A retired baker has denied committing two knifepoint sex attacks in multi-storey car parks more than 26 years ago.

Convicted sex offender John Clayson said he “very occasionally” used one of the car parks at The Pentagon Centre in Chatham and claimed he had never been to the other, the former Anglesea car park in Gravesend.

The crimes in July 1990 remained “cold cases” until 2015 when advances in DNA testing led to the arrest of the 60-year-old father.

A jury has been told Clayson, of Upper Fant Road, Maidstone, was jailed for five years in February 1995 for attempting to rape a woman at knifepoint in Cornwall at knifepoint.

Prosecutor Christopher May said forensic experts were able to make a match from a stocking worn on the attacker’s head in 1990 to Clayson’s DNA profile.

Clayson, who is receiving only palliative care for cancer, denies attempted rape, indecent assault and having an offensive weapon in relation to one of the women and false imprisonment, indecent assault and another serious sexual offence in relation to the other woman.

He also denies committing three other serious sexual offences with a third woman.

The first attack was on a 19-year-old woman on the top floor of the car park at the The Pentagon on July 4.

She told how she was grabbed by a man wearing a leather jacket with a stocking over his head and armed with a knife. He molested her but ran off when he heard the lift “ding”.

The second attack was 16 days later on a woman, 21, at the Anglesea car park, now Thamesgate shopping centre, in Gravesend.

This time the man, also with a stocking over his head and holding a knife, tied her hands with tights, forced her into her car and subjected her to a serious sexual offence.

Clayson was at the time living in Dagmar Road, Chatham, and working at a bakers in Denton, Gravesend.

He went into the witness box at Maidstone Crown Court with the aid of a walking stick.

Clayson, who grew up in the Kingswood area, said he worked at a bakers in Denton but never went into the centre of Gravesend.

He maintained that he was innocent of the attempted rape offence in Cornwall.

Mr May told him that a car registered to him a Mitsubishi Galant, was at the Anglesea car park on the day of the attack.

“It was there because you drove it there,” he said. Clayson replied: “No.”

He agreed his favourite leather jacket, along with a knife, was found in his car when he was arrested for the Cornwall attack.

Clayson just replied “No” when Mr May put all the allegations to him.

He denied holding a knife to the throat of the third woman while having sex with her. He also denied resorting to violence to have sex.

The case continues.