FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) — In the nearly three decades he’s been behind bars, Michael Sullivan’s mother and four siblings have died, his girlfriend has moved on with her life and he’s been severely beaten in several prison attacks.

All for a crime he has long insisted he never committed.

Earlier this month, Sullivan, 64, got a degree of justice when a Massachusetts jury found him not guilty of the 1986 murder and robbery of Wilfred McGrath. He was awarded $13 million — though state regulations limit rewards to $1 million for wrongful convictions. The jury also found that a state police chemist testified falsely at trial, although it is not his testimony that warranted Sullivan’s conviction.

It’s the latest in a string of convictions that have been overturned in the state in recent years.

“The most important thing is to find me not guilty of the crime, to get it off my record,” Sullivan said, speaking at the office of his lead attorney Michael Heineman in Framingham, Massachusetts. “The money, of course, will be of great help to me.”

A spokesman for the Massachusetts Attorney General said: “We respect the jury’s verdict and evaluate whether an appeal is appropriate.”

Sullivan was convicted of murder and armed robbery in 1987 after police said McGrath was robbed and beaten and his body dumped behind an abandoned supermarket.

Authorities zeroed in on Sullivan after learning that his sister had gone out with McGrath the night before the murder and that the two had gone to the apartment he shared with Sullivan. Another suspect in the murder, Gary Grace, implicated Sullivan and the murder charges were dropped. Grace testified at trial that Sullivan was wearing a purple jacket the night of the murder, and a former state police chemist testified that he found blood on the jacket and a hair consistent with McGrath’s, not Sullivan’s.

Sullivan was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Meanwhile, Grace pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact and was sentenced to 6 years in prison. Emil Petrla, who beat McGrath and helped dispose of his body, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, but died in prison.

“I couldn’t believe I was convicted of murder,” Sullivan said, recalling that prosecutors mentioned the purple jacket five times in closing arguments. “My mother was crying in the courtroom, my brother was crying. i was crying It was very difficult for me and my family.”

Prison would prove a nightmare for Sullivan. He almost had his nose bitten off in one attack and almost lost an ear in another. And because he was out for life, the prison system didn’t allow him to take classes to gain much-needed skills.

“It’s very hard for a person, especially when you know you’re innocent,” Sullivan said. “And prison is a bad life, you know. Prison is a hard life.”

But in 2011, Sullivan’s fortunes changed dramatically.

Sullivan’s attorney requested DNA tests — which had not been available for the first trial — which found no blood on the coat. Tests also found that substances on the coat did not contain McGrath’s DNA and could not determine if hair found on a jacket belonged to him.

Dana Curhan, a Boston attorney who represented Sullivan from 1992 to 2014 and pushed for DNA testing, said Sullivan always told him McGrath’s blood was not on the jacket. But he was surprised to learn there was no blood, undermining the prosecutor’s argument that Sullivan had beaten McGrath to a “bloody pulp”.

“In the prosecutor’s closing, he basically said, ‘Hey, if he wasn’t the one who did it, why did they find blood on both jacket cuffs?'” Curhan said. “He kept repeating that. Now, we have no blood and no DNA match. You’d expect someone who does what they’re supposed to have done to be full of blood. There is no blood. That was indeed the case.”

A new trial was ordered in 2012, and Sullivan was released in 2013. He spent the first six months under house arrest and had to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for years.

“When I walked out the front door, I was in an emotional state, he said.

In 2014, the Supreme Court upheld the decision to grant Sullivan a new trial, and in 2019, the state decided not to retry the case. At the time, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said it was virtually impossible for her office to successfully retry the case against Sullivan, given the deaths of some witnesses and a diminished recollection of other potential witnesses.

Sullivan admits he “shut down” after he was released, and to this day struggles to function in a world that changed dramatically while he was in prison. Before he was arrested, he had worked at a peanut factory and planned to go to school to become a truck driver and eventually work for his brother, who owned a trucking company.

Instead, he left prison with no job prospects and little hope of finding work. He still can’t use a computer and mostly helps his sister with odd jobs. His girlfriend, whom he had known since he was 12, would visit him for a decade in prison, but eventually “had to get on with his life”.

“I’m still not used to the outside world,” Sullivan said, adding that he spends a lot of time with his Yorkshire terrier Buddy and the pigeons he keeps at his sister’s house.

“It’s hard for me,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m scared all the time… I’m almost a loner.”

Sullivan’s sister, Donna Faria, said the family “never for one minute” believed he killed McGrath. They were at the trial in support and spoke to Sullivan twice a week while he was in prison and visited him every few months.

But Faria laments all that Sullivan lost while in prison, noting that he “never had kids, never got married, like the rest of us did.”

“If he didn’t have me, my brother would have been on the streets like many of the homeless,” Faria said. “It’s almost like he doesn’t trust people. If he is around his family, he feels safe. If it isn’t, don’t do it.”

These days, Sullivan spends most of her time at Faria’s home in Billerica, Massachusetts, and often does her family’s laundry, as she did for fellow inmates while in prison. Despite the jury’s award, Sullivan doesn’t expect his life to change that much.

Sullivan will splurge on a new truck, but said he wants to save most of the money to make sure his nieces and nephews have what they need when they turn 21. Sullivan did not receive any therapy for the hardships he endured, but his attorney Heineman said he plans to ask the court as part of the ruling to provide him with therapy and educational services.

“They will have money. That will make me very happy,” he said. “The most important thing is my nieces and nephews – to take care of them.”

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