A RAPIST who targeted a 12-year-old girl on her way to school was jailed for life yesterday after police linked him to another sex attack.

Alan Blackwell raped the schoolgirl in Washington, Tyne and Wear, after pouncing on her from behind bushes.

The attack, which happened while Blackwell was wearing women's clothes, left the traumatised youngster fearing she was going to be killed.

He was branded an extreme danger to the public when he was sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court to 14 years behind bars in 1997.

After his arrest, detectives from Operation Phoenix, who use scientific advances in DNA techniques to re-investigate old cases, matched him to fibres from the scene of an attempted rape in 1994, two years before the schoolgirl attack.

Blackwell was interviewed in custody and confessed to attacking a 21-year-old woman as she made her way home along the John Reid Road in South Shields after visiting a friend.

A manhunt at the time failed to trace the attacker but Phoenix detectives were able to bring him to justice a decade after the attack using fibres stored from the scene.

Blackwell, formerly of Sandiacres, Hedworth, Jarrow, pleaded guilty to attempted rape at an earlier hearing.

Judge Maurice Carr said yesterday that Blackwell must not be considered for release by the parole board for at least another five years.

Defence barrister Paul Caulfield said Blackwell had made good progress while serving his sentence in a specialist unit for sex offenders in Nottinghamshire.

After the case, Detective Inspector Garry Dixon, who heads Operation Phoenix, said: "I would like to reassure victims and warn offenders that time is of no consequence. By using the technology of today to solve the crimes of the past, we're helping to prevent similar crimes in the future."