A rapist killer has walked free from a court after another alleged rape victim brought a trial to a standstill.

Barristers defending Roddy Henry at Chelmsford Crown Court inferred the alleged rape victim had deliberately engineered the end of his trial so she would not have to continue giving evidence against him.

At one point, the 53-year-old woman was threatened with contempt of court proceedings after an outburst from the witness box.

In front of the jury and despite warnings from the prosecution and her own defence team, the woman revealed Henry had been serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a 92-year-old woman.

Trial judge Mr Justice McKinnon stopped the trial after the outburst and an hour later prosecutor Andrew Munday QC offered no evidence against Henry, 39, and he was formally acquitted by the judge.

Henry, from Springfield Park Road, Chelmsford, was accused of raping the woman at a Chelmsford hotel in October 1998 while on home leave towards the end of his life sentence.

But at the end of the trial, it was revealed that before the alleged rape, the woman wrote to Henry in sexually explicit terms suggesting the same sexually deviant act she was complaining about to police.

Defence barrister Christopher Hotten QC said Henry had always vehemently denied the rape allegation and was more than prepared to go into the witness box and give his version of events.

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