A violent sex attacker who staged a series of rapes on victims as young as 10 was today found guilty of raping a complete stranger more than a decade earlier.
Antoni Imiela was convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey of raping Sheila Jankowitz in the early hours of Christmas Day, 1987.
The 57-year-old was also found guilty of indecent assault and buggery.
Imiela's attack on Jankowitz was the precursor of a series of violent stranger rapes that he committed more than a decade later. Those attacks led to him being dubbed 'the M25 rapist'.
Imiela grabbed Mrs Jankowitz off the street, dragged her behind a shed and threatened to kill her before he attacked her, punching her repeatedly when she tried to resist. He pounced on the mother of two, who was then 31, near her flat in Forest Hill, south east London, as she went to look for her husband after a row.
She died in 2006, but her mother-in-law, former husband and daughter all went through the ordeal of giving evidence in the trial. Erwin Jankowitz told the court he was distraught to discover that the attack had taken place so near to where they lived, and his wife heard him walk past during the assault.
He said: "That really upset me, because the shed was so close, two metres away. I could have stopped it happening but as he had his hand over her mouth restraining it, she couldn't call out."
Daughter Charlene remembered that she was supposed to be in bed, and looked downstairs through the banisters to see her mother with blood on her clothes, saying she had been raped.
During his evidence, Imiela cynically said he had "made love" to Mrs Jankowitz, and at one point he hurled abuse at prosecutor Richard Hearnden, calling him a "jumped up little c***". He also made veiled references to mental health problems that Mrs Jankowitz had suffered after the merciless attack.
Imiela, of no fixed address, was found guilty of rape, indecent assault and buggery.
Fourteen years after the sickening assault on Mrs Jankowitz, he began a series of similar violent sex attacks on girls and women he had never met. Again he grabbed them, dragged them into a secluded area, threatened to kill them and hit them.
In 2004 he was given seven life sentences for the rapes, with a minimum term of eight years - meaning he became eligible for parole this month. His victims included girls aged 10, 13 and 14, as well as women up to the age of 52, but the jury in the current case was not told how old they were.
The Old Bailey heard that he knew he was facing a lengthy jail sentence for armed robbery when he pounced on Mrs Jankowitz in the early hours of Christmas Day 1987. Two weeks later he handed himself in to police for the robbery spree and was eventually jailed for 14 years.
He was released in 1996, and five years later began a terrifying campaign of rapes across the south of England on victims as young as 10. Imiela was dubbed "the M25 rapist". He would snatch his victims where they were walking, drag them into a secluded area and rape them - exactly what he had done to Mrs Jankowitz more than a decade before.
The deluded sex attacker continued to protest his innocence despite being linked through his DNA to the rapes. He told the Old Bailey that he had been trying to appeal against his seven life sentences, but could not say whether any appeal had actually been lodged.
The jury in the latest trial was not told the ages of his previous victims. Born in Lubeck, West Germany, in 1954 to a Polish father, a soldier, and German mother, Imiela spent part of his early childhood in a displaced people's camp as his parents were both refugees.
The family moved to the UK in 1961 and spent time in Worthing, West Sussex, before eventually settling in Newton Aycliffe in the north east of England. His parents split up a few years after arriving in the UK.
During the Old Bailey trial, when asked if some people thought he had a German accent on certain words, he said: "Yes. Green, grass, rape." Imiela was first sent to Borstal at the age of 15 when he was locked up for robbery, and a series of brushes with the law followed.
As a teenager, he met Allyson Pletts - who was later to become the mother to his son Aidan - but she at first took a liking to his older brother Andy with whom she lived in Germany for two years. She returned to the North East in the early 1980s and got together with Imiela before the two of them had a child.
The relationship between them became turbulent and in February 1987, after Imiela lost his job as a plasterer, he began his series of armed robberies across the country. After his release from prison in 1996, he tried to build a new life in the south of England with another woman.
Christine, who was just recovering from a turbulent relationship with another man, married Imiela in 1997 and the couple moved into an old council house in the village of Appledore in Kent. Imiela tried a string of odd jobs, including running a "bric-a-brac" stall in nearby Rye, East Sussex, before finding work on the railways.
Colleagues recalled that he would brag to them about his use of prostitutes - although it later emerged that some of the stories might actually have been about rape victims. One colleague said that shortly before Imiela's arrest for the seven rapes, he saw him at St Pancras railway station in London, where he boasted that he "went with this young girl and she looked only about 12".
A few days earlier, Imiela had driven to Birmingham and kidnapped a 10-year-old girl at knifepoint before putting her through a five-hour sex ordeal in his car. He also suggested to another colleague - who had no idea his fellow railway worker was the rapist - that the little girl might have "deserved it".
Darren Arnold, who had just read a newspaper article about the rape, commented that - as a father himself - he would kill the rapist if his child had been the victim. Imiela replied: "Maybe she deserved it."
During his trial for raping Mrs Jankowitz, Imiela spent most of his evidence in tears. He also lost his temper, ranting at the prosecutor: "You've got the vilest mind because you're the professional person, you're educated, you've had all the advantages yet you're prepared to twist things to get a conviction."
Imiela tried to portray himself as innocent and he has never confessed to his crimes. But after the Maidstone trial it was revealed that he had written to his son and said: "I cannot control my sexual urges. "I'm a man, you must understand that sometimes you have no control over your impulses."