Violent rapist Anthony William O’Connor found guilty — 15 years after shocking home invasion in Adelaide Hills

A knife-wielding rapist who attacked an Adelaide Hills woman as she slept has finally been found and convicted of the crime more than a decade after he fled into the night.

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A knife-wielding man who broke into a woman’s Adelaide Hills home and blindfolded and raped her has been found guilty of the shocking attack — after a DNA match linked him to the crime 15 years later.

Father-of-three, Anthony William O’Connor, 53, of Reservoir in Victoria, broke into the single mother’s home in September 2003.

He threatened her with a knife then grabbed her by the hair “with such force that she was forced facedown”.

A District Court jury unanimously found him guilty of three counts of rape and a charge of aggravated serious criminal trespass. DNA found on items at the scene matched DNA from a buccal swab taken from O’Connor.

The jury heard the DNA found on items at the crime scene was 3.1 billion times more likely to belong to O’Connor than another person.

Sandi McDonald, prosecuting, told the court the victim was asleep in her home when she “woke to find a male intruder standing over her” with a knife before he “violently raped her”.

“That man threatened her, blindfolded her and raped her,” she said.

“The intruder was ready for the attack. He was armed with a knife.

“He brought items with him to assist him with what he was going to do. He brought a blindfold, he brought a gag, he brought a cord ready to tie her up.

“Clearly, on the prosecution case, that man was intending to rape.”

Fearful of being stabbed, the woman grabbed at the knife, cutting her hand down to the tendons.

Before he left, he asked for money and drugs, gagged the victim and bound her ankles.

The victim had managed to get a hand free, but “kept up the pretence that they were secured together”, enabling her to flee almost naked, through rain and hail to a neighbour’s house for help.

Neighbours told the jury the woman was “distraught” and “talking rapidly, frightened, hysterical” when she burst into their home in the early hours of the morning seeking help.

She still had a gag around her neck and a cord around her wrists.

The court heard O’Connor, an Irish-born carpenter, had been working in South Australia on the Onkaparinga pipeline in the late 1990s, and had returned to the Adelaide Hills in September 2003 aged 37 as a “drug mule” to source cannabis for a buyer, as he had done on four or five other occasions.

In his defence, O’Connor had told the jury he met the victim at a local pub where they discussed the sale of cannabis before they returned to her house for the drugs.

He told the jury the pair had a consensual sexual encounter, before he left with a bag of cannabis.

“The only thing I’m guilty of here is stealing a pound of marijuana from her,” he said. The jury’s verdict, delivered earlier this month, rejected O’Connor’s account.

Despite the guilty verdict, SA police would not comment about how DNA from O’Connor came to be checked against the items found at the crime scene.

O’Connor will reappear in court for a pre-sentence hearing next month.

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Originally published as Violent rapist Anthony William O’Connor found guilty — 15 years after shocking home invasion in Adelaide Hills