A man who raped a 71-year-old woman as she walked her dogs at an isolated spot has been warned he could face a life sentence.

Michael Alcock attacked the pensioner as she returned to her car with her two dogs after exercising them at the old Yatesbury airfield in December.

The 27-year-old had claimed that the married mother of three from Calne had paid him to have sex with her in the bushes close to where she had parked her car.

But following a trial at Swindon crown court a jury of eight women and four men took five hours to find him guilty of rape by an eleven to one majority.

Judge Douglas Field adjourned sentence to Friday August 21 so a psychiatric report can be compiled on Alcock, of Bridgend, South Wales, and remanded him in custody.

The judge will have to consider whether he poses a substantial risk of serious harm to the public in the future and if so could pass an indeterminate, or life, sentence.

The woman, now 72, told a jury she thought she was going to die when he attacker dragged her into the woods and raped her.

She had been walking her dogs at the airfield off the A4 near Cherill when she said she was set upon by a young man who was out hiking.

After threatening her with the knife she said he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into a copse where he pushed her to the ground and had forced her to have sex with him.

She said her husband had gone away on business the weekend before the incident on Wednesday December 3 last year.

Welshman Alcock started talking to her as she went to get back into the car after walking her two dogs at lunchtime, first asking the time.

“I felt uneasy because he was coming towards me and coming too close,” she told the jury of eight women and four men.

After asking her to kiss him the woman told the jury he said ‘I want to feel you’ before demanding sex telling her liked older women.

She said he then produced a small silver folding knife which he pointed at her, holding between six inches and a foot from her face.

“I think I screamed, it was very frightening and I screamed at him. I said something like ‘This is very serious’ and ‘Put it away’.”

She said she was terrified and he grabbed her by the right arm and dragged her to a small wooded area where he demanded she undress.

As he lay across her prone body she said she struggled to breathe as he forced himself on her.

“I thought I was going to die, it was terribly difficult because I couldn’t breathe,” she said.

“I tried kicking about but it wasn’t much good. It seemed to go on for ages and ages. He removed some of the pressure or I pushed him off. I think at one stage I managed to get a finger and bent it back, I am not sure.

“At one point he pinched my nose tight and his other hand covered my mouth, so I couldn’t breathe again.”

When the ordeal came to an end the woman, who had suffered a blackened eye and scratches to her face, said she sat in her car before going to tell the police.

Before he dragged her off she said she offered him cash to ‘find someone you could pay’ to have sex, but claimed he took the money anyway after raping her.

Under cross examination from Sue Evans, defending, the woman denied she had paid the man for sex.

Miss Evans said “I suggest you gave him about £80 to have sexual contact with you,” which the woman denied.

She said “I am going to suggest he did not have his hand on your windpipe or use any violence towards you,” to which the pensioner replied “That is a total travesty of what happened.”

The barrister also put to the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, that she had claimed to be 51 years old and asking Alcock if he had a girlfriend.

It is her client’s case that he got the knife out to help her remove stones from the tyres of her car which he did before she offered him cash for sex.