A Neyland man has been jailed for seven years today (Thursday) after a jury convicted him of rape.

Daniel McKenzie, 42, had been released from jail for drug dealing just weeks before he was arrested and returned to prison on the rape charge.

He denied the offence but was convicted unanimously following a trial at Swansea crown court.

McKenzie, of College Park, trembled in the dock as Judge Keith Thomas sent him down for seven years.

The court had been told how McKenzie tried to kill himself when he heard that the woman had telephoned her mother and made a complaint. Her mother immediately rang the police.

McKenzie walked into nearby woods and tried to hang himself from a tree. But the branch snapped.

When police arrived to question him McKenzie climbed out of a bedroom window and paced backwards and forwards along the roof.

Officers saw him fashion a scarf into a noose and place it around his neck.

But they managed to talk him down.

McKenzie told the jury that sexual intercourse had not taken place at all.

But a forensic scientist said semen had been found in the woman’s underwear and a DNA profile had been obtained. The chances of it not having come from McKenzie were a billion to one.

Jim Davis, prosecuting, told the jury: “That’s a thousand million to one.

“The fact is that the DNA matches the defendant’s DNA. How did it get there?.”

He said when officers searched McKenzie’s home they found a note he had written to his wife taped to a television screen.

In it he mentioned “a moment of madness” and wrote that “maybe it is the red male blood in me.”