A serial sex offender who broke into a woman's Battersea home and raped her is back behind bars after detectives matched his fingerprints to another sex attack.

Eli Morin was about to be released in April at the end of a nine year jail term for sneaking into a third floor flat in Prince of Wales Drive in June, 1991, and raping a woman before escaping with just £10.

But instead of walking to freedom Morin, now 46, was arrested by detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Cold Case Unit and charged with another, earlier sex attack.

His fingerprints had been matched to ones found at a sexual assault in Brixton October 1990.

Last Thursday, May 26, an Old Bailey judge sent him back behind bars for another nine years after hearing that Morin had crept up a refuse shaft into the home of a 35 year-old doctor.

Prosecuting, Peter Glenser said: "She looked up and to her horror saw a face leaning around her bedroom door.

"In short she was the victim of a terrifying, violent, prolonged sexual assault that left her body bloody and bruised."

Morin, then 26, pinned the woman onto the bed of her home with her arm twisted behind her back and demanded valuables, but the woman managed to fight back briefly.

He then pinned her down again and sexually assaulted her before telling her: "I think you want to be raped, don't you?"

Mr Glenser said: "She was convinced she was going to die that night and she screamed as loud as she possibly could."

Morin pushed her into a table and the resulting crash was so loud that he fled the house.

Judge Giles Forrester said he was unable to give Morin an indefinite sentence as the crime was committed before 2003. But he jailed him for nine years for the sexual assault, five years for burglary and three years for assault, all to run concurrently.

He said: "You subjected your victim to every woman's worst nightmare. The offences you have committed are shocking.

"Your victim was vulnerable and alone, utterly defenceless. She was the victim of what I can only describe as a pitiless, wicked crime."

Morin, who was on probation for other offences when he carried out the attacks on the two women, admitted indecent assault, burglary and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.