A patient who sexually assaulted two paramedics as they tried to help him is a convicted murderer, it has emerged.

Ian Vickers had been released on licence from a life sentence for battering to death a Yugoslavian refugee when he attacked two female ambulance staff in Brighton last year.

They had no idea about his violent past when they tended his head injury after finding him slumped in the street after he had been attacked.

He repaid them by twice sexually assaulting one of the paramedics as she treated him in the back of the ambulance.

Vickers, 51, grabbed her between the legs and uttered obscenities about what he wanted to do to her.

He later groped her colleague's bottom as she tried to brief doctors on his condition.

Vickers, of Pier Road, Littlehampton, has denied the assaults were deliberate and claimed he was confused because of his head injury and because he had been drinking.

His claims chillingly echoed his excuse that he could not remember killing Mr Stojnik because they had been out on a four-hour drinking spree together.

A jury of six women and five men at Hove Crown Court unanimously found him guilty yesterday of the sex attacks.

Judge Anthony Niblett told him: "Because of your background of violence you are a man of the greatest possible dangerousness."

A woman juror had earlier been discharged from hearing the case when she became too distressed to continue after listening to details of the assault.

After the remaining jurors returned their verdicts, Matthew MacDonagh, prosecuting, told them Vickers had been jailed for life for murder.

He said only that the case involved claims by Vickers that a man had made sexual advances to him at a flat in Crescent Road, Worthing.

The Argus can reveal that 65-year-old Mr Stojnik died after being beaten about the head with a portable radio and inhaling his own blood.

His body was found by police after Vickers was arrested following an incident in the street in January, 1981.

They broke into the flat and found Mr Strojnik's bloodstained body on the bed.

There were criss-cross scratches on his chest and stomach and his private parts had been cut.

Vickers claimed he had so much to drink that night he could not remember what had happened.

The judge at his trial at Lewes Crown Court passed a sentence of life with no minimum term.

Vickers spent his time in prison studying for a degree in pure maths and after his release on licence in 1994 went on to become a maths teacher in London.

He later moved to Littlehampton to be closer to his elderly and infirm mother.

Vickers said he went to Brighton on June 10 last year to meet his 27-year-old son but was attacked by a street drinker in Marlborough Place.

The jury heard he suffered a 2in gash between his eyes and appeared to be drunk.

The paramedics helped him into the ambulance.

The first medic told the jury she was cleaning his forehead when the first assault took place.

She said: "I tried to ignore it because he was waving his arms about and I thought it might have been an accident.

"I carried on cleaning his wound but kept more of a distance."

Vickers later discharged himself from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, but went to Worthing General Hospital next day when he realised he had a serious head injury.

The court heard that because Vickers had been arrested for a serious offence his Home Office licence had automatically been revoked and he had been recalled to serve the rest of his sentence.

He also has previous convictions for assault causing actual bodily harm.

Vickers will be sentenced at a later date for the ambulance assaults.

Judge Niblett praised the actions of the two paramedics for continuing to treat Vickers' injuries despite the sexual assaults.