Rapist accidentally named to police by friend 15 YEARS after sex attack

Lorenzo Gibbs and two other men picked up the prostitute girlfriend of a person who owed one of them money, a jury heard.

She was seized in Hailes Park Close, Parkfield and bundled into a car on November 2, 2001, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.

The victim was taken to a flat where she was ordered to undress and raped by the men before being returned to the area from which she had been taken.

She was also given a deadline for her boyfriend's debt to be settled.

She defied the trio's warning not to contact police and gave officers the names of two of those involved, including the man to whom the money was allegedly owed.

They were arrested, convicted and jailed for eight years each.

But the woman did not know Gibbs, whose DNA was not on the police data base since he had no previous convictions, and therefore could not be cross checked against evidence found at the scene.

Two years later a sample of the DNA of Gibbs was taken following his arrest for an unrelated case of assault for which he received a caution but gave police false details including the bogus name of Neville Embard. The results of the swab test were recorded under this identity rather than the real one.

Life went on for the defendant. He met a woman and married in 2005. The couple now have four children. Police refresh unsolved cases on a regular basis and a review of the outstanding offence involving Gibbs was launched earlier this year. As part of the process his photograph was included among the West Midlands 'most wanted' list on the force's Facebook page.

A close friend of the defendant was alarmed to see the face of Gibbs featured above an appeal for help in finding Neville Embard.

Police were contacted and told that they had made an embarrassing mistake. It was explained that the man in the picture was really 43-year-old Lorenzo Gibbs and not the man they were hunting. He was arrested the next day.

The Jamaican-born defendant, who came to this country in 1997, had lived an otherwise blameless life, working hard in a variety of jobs including cleaner, porter and security guard. He was given leave to remain in this country in 2011, said Mr John Edwards, defending.

Gibbs, from Greenfield Road, Great Barr was jailed by Judge Amjad Nawaz, who said: "This was a sustained attack by a number of men, one of whom apparently had a debt owed to him by the boyfriend of the woman involved.

"You were not arrested at the time because you were not identified, unlike the other two offenders who were both 10 years older than you."