A man accused of a 2003 rape that saw an innocent person jailed for 17 years has told a jury he does not know how his DNA got on the victim’s clothes.
Paul Quinn, 51, also said he could not explain searches made on his phone for “wrongly convicted cases” and “Andrew Malkinson”, whose rape conviction was quashed in 2023.
Quinn, a father of six, was arrested in December 2022 after fresh analysis linked his DNA to the victim. Giving evidence for the first time at Manchester crown court on Thursday, Quinn said he did not know the woman who was attacked but accepted that his DNA was found on her vest and bra.
Asked by his barrister, Lisa Wilding KC, how it got there, Quinn replied: “I do not know.”
“Did it get there because you raped and attacked her on that night?” she asked. “No,” he replied.
The court heard that Quinn provided a DNA sample to police in December 2012, a decade after the attack, and that he had searched online for how long this would be kept on the database.
Questioned by the prosecutor, John Price KC, the defendant said he could not explain searches on his phone for the Malkinson case in 2019, including one followed minutes later by looking up “wrongly convicted cases UK”.
Quinn said he had always been interested in “true crime” programmes. The prosecutor suggested the searches indicated that Quinn “knew [Malkinson] might be a wrongful conviction long before anyone else”. “No,” replied Quinn.
The prosecutor continued: “In September 2019, there were two people who knew that Mr Malkinson was a wrongful conviction – him and you. Is that the truth?”
“No,” said Quinn. Price added: “You knew that his was a wrongful conviction because you know that the person who attacked [the victim] was you?”
Quinn replied: “No, I didn’t.”
He was then asked why in August 2022 he had searched for “How long is DNA kept in database”. Quinn said: “It was just to satisfy questions I had in my own head. Just inquisitiveness.”
Price put to the defendant that his online browsing habits changed significantly in late summer 2022, when records show an “exponential” increase in visits to the Manchester Evening News homepage.
Quinn denied the suggestion that this “sudden change” was because it had recently emerged that fresh DNA tests had linked a new suspect to the 2003 rape and he was checking for updates. He claimed it was because his break patterns had changed at work.
In police interviews, Quinn told officers he was “very promiscuous” around the time of the attack and this might explain how his DNA was found on the victim.
A detective asked Quinn, in footage seen by the jury, whether he was attempting to “explain away the DNA by making out you have slept with the majority of Manchester over a 16-year period?”
Quinn replied: “It could’ve been from contact with her.”
Under cross-examination, Quinn said the “majority of Manchester” was an exaggeration but he had been “very promiscuous”.
Quinn told the jury he had six children with his former wife, Catherine Quinn, to whom he was married for 20 years before they separated in 2016.
He said he was a “disgrace to myself” and “disgusting” for being unfaithful to his wife by having unprotected sex or “copping off” with strangers for years.
At the time of his arrest in December 2022, he was living in Exeter and was in a new relationship, the court was told.
Earlier on Thursday, Quinn pleaded not guilty to two charges of indecent assault which have been added to the indictment to reflect what the jury was told was “an issue between the prosecution and defence about the two charges of rape”.
The judge, Mr Justice Bright KC, told jurors that rape required penetration by a penis under the law in 2003. A sexual assault involving penetration by another object “is of course a crime if it happens without someone’s consent, but it’s not rape”, he said.
The trial continues.
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