Man found guilty of rape that led to Andrew Malkinson’s wrongful imprisonment | Crime

A man who eluded justice for more than two decades has been found guilty of the rape for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongfully imprisoned for 17 years in 2003.

Paul Quinn, 52, was convicted by a jury on Friday after a new forensic analysis found traces of his DNA on the victim.

The father of six was found guilty of two counts of rape, attempted strangulation and grievous bodily harm. He was found not guilty of two counts of indecent assault, an alternative to rape.

Quinn sat with his head down and took off his glasses as the verdicts were announced.

It can now be revealed that Quinn is being investigated as a potential suspect in other serious sexual assaults, including three rapes that occurred while he was on the run.

Manchester police are facing questions over why they were not investigated at the time, despite a convicted sex offender living near the scene of the attack.

Instead, detectives focused on Malkinson, who was jailed in 2004 and served 17 years while protesting his innocence.

His conviction was eventually overturned in 2023, becoming one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in modern British history.

A jury at Manchester crown court was told that Quinn’s DNA was detected on samples of the victim’s clothing in October 2022 following a new forensic examination.

Police and prosecutors knew as long ago as 2007 that an unidentified man’s DNA was found on the victim, but they decided not to test further at the time.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body responsible for investigating potential miscarriages of justice, also ruled out further forensic work and twice refused to refer Malkinson’s case to the appeals court.

An investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating five former Greater Manchester police officers, including one who is under criminal investigation, on suspicion of gross misconduct. A sixth officer currently employed by GMP is being investigated on suspicion of misconduct.

The police watchdog is examining GMP’s destruction of evidence in the Malkinson case, its failure to disclose the criminal histories of two key witnesses in the 2004 case and whether they were offered incentives to give evidence against the innocent man.

Quinn admitted in court that his DNA was on items on the victim’s clothing, including a vest over her left nipple, which was partially cut off during the attack.

He suggested the woman, who was 33 at the time, could have been one of the “hundreds” of local women he claimed to have “dealt with” at Little Hulton in Greater Manchester.

Quinn had lived in the area all his life until moving to Exeter in 2017 because police believed he owed a drug debt.

Jurors at Manchester crown court were not told about the drugs dispute or that Quinn had been found guilty of twice raping a 12-year-old girl in 1990 and 1991 (when he was 16).

Four years ago, when he was 12, he received a criminal warning for indecent assault on a woman.

In his late teens, Quinn was convicted of burglary, causing actual bodily harm, possession of an air weapon and arson after setting fire to a wheelie bin outside his ex-girlfriend’s home while he was with his children.

During the trial, it was revealed that he had repeatedly searched for details about the case on the internet.

In 2019, before Malkinson’s case became widely known as a miscarriage of justice, she looked up an article from the original trial before Googling “misconviction cases in the UK”. He claimed this was because he was a fan of true crime documentaries.

Quinn gave his DNA to police in 2012 as part of a nationwide operation to collect samples from serious criminals whose crimes were committed before the national DNA database was created in 1995. It was this example that eventually led to the police coming to his door in 2022.

But he seems to know that day will come. The hearing heard that he repeatedly inquired “how long DNA would be kept in the database” in the weeks after the Guardian revealed a new analysis in 2022 linked another man to the 2003 attack.