Fake taxi driver rapist Andrew Timothy Agius back behind bars after breaching parole
A serial rapist who posed as a taxi driver before driving his victims to a secluded location is back behind bars — just a year after being released on parole.
A SERIAL rapist who terrorised Adelaide for 10 months in 2004 while posing as a taxi driver is back behind bars after breaching his parole.
Andrew Timothy Agius, 49, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for raping three women in his car after driving them to a secluded location.
After serving 10 years he was released on parole in September 2017.
District Court Judge Liesl Chapman said Agius had done “some good work” while on parole but had lapsed into illicit drug use.
Positive drug tests prompted the Parole Board to revoke Agius’ parole with almost six-and-a-half years remaining on October 24, 2018.
The court heard Agius had started using the drugs to self-medicate for pain from an old back injury.
Since returning to custody he has not returned any positive drug tests.
This week, Judge Chapman imposed a new non-parole period of 11 months backdated to October 2018 — that means Agius will be eligible for parole again in September.
He was found guilty of three counts of rape against three different victims between December 2003 and November 2004.
He convinced two of the women to get in his car while he was prowling the streets of Adelaide, telling them he was a taxi driver.
His third victim said Agius had looked familiar and that was why she entered his car.
He was linked to the crimes by DNA taken from his victims but tried to explain the damning evidence by saying that the three women were prostitutes.
The sentencing judge said Agius had added to the indignities and suffering of his victims by making up the excuse.
By the time of the last rape, the sentencing judge said, Agius had “well and truly embarked on a patter on entrenched criminality”.
He tried to appeal the verdict, asking the Court of Criminal Appeal to overturn the guilty findings because the trial judge had not separated the three rape charges. The appeal was rejected in 2007.