SERIAL rapist Nicholas Edwards has been jailed for life after being nailed by the evidence of two brave victims from High Wycombe.

They were among five women allowed by the judge in a landmark case to tell jurors about their ordeals at the hands of Edwards.

Edwards, 39, was found guilty of the rape of Miss D, 23, in his south east London flat in August 1998, at the Old Bailey yesterday. As justice caught up with Edwards, described by his own barrister as a 'walking Viagra pill', detectives revealed that other victims have now come forward.

In 1981 Edwards, then an office worker, raped a 19-year-old in his car at knifepoint after giving her a lift home from an anti-racism meeting in High Wycombe. He was jailed for 30 months, reduced to two years on appeal.

He also received a five-year jail term in 1986 for the rape of a 17-year-old woman known as Miss S in High Wycombe. Giving evidence in the latest case Miss S told how Edwards attacked her at his home, then in High Wycombe, after chatting her up at a petrol station. She said: "I just blanked out. I didn't know what was happening for a while."

Edwards was sentenced to life imprisonment under the so called 'two strikes law'. In nearly 20 years the father of six stood trial for rape seven times but was only convicted and locked up twice.

Edwards, who fathered his first daughter when he was just 13, and boasted of 2,000 sexual encounters, maintained he had only a vague recollection of previous cases brought against him.

However, a former model, known as Miss N, told the court that Edwards attacked her when she was 19 and living in a bedsit in High Wycombe,

Miss N, now 35, said she had to have an abortion after being made pregnant by Edwards.

Richard Benson QC, defending, told the jury that Edwards has been previously acquitted of attacking Miss N.

But David Perry, prosecuting, said Miss N's evidence was intended to show a similar pattern to the rape of Miss D.

Mr Benson admitted in his closing speech that Edwards has the 'morals of an alley cat.'

He said: "If it's right about his 2,000 woman sexual odyssey, he's little more than a walking Viagra tablet."

Mr Benson added that Edwards would often make inappropriate remarks about pregnancy or abortion after sex.

He said: "Falling for his charms and later regretting it does not make it rape. Wanting to punish a man for using her does not make it rape."

For the first time in a rape case, the prosecution was allowed to call 'similar fact evidence' five previous complainants against Edwards. Before the two week trial began, Judge Leonard Gerber ruled that the 'probative value ' of the evidence outweighed the potential prejudice of allowing the women to testify.