As a testament to the power of advertising, it takes some beating. Had it not been for a classified ad in a prison newspaper, Sean Hodgson would still be behind bars.

Mr Hodgson was convicted in 1982 of the murder of Teresa de Simone, a part-time barmaid from Southampton found strangled in her Ford Escort.

It was one of about a hundred crimes to which he admitted, including a couple of murders that the police could never trace. He told a Roman Catholic priest a year after the murder that he was still haunted by Miss de Simone’s face. But although he retracted that confession and described himself as a pathological liar, the jurors at his trial and the judges who heard his appeal the next year were not convinced.

In and out of psychiatric wards, Mr Hodgson continued to plead his innocence but few were listening — until he picked up a copy of Inside Time and saw an advert by Julian Young & Co, a London firm of solicitors that specialises in criminal appeals.

The firm organised DNA tests that destroyed the case against Mr Hodgson and led to his conviction being quashed at the High Court yesterday.

The newspaper, founded in 1990 as part of major prison reforms recommended in the Woolf report, is distributed free to all prisoners who can read — about 46,000 across the country, about half the jail population. Written by inmates and a small staff of journalists, Inside Time provides news reports and a platform for prisoners to air their views.

The costs are met by advertising, which, given its readers’ limited financial resources, primarily means advertisements for legal services.

John Roberts, a member of the paper’s management team, said that he thought Mr Hodgson had chosen Julian Young because of its address — in Duke Street, Mayfair — although he did not know why.

Mr Roberts said that if had not been for the newspaper, Mr Hodgson would still be in jail. “It would be reasonable to expect that someone in a prison on the Isle of Wight is unlikely to have an appeal lawyer’s name in front of them,” he said. “We are not seeing it as a victory for the newspaper. For someone to be released from prison after 27 years for something he didn’t do has got to be a victory for everybody.

“We’re just glad to have been of service.”

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