Rapist soldier caught when routine DNA test linked him to sex assault

A soldier was jailed yesterday after being revealed as a sex attacker by a DNA sample given when he was wrongly arrested over a faulty credit card.

Darren Leatham, of the Irish Guards, was about to leave the police station when the routine test linked him to an assault on an 18-year-old student. He was immediately re-arrested.

His case highlights the benefits of DNA testing in fighting crime and will add weight to the calls for a national database under which all adults will be encouraged to give samples regardless of whether or not they have a criminal record.

Leatham's victim met the 22-year-old guardsman when she was with friends at a nightclub in Leigh, near Manchester, in November 2005.

They danced together and, at the end of the night, the teenager recalled being slumped in a doorway and Leatham picking her up and carrying her.

Anne Whyte, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that the student thought they were going for a taxi but she became alarmed when he kept walking and they ended up in an alley.

"She shouted for her friends but was told they had gone and he put his hand over her mouth so she could not make any noise," said Miss Whyte.

Leatham then carried out a sex assault but to deter him the teenager falsely claimed she had Aids and he left the scene.

She ran out on to the street and flagged down a passing police car and reported that she had been sexually assaulted.

The police searched the area but could not find him.

The investigation went cold for 15 months because his DNA was not on the national database.

The match only came after Leatham was detained when the credit card he used to buy a rail ticket from Waterloo to Wigan to see his girlfriend was wrongly flagged up as being suspicious by a chip and pin machine.

While under arrest, Leatham, who was based in Aldershot, agreed to give a DNA sample which was sent away for tests.

When the credit card was found to be legitimate officers were ready to release him - until the swab he gave matched that of DNA found on his victim.

Leatham was cleared of rape but convicted of attempted rape and was jailed for five years.

DNA played a crucial role in the convictions of killers Steve Wright and Mark Dixie last week.

Dixie was trapped for the murder of aspiring model Sally Anne Bowman on DNA evidence taken after a minor street scuffle.

Wright was arrested for the murder of five prostitutes in Suffolk after DNA found on the bodies was matched with a profile held on a database which had been taken in 2001 for an £ 80 theft conviction.

Tony Lake, the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire and the chairman of Association of Chief Police Officers' forensics panel, said: "If there was a national database of everybody then we would solve more crime, of that there is absolutely no doubt."

But he added: "Any database that we hold has to be reasonable and proportionate in the eyes of the public."

Calls for an extension of DNA records have been supported by some politicians.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has insisted that records could be improved but has also rejected police suggestions that innocent people should be included.

The Home Office is awaiting a European ruling on the legality of holding samples from innocent adults and children on the database.