A burglar who broke into a 49-year-old woman's flat and raped her has been jailed for 13-and-a-half years.

Anthony Jordan, 50, from Eastbourne, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for the attack in 1991.

He broke into the woman's flat in Hackney, east London in the early hours of the morning, put a pillow over her face and attacked her.

Jordan also took £10 from the woman's purse as well as her cigarettes and lighter.

A month later he "brazenly" returned to burgle the flat again but accidentally triggered a panic alarm and was caught by police.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Thornton QC told him: "She was alone in her flat and had been asleep when suddenly she was confronted with a male intruder, a stranger: every woman's nightmare. She was terrified and thought she was going to die."

It was "only by good fortune" that the victim, who cannot be named, was away when he returned a month later.

The woman, now 70, said in a victim impact statement: "My life was altered and changed beyond recognition on that night. I have never been the same again and I have had to live with the pain and suffering this caused me."

Jordan was convicted of the second burglary in 1991 and jailed for 18 months but DNA evidence for the rape was considered too weak.

Last year the case was re-examined and more sensitive modern techniques yielded a match probability of one in one billion.

The court heard that the window cleaner has a previous conviction for breaking into another woman's home and attacking her with a hammer when he was 17.

He will remain on the sex offenders' register for life.