Prolific sex offender guilty of rape that saw innocent man jailed for 17 years
A prolific sex offender who kept his freedom while an innocent man spent 17 years in prison for his ‘horrific’ attack has finally been brought to justice.
Paul Quinn, 52, targeted a lone woman who was walking home alone in Little Hulton, Salford, in the early hours of July 19, 2003.
The victim, in her 30s and a mum to young children, was strangled until she passed out, beaten and twice raped in a ‘prolonged assault’ then left for dead.
Andrew Malkinson was inexplicably identified as the perpetrator by three people and jailed a year later, becoming ‘the victim a most terrible miscarriage of justice, one of the worst there has been’.
Quinn, who lived less than a mile from the scene and has convictions for sex offences going back to when he was 12, was arrested almost two decades later after advances in DNA testing meant in 2022 a billion-to-one match of his DNA profile was made with saliva left on the victim’s vest top.
By then, Mr Malkinson, from Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, had made multiple failed appeals.
Now aged 60, he was only released in 2020 after 17 years in jail, with his conviction finally quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2023.
Mr Malkinson said in a statement: ‘I am content that the right result has finally been achieved for the victim, myself and the public.
‘But the truth is that if the police had acted as they should have done, Paul Quinn could have been caught a long time ago.
‘Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime.’
Following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court, Quinn was convicted on Friday of two counts of rape.
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He was also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim to render her unconscious while he carried out the attack.
Quinn, wearing a white T-shirt, remained seated as the guilty verdicts were read out. He lent forward, bent almost double as the jury foreman delivered the guilty verdicts.
His relatives in the public gallery put their hands to their face in shock.
Mr Justice Bright thanked the jurors for their service and told them they are exempt from sitting on a jury for five years, adding: ‘We are enormously grateful, everyone in the Manchester conurbation, the country as a whole, what a significant case this is.’
He told the court he would not pass sentence today and adjourned the hearing for sentencing on June 5.
Fallout from the case continues, with a public inquiry now under way after a 2024 review found failings that could have exonerated Mr Malkinson a decade before he was eventually released from prison.
And five former Greater Manchester Police officers and one currently serving with the force are under investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) with both the chair and chief executive of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) having resigned.
The trial heard Mr Malkinson was the victim of one of the worst examples of a miscarriage of justice.
Quinn stalked his victim, in her 30s, as she walked home, dragging her from the street down a motorway embankment.
He battered her, fracturing her cheekbone, and she was strangled unconscious and twice raped.
He also bit her left nipple, almost severing it, but left behind on her vest top his saliva from which his DNA was recovered years later.
No DNA evidence had linked Mr Malkinson to the crime but he was picked out at an identity parade.
When the victim gave evidence against Mr Malkinson in 2003 she had doubts she had picked out the right man, but police dismissed this as ‘just trial nerves’.
And the DNA sample from the victim’s vest top, only recovered and identified in 2007, was analysed and ruled out Mr Malkinson, a development which ‘ought to have set alarm bells ringing’, the court heard.
The crime scene sample was identified as coming from ‘Unknown Male 1’.
Quinn had a history of sex offending and violence towards women and had been cautioned for indecent assault in 1986, aged just 12, and in November 1992, aged 16, convicted of two counts of under-age sex with a girl aged 12.
In 2012, Quinn was visited by police to take his DNA to put on the national database, during a national operation to harvest samples from known sex offenders.
In 2012 and 2020, the Criminal Cases Review Commission twice refused an appeal by Mr Malkinson.
As DNA testing advanced over the years, in August 2022 news broke police had matched the vest top DNA sample to another man.
Timeline to justice as Paul Quinn convicted more than two decades after attack
Paul Quinn is finally facing justice almost 23 years after the rape attack for which Andrew Malkinson was jailed. Here is a timeline of the most significant developments:
– July 19 2003
A young mother in her 30s is brutally attacked and raped, walking home in the early hours of the morning on Cleggs Lane, Little Hulton, Salford.
Hours later two local police officers identify Mr Malkinson, a security guard at a local shopping centre, as a potential suspect.
– August 3 2003
Mr Malkinson is picked out as the suspect by the victim and a witness at an identity parade.
– February 10 2004
Mr Malkinson is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of seven years.
– July 2006
Mr Malkinson’s first appeal against conviction and sentence is dismissed by the Court of Appeal.
– 2007
Retesting of DNA samples reveals for the first time a DNA profile from the victim’s vest top that does not come from Mr Malkinson and is designated ‘Unknown Male 1’.
– July 2010
Mr Malkinson becomes eligible for parole, but remains in jail because he is maintaining his innocence.
– February 2012
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) dismisses Mr Malkinson’s application and refuses to refer his case back to the Court of Appeal.
– December 13 2012
Quinn’s DNA profile is taken by police and stored in the national DNA database.
– February 27 2020
The CCRC for a second time refuses to refer Mr Malkinson’s application to the Court of Appeal.
– December 2020
Mr Malkinson is released from prison on licence after serving 17 years, four months and 16 days.
– October 2022
Testing shows a DNA sample from the rape victim’s vest top is a one in a billion match to the DNA profile of Quinn.
– December 13 2022
Quinn is arrested for rape and denies any involvement.
– July 26 2023
Mr Malkinson’s conviction is quashed by the Court of Appeal.
– April 2026
Quinn is convicted of rape, nearly 23 years after the attack.
The development had a ‘profound’ effect on Quinn’s internet usage, his trial heard.
Quinn told jurors it was a ‘complete coincidence’ he had begun scouring the news for information on the Malkinson case and repeatedly searched Google, asking: ‘How long is DNA kept in database’, and, ‘Why do I keep sweating all the time…’
He also searched up ‘wrongful convictions’ in the UK and had begun to ‘fear a knock on the door’ was coming.
By the time of his arrest in December 2022, Quinn had divorced in 2016 and moved to Exeter, Devon, working as a delivery driver, following a dispute over drugs in his hometown of Salford.
In court he claimed he had led a highly promiscuous, party lifestyle of drink and drugs each weekend for more than 15 years.
Aged 29 at the time of the rape, married with two children, he claimed to have had casual sex with hundreds if not thousands of local women and could have come into contact with the victim and his DNA transferred.
His claims were rejected by the jury.
Detectives say they believe Quinn may be responsible for other offences and are looking at any links he may have to unsolved crimes.
Three stranger rapes in Greater Manchester have been examined.
Asked to describe Quinn, Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca McKendrick said: ‘Disturbing, dangerous, and maybe lacking the full range of human emotions, because I don’t know how you can possess the full range of human emotions if you are firstly able to commit this attack with no regard for the victim, clearly none whatsoever.
‘And then watch someone completely innocent sit in prison for 17 years while you go about living your life.
‘I think that it is a distinct possibility that he has committed other offences.’
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