A rapist who tried to kill his victim during a “brutal and inhumane” late-night street attack has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 13-and-a-half years.
Anthony Dealey – a married father-of-two from Ilkeston, Derbyshire – was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life after leaving the woman for dead.
Dealey attacked the woman, who was in her 30s, shortly after she got off a bus in Ilkeston at around 4am on 26 November 2017.
Jurors found him guilty in September after hearing how the victim was strangled, robbed of money and left in a “wretched and pitiful state” following the attack.
It took them just over two hours to convict Dealey after hearing that DNA found on the victim’s clothes was “more than a billion times” more likely to be from him than anyone else.
Dealey, of Erewash Square, Ilkeston, still denies carrying out the offence.
Offering mitigation before sentence, defence lawyer Martin Elwick said the continuing denial may be a coping mechanism after his friends and the whole of his family “abandoned” him following his arrest.
Passing sentence on Friday, Judge Nirmal Shant QC told Dealey: “This was a brutal and inhumane attack on a lone female walking home.
“It’s plain from the evidence that when the complainant passed the location where you had been at 4am, you had clearly been trawling the area looking for a victim.
“What you did thereafter is beyond words. To give her the final indignity you took money from her handbag and you left her for dead.”
The judge said calling the incident “a wicked attack doesn’t begin to describe it”, adding: “The victim had the final humiliation of having family members having to come and see her in that state, when somebody alerted them.”
Dealey’s conduct when he was confronted by police was chillingly calm, the judge said, adding that the long-term impact on the victim was beyond description.