretary, who is also head of the government’s child poverty taskforce, said ministers are trying to help in other ways, such as expanding funded childcare hours and opening free breakfast clubs.

She said it is “the moral purpose of Labour governments to ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can get on in life”.

Her “personal mission” is to tackle child poverty, she said.

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Sir Keir Starmer is said to have privately backed abolishing the two-child limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so, The Observer reported on Sunday.

The government’s child poverty strategy, which the taskforce is working on, has been delayed from its original publication date in the spring.

Whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap is one of the main issues it is looking at.

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