Rapist jailed 20 years after attack

A rapist who attacked a woman in her Clapton home and then returned a month later to burgle her has been jailed for 13 and a half years after a cold case inquiry by Met detectives.

The sexual assault happened 20 years ago this month, and it took advances in DNA techniques to finally bring the attacker to justice.

Anthony Jordan, 50, from Eastbourne, East Sussex broke into the woman's flat in Hackney, east London in the early hours of the morning, put a pillow over her face and attacked her.

Jordan also took £10 from the woman's purse as well as her cigarettes and lighter.

A month later he "brazenly" returned to burgle the flat again but accidentally triggered a panic alarm and was caught by police.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Thornton QC told him: "She was alone in her flat and had been asleep when suddenly she was confronted with a male intruder, a stranger: every woman's nightmare. She was terrified and thought she was going to die."

It was "only by good fortune" that the victim, who cannot be named, was away when he returned a month later.

Jordan was convicted of the second burglary in 1991 and jailed for 18 months but DNA evidence for the rape was considered too weak.

Last year the case was re-examined and more sensitive modern techniques yielded a match probability of one in one billion.

The court heard that the window cleaner has a previous conviction for breaking into another woman's home and attacking her with a hammer when he was 17.

He will remain on the sex offenders' register for life.