Rapist Sam Robinson captured after DNA traced
A rapist has been jailed after being caught by new DNA techniques 30 years after he carried out a sex attack on a teenage girl in Devon.
Traces of Sam Robinson's DNA were found on the 17-year-old victim's clothes, Exeter Crown Court heard.
Robinson was on the national DNA database and was arrested by police.
Robinson, 47, of Totton, near Southampton, was found guilty of two counts of rape and one of indecent assault and was jailed for 18 years.
Robinson was 17 when he attacked the girl as she walked home through the grounds of Oldway Mansions in Paignton late one night in 1984, the court was told.
He moved away from Devon, was invalided out of the Army and moved to Southampton where he taught college students marine technology.
The police were unable to identify the attacker and closed the case.
But the victim went back to the police in 2012 and asked them to use the DNA techniques now available.
She was inspired after reading of another trial in Plymouth in 2011 in which a cold case was solved by new DNA techniques.
Robinson, who had denied the charges, claimed his DNA may have come on to her clothes accidentally after he had been in the Oldway gardens earlier in the evening.
Judge Francis Gilbert told Robinson: "This was an extremely violent incidence of rape and one of the worst I have seen in many years on the bar and as a judge."