POLICE are to launch a new appeal in the hunt for a serial sex attacker suspected of assaults on 32 elderly women, after DNA tests established his ancestors came from the Windward Islands in the Caribbean, writes Robert Booth.

The man, known as “the Night Stalker”, is thought to have been responsible for 98 offences — including burglary — against women aged between 68 and 93 in south London. He is said by police to be a light-skinned black man about 35 years old and is known as a “gerontophile” — someone who feels a sexual attraction to old people.

Using advanced techniques in DNA profiling, the investigators have found that his genetic make-up includes American Indian ancestry, which would mark him out as from the Caribbean rather than Africa.

A further analysis has been made of the DNA of police officers with Caribbean heritage and who knew the island from which their families originated. This has enabled the scientists to narrow the search down to the Windward Islands, which include Barbados and St Vincent.

“We hope to predict which countries are the most likely birthplaces for both parents of our offender,” said a spokesman for the Metropolitan police.

They have been helped by scientists including Professor Paul McKeigue, a genetic epidemiologist at University College, Dublin, and DNAPrint Genomics, a US company involved in the mapping of the human genome. Together they have established that the attacker’s background is 12% native American, 6% European and the remainder African.

“It has now become possible to assign someone’s country of origin from genetic markers,” said McKeigue. “It is possible to infer what kind of mix a person’s ancestry is, although we always express it as a probability, because nothing is certain.”

All of the suspect’s victims have been elderly, with his attacks centred on Orpington, and Shirley, near Croydon. His first assault that left DNA evidence was in Shirley in 1992 and his most violent was in August 1999 when he raped a woman twice. The last suspected incident is thought to have been in January last year.

He has typically struck in the early hours after hiding in his intended victim’s garden to ensure she is alone. He has raped four women and indecently assaulted a further 28 and usually steals from the victim.

Dr Julian Boon, a police profiler who has worked on the case, has said: “He doesn’t hate these women; he wants to love them.” He added that the suspect appeared to show remorse by stopping for long periods after a victim had been hurt.

Operation Minstead, an investigation into the apparently linked attacks, began in 1998. In 2004 police appealed for black men in south London to come forward to take a DNA test in order to rule them out of the inquiries.

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