IT has already cost him 27 years of his life, now the man wrongly jailed for murdering a Hampshire woman could have to pay £250,000 for his stay behind bars.

Sean Hodgson was the victim of one of Britain’s worst miscarriages of justice, spending almost half his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.

As reported by the Daily Echo, he was dramatically freed earlier this year after DNA evidence proved he did not kill Teresa De Simone in Southampton in 1979.

While police are now trying to hunt down her real murderer, the 57-year-old is lodging a claim for compensation.

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Mr Hodgson could be entitled to £1m for the time he wrongly served, but up to a quarter of that will be deducted to cover board and lodging while he was inside.

“His response to being told that isn’t repeatable in a family newspaper,” his solicitor, Julian Young told the Daily Echo.

“We can’t fight it because it’s a matter of law. Legally, it may be one thing, but morally it is a very difficult step for the Government to impose.”

As well as claiming Home Office compensation, he plans to sue the Forensic Science Service, which wrongly told his former legal team there were no DNA samples from the murder scene. It was that error which led to Mr Hodgson needlessly spending another 11 years in the Isle of Wight’s Albany Prison.

Two months after being released, Mr Hodgson is slowly adjusting to life on the outside, and is now staying with his family in the North East.

Mr Hodgson initially confessed to killing the 22-year-old gas board clerk, who was raped and strangled in her car, behind the then Tom Tackle pub in Commercial Road, but was convicted by a Winchester Crown Court jury in 1982.

Last week, the Daily Echo revealed police investigating the murder case have taken DNA swabs from 69 people in their fresh hunt for Miss De Simone’s killer.