The millennium night rape victim did not hesitate when asked for her thoughts on Reynolds: "I would like to kill him. I would make it slow and I would make it painful."

She is relieved the trial is over and intends enjoying Christmas with friends, but no matter where she goes, Reynolds will be with her in her mind. He has mentally scarred her for life.

The victim, now a shop worker outside Sussex, still has nightmares about her ordeal and believes she always will.

Reynolds, with his long black dirty hair, appears in different dreams and she often wakes with a start.

"I am just so glad it is over and he is behind bars.

"I am glad I told the police. If I hadn't, he would have done it to someone else."

The details of the wicked acts Reynolds committed on the now 25-year-old graduate are too horrific to print.

Her ordeal lasted 45 minutes, a time that has changed her life for ever.

She said: "I have become moody and I lose my patience a lot since the attack. I don't suppose I will ever be the frivolous person I once was.

"I have become much stronger in some ways but I am far less trusting of people."

She trusted Reynolds in the early hours of New Year's Day when she asked him for directions.

She had no idea he was stalking women and that she was playing into his evil hands.

She had attended celebrations in the Old Steine, Brighton, and was happy and in high spirits. She was snapped into sobriety by Reynolds.

He led her through the grounds of the Aldrington Day Care Centre, off New Church Road, Hove. He was a regular at the drop-in centre and familiar with its secluded grounds.

Reynolds, described as dirty, shabby and smelly, attacked mercilessly, raping her four times and performing other indecent acts to humiliate her.

He put his hand around her mouth, dragged her to the ground on a grassy area and put cloth in her mouth.

She thought she would die when he boasted how easy it was to "do away with you". When he left her, she counted to 60 three times before scrambling over a fence and being sick.

For the police, it was the hardest kind of rape to investigate, one committed by a stranger with no previous connection with the victim.

But Reynolds left behind a genetic fingerprint that was to lead to his capture.

Like the Yorkshire Ripper, Reynolds's name kept coming up and officers decided to try to eliminate him from the inquiry.

Unable to trace him, they took DNA samples from his parents and were shocked when results came back showing the odds that it was not him were nine million to one.

It was the first time any force in Britain had identified an offender through the DNA profiles of his parents.

Born in Brighton, Reynolds left school at 16 and worked most of his adult life as a cleaner on the railways. When he lost his job six years ago, he started living rough.

Following publicity about the rape, a woman spotted a man living on the cliff top at Roedean. Police found him sleeping under a sheet of tarpaulin.

A further DNA test, showing a one billion-to-one match, proved beyond doubt Reynolds was the rapist.

Reynolds, 35, dismissed the results, insisted on his innocence and, in doing so, made his victim go through the additional ordeal of giving evidence and being cross-examined.

As she left the witness box she purposely averted her eyes from where Reynolds sat.

She was telephoned yesterday with news of the guilty finding. She praised Sussex Police: "They were really good and so supportive. I was not treated like an object and they showed the utmost tact, consideration and sympathy. Their work has been unerring."

Detective Inspector Russ Whitfield, who headed the inquiry, praised his officers for bringing the rapist to justice.

Reynolds, who is facing life, will be sentenced in February.