Criminal history of Little Hulton rapist Paul Quinn

Paul Quinn, now 52, escaped justice at the time for the horrendous rape of a loan woman off a motorway embankment between Little Hulton and Farnworth in 2003.

In what has since become a notorious miscarriage of justice innocent security guard Andrew Malkinson, now 60, went to prison for 17 years for Quinn’s crime.

Asked to describe Quinn, Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca McKendrick, of Greater Manchester Police 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.”

Andrew Malkinson was finally freed in 2020 (Image: PA)

DCS McKendrick said it was a “distinct possibility” that Quinn has committed other crimes.

Quinn, who worked as a fencer while in Little Hulton, was not arrested until 2022 by which time new DNA and other evidence had connected him to the rape.

What the jury in the most recent trial that convicted Quinn last week could not be told, but is now free to be reported, is that Quinn had already been a convicted sex offender since age 12.

Quinn had been cautioned back in 1986, when he was 12, for two counts of indecent assault on a female.

He was convicted of burglary in 1988 when he was 14 and two counts of assault in October 1992.

A photo of Paul Quinn believed to have taken in 2000 (Image: PA)

In 1992, at the age of 16, Quinn was then convicted of unlawful sex with a 12-year-old girl, an offence that police officers say would now be considered as rape.

He was sent to a young offender’s institute in December 1993 for arson with intent to endanger life after setting fire to a wheelie bin outside a former partner and her children’s house.

Despite this, and despite living in the estate opposite where the notorious rape happened off Cleggs Lane in 2003, he never featured as a person of interest in the original investigation.

Instead, he remained silent while the innocent Mr Malkinson was arrested, tried and convicted for the crime.

Quinn continued to live in Little Hulton years afterwards and in January 2013 he was further convicted of production of cannabis.

In 2017 he moved to Exeter in Devon, a move police believe was brought about because of a drugs related dispute, where he worked as a delivery driver.

But his previous crimes would come back to haunt him, it was his 1992 sex offence that saw Quinn added to a data base of offenders when his DNA was rearrested in 2012.

This, along with his internet searches, would help convict Quinn of the rape that he had allowed Andrew Malkinson to be jailed for all those years ago.

Quinn, of Whipton Barton Road, Exeter, was found guilty of two counts of rape, causing grievous bodily harm and attempting to choke or strangle his victim with intent to rape.

He will be sentenced on Friday June 5.