A 'match' all these years on

TRENT FREEMAN is on trial in the District Court for the rape in 1998 of an 85-year-old woman who is now deceased. Crown prosecutor David Patch told the court it is alleged Freeman broke into the woman's housing commission bedsit in Guildford at night with a knife, and after raping her, said, "If you go to the police I will come back with my gang and kill you." The court heard that the victim told police that after the rape her attacker said, "Where's your jewellery?" She had replied, "I don't have any." When he demanded to know why, she had said, "I've got nobody to buy it for me." She sought comfort from two other women in their eighties who lived in the same block of flats. They, too, are now deceased. Police obtained fingerprints and DNA samples from the scene but had no match until recently, when a review of cold cases found a match with Freeman's fingerprints, which had been added to the database after a later traffic offence. Freeman's barrister, Mike Smith, told the court his client disputed the DNA and fingerprint evidence.