The Night Stalker rapist who preyed on the elderly for almost two decades has been jailed for a minimum term of 27 years.

Judge Peter Rook said: “Your utter depravity knows no bounds. You have been convicted by the jury of 29 offences most of them are very grave offences.

“You targeted elderly victims living alone. Your actions blighted the remaining precious years of their lives.”

Sick Delroy Grant, 53, left pensioners across south London cowering in fear as he terrorised hundreds of victims in a 17-year spree of rapes and burglaries.

The masked monster targeted frail and vulnerable victims as old as 89 across Croydon and Bromley, with police estimating he could have been involved in almost 700 crimes.

Many of his victims, who he often abused for several hours, were blind, deaf or had conditions including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Grant was found guilty of 29 offences, including rape and indecent assault, at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday.

Today, wearing a black pinstriped suit, the serial rapist looked down at the floor and shook his head as sentence was passed.

During the trial, Grant tried to pin the blame for the attacks on his ex-wife Janet Watson by claiming she collected and planted his DNA at the scenes of the crimes.

She has since spoken of her years of violent abuse at the hands of her Night Stalker husband, who she left with the couple's two children after four years of hell.

She told the Sun: "Anything could start it off.

"If I hadn't cleaned the house properly - if there was a speck of dust under the bed - he would scream in my face 'You're gonna get a beating'."

Police have already apologised for a botched chance to convict the serial rapist ten years before his eventual arrest in 2009.