Man served 17 years in jail for sexual assault he didn’t commit, the true perpetrator was caught thanks to their search history

A man from the U.K. has been found guilty of a 2003 rape which sent an innocent man to jail for 17 years. Andrew Malkinson was convicted and jailed in 2004 but was later released after DNA evidence proved his innocence. Meanwhile, Paul Quinn, has been found guilty of committing the horrific attack.

Quinn denied brutally attacking a 33-year-old woman in Salford back in July, 2003. The victim was dragged down an embankment beside a motorway where she was strangled until unconscious and subsequently raped. She suffered injuries to her face, back, arms, legs, and chest, as well as a fractured cheekbone. 

At the time the victim identified Andrew Malkinson in a line-up, despite several of his features not matching her description. The woman did express her uncertainty but was reportedly pressured by police to identify Malkinson as they were certain it was him. The problem was he hadn’t committed the crime.

Malkinson’s innocence proved

It would take 17 years for Andrew Malkinson to finally be released from prison for good behavior and another 3 before the conviction was formally overturned. DNA recovered from a vest owned by the victim but only recovered in 2007 was able to rule out Malkinson as the perpetrator.

When the evidence was finally re-examined the DNA finally proved Malkinson’s innocence which he had maintained for two decades by this point.

Attention turns to Paul Quinn

The DNA which had been found on the vest belonged to Paul Quinn. His DNA had not been in the national database when the case had originally happened despite the fact he was convicted of the rape of a 12-year-old girl in 1993. This was because the database did not exist at the time.

Quinn pleaded not guilty to the attack of the woman in 2003. While the DNA was pretty conclusive evidence, the 51-year-old’s search history proved beyond a doubt that he knew something. According to an article from The Guardian, Quinn’s search showed a great deal of interest in Malkinson’s case despite Quinn generally not reading the news. 

In 2019 he searched a news story on Malkinson’s trial back in 2004, quickly followed by “wrongly convicted cases uk,” at this point it wasn’t public knowledge that Malkinson was wrongly convicted, the only people who could have known that the man in jail in 2019 was innocent would have been Malkinson himself and the real perpetrator. 

When Malkinson’s case saw renewed attention in 2022, there was talk of another suspect. Again, Quin’s search history gave him away. He Googled, “how long is DNA kept in database,” and “why am I sweating so much all of a sudden.” It seems pretty obvious why he was sweating.

Paul Quinn was convicted in April and will be handed his sentence on June 5. Speaking at the trial, Andrew Malkinson said that he was “content that the right result has finally been achieved for the victim, myself and the public,” but he added, “if the police had acted as they should have done, Paul Quinn could have been caught a long time ago.”