IT was a crime Thomas Noble thought he had got away with -the rape of a woman walking home late at night.

The assault prompted police to launch a major hunt and produce a photofit that was a striking likeness to Noble.

However, no one linked the two and, as the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, the prospect of a breakthrough slowly and painfully diminished.

The case was never closed, but as time wore on, detectives feared the Monkey Tree Park attacker would never be caught.

The growing police frustration was matched by Noble's increasing confidence that he would evade justice forever.

But a row with children outside his home in Stockton, within a mile of the scene of his crime ten years earlier, was to be his downfall.

Noble was arrested and had to provide a DNA sample following the row over stone-throwing during the 2005 Christmas season.

Scientists found a match when they ran the sample through a national database which held traces of DNA taken during the rape case.

Noble, 36 at the time of the attack, became the prime suspect and the latest target of Operation Advance.

A Government-funded project, Operation Advance, which reviews historic rape cases, was to score its next success.

Detectives were told of the match in October and spent the next few weeks monitoring Noble's movements and building up a picture of his private life.

They also had to carefully plan how they approached the victim, who was 32 at the time of her ordeal, to inform her of the long-awaited development.

Police established that Noble lived with a partner and four children, and to lessen the impact on his family, waited until the youngsters were out of the house.

Noble was stopped in his car after he dropped off the children at school, and a trained officer was sent to tell his partner what had happened.

Detective Inspector Andy Greenwood said: "Noble was stunned when we pulled his car over and told him he was a suspect.

"It was just as much of a shock for his partner to find out that the person she had been living with all those years could have been responsible for such a crime.

"Noble refused to answer any questions in interview, but made a written statement which he gave to his solicitor, which said the sex was consensual.

"That version of events was never released to the police until he was charged, and he denied he committed the crime right up until the day of his trial.

"It is clear that the strength of the evidence was a major factor in his change of plea at the very last minute."

The conviction and yesterday's sentence is the second success Cleveland Police has secured through Operation Advance, following the eight-year sentence given to Andrew Russell in 2005.

Former soldier Russell raped a woman on the stairs of a Stockton car park in December 1989 and was trapped when DNA taken after a minor incident on Merseyside linked him to the unsolved case. An increasing number of serious offenders are now behind bars after "cold case" detectives used advances in technology on unsolved crimes.

Civil liberties campaigners argue that we risk committing "slow social suicide" through expanding the National DNA Database and over-use of security cameras.

But Professor David Barclay, a forensic scientist behind some of Britain's most high-profile murder investigations, has called for the DNA of every adult to be recorded to help beat crime.

The details of 3.6 million people are currently held on the database, about one in 20 of the UK population.

Prof Barclay, an advisor to TV drama Waking The Dead, which follows the work of a fictional cold case detective unit, said: "I would be very much in favour of everybody being tested for a DNA database."

Det Insp Greenwood said: "In the fullness of time, when cases are reinvestigated with the help of Operation Advance, the people responsible are going to be caught and convicted.

"No matter how long ago these offences were committed, we are confident there will be further breakthroughs as the review of historic sexual offences - primarily rapes - in Cleveland goes on."