Database match traps serial sex attacker 15 years later

Carl Fridye was a 17-year-old drug addict when in 1989 he climbed through a bedroom window and indecently assaulted a pensioner as she lay in her bed.

Now 15 years later he is behind bars even though his victim has died and was too traumatised at the time to give police a statement.

Officers carrying out the review of so-called "cold cases" matched DNA found at the scene to him through the national database, along with a fingerprint, and he was jailed last month for five and a half years.

His 77-year-old victim had alerted the warden after he fled from her sheltered accommodation in Holloway, but she could not give a written statement and died of natural causes in 1997.

Fridye, from Birmingham, went on to rape a woman in Derbyshire in 1995 and indecently assaulted three others in the same area. He was jailed for seven and a half years for those offences and his DNA was kept on file.

In prison he took a drugs rehabilitation course and worked as a warehouse manager after his release in 2001. But at the Old Bailey last month he admitted the indecent assault on the pensioner and failing to register as a sex offender. He wrote to the court expressing his remorse.

When sentencing him Mr Recorder Paul Worsley, QC, said: "The cold case review has paid extreme dividends in this case. The public can take some comfort that the books of undetected crime are never closed."

Commander John Yates, in overall charge of Project Sapphire, said: "This is a remarkable case and we think it is unique in that we brought it to court and have gained a conviction despite the fact the victim never gave a statement and died before she saw this man brought to justice."