London, Sydney: A British man has finally been sentenced to jail in Australia for three rapes from the early 1980s after he was arrested for drink-driving in Britain three decades later and his fingerprints were matched to those taken from wine glasses at the scene of his crimes in Melbourne.

Colin Henderson, a dual British-Australian citizen from Scotland, became known in Melbourne as the “rental rapist” after he responded to advertisements for flatmates and arrived at the homes of his female victims with bottles of wine, which he suggested they drink to get to know each other better. After drinking and eating with the women, he made unwanted advances and threatened them with violence – in two cases wielding a knife – before raping them.

In one case, he viciously raped a woman and then went to her three-year-old child’s bedroom and kissed the sleeping youngster. In another, he committed the rape and then asked the woman: “No hard feelings?”

For decades, it seemed, he would escape punishment. Five years ago, police from the cold case squad in the state of Victoria re-opened the investigation and used new technology to examine fingerprint evidence from the wine glasses.

During separate inquiries into a murder in Victoria in 2012 of a woman who responded to a newspaper advertisement, two of the original rape victims were interviewed and said they thought the rapist was Scottish.

This prompted Australian police to send the DNA and fingerprint evidence to their counterparts in Britain.

The data helped police to track down Henderson, who had moved to Britain in 1996 and was living in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. His fingerprints were reportedly on file in Britain following his arrest for drink-driving in 2013. He was arrested and extradited to Australia last year.

Yesterday, the county court in Melbourne sentenced Henderson, now 65, to 15 years in prison, saying his crimes were “every woman’s worst nightmare”.

He pleaded guilty to six charges. Since the rapes, which occurred in 1981, 1982 and 1984, Henderson has run a bar in Spain and lived in Australia and Britain.

He has three children from a first marriage and remarried in 2000.