Scores of cases over the last 20 years in which police have failed to catch rapists are being re-examined by a cold case team within the new rape command. Since 2003, when the officers began trawling through crimes going back to the 1980s, 55 men have been convicted of 122 offences. They have also captured the DNA of 110 suspects whose information has been entered on the national DNA database.
The latest cold case to be solved was that of Kazimierz Sadowski, a 33-year-old Polish national who repeatedly raped a student in central London in July 1999. The 19-year-old victim reported the attack and a DNA swab of a suspect was obtained but it did not match any on the national database. Sadowski was caught last year after being arrested for drink-driving when his DNA matched that taken from the rape victim. He was found guilty in October and is being sentenced on Friday.
