A RAPIST from an affluent family who boasted to a prostitute he was wanted for murder before attacking her has been jailed for 12 years.

Zeeshan Ali was intelligent and well-educated and came from a family who were upstanding members of the community but he masked a secret obsession for prostitutes.

Teesside Crown Court heard the 21-year-old brandished a knife at a prostitute, in Thornaby, Teesside, and told her he was on the run for multiple killings.

He forced her to commit a sex act and then released her, but six weeks later he asked her for business before punching her and running off with her handbag.

Half an hour later, he threatened to kill another prostitute, slashed her arm and stole her handbag before he was caught by police.

Ali was said to have a "peculiar regard" for women's handbags.

Naeem Mian, mitigating, said, his client did not accept he had committed the crimes, despite being found guilty by a jury last month.

He said: "He has brought about not only his own ruin and shame upon himself, but ruin and shame upon his family.

"He comes from a respectable, hard-working, family who have some standing in the community. All that amounts to nothing.

"All of that reputation is left in tatters."

Judge Peter Fox, Recorder of Middlesbrough, branded Ali arrogant and said he lacked any warmth of humanity.

He told him: "You were very intelligent and well educated and come from an affluent background.

"You are an arrogant young man as well. You preyed upon young women in Thornaby. Young women who themselves are vulnerable and in need of help and support, but you had a contemptuous obsession which is deeply disturbing.

"You are a very real danger to such vulnerable, young women."

Ali, who was 20 at the time of the attacks last summer, was said to have threatened to kill one of the women in a "chilling and horrifying" way.

The defendant, of Oxford Road, Thornaby, had denied two counts of rape making a threat to kill, robbery, wounding with intent and possession of an offensive weapon.

He was ordered to be put on extended licence for five years after his release from prison.