Sex offender convicted of rape after another man wrongfully jailed for 17 years

A sex offender has been convicted of a brutal rape for which another man spent 17 years in jail after a notorious miscarriage of justice.

Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty by a jury of the sex attack on a young mother as she walked home in Little Hulton, Salford, in the early hours of the morning on July 19th, 2003.

Andrew Malkinson, working as a security guard at a local shopping centre, protested his innocence but was wrongly picked out at an identity parade and jailed.

Father-of-six Quinn, a sex offender from the age of 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.

Following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court, Quinn was convicted on Friday of two counts of rape.

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.

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.

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, of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), 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.”