A SEX attack suspect arrested three decades after the crime could not initially explain DNA evidence linking him with the crime, a court was told.

Former club singer Michael Khannan, who used the stage name Simon Preston, was only suspected of the attack after a cold case review of the outstanding crime using latest DNA profiling, last year.

Durham Crown Court was told that no one was brought to justice for the knifepoint attack at the time, in 1978.

An 18-year-old pub worker was grabbed from behind and felt a sharp object in her back, as she was waiting at a bus stop in Peterlee, County Durham, late on January 17 that year. She was taken to an alcove on grassland near a Peterlee College building, where the near hour-long ordeal took place.

The court heard her harrowing account of the incident, when she was re-interviewed after the DNA evidence was discovered last July.

She tearfully told officers she feared she would be killed, before she was eventually released, heading for the nearby police station.

Khannan, 58, of Claremont North Avenue, Gates-head, who was arrested on September 2 last year, denies attempted rape and indecent assault. The jury has been told he has convictions for a rape and indecent assault, in 1972.

He was released from prison on licence on October 11, 1976, and was working on the North-East club circuit at the time of the incident.

When he was interviewed on the day of his arrest, last September, he told police he believed he had been to Peterlee at some stage, but could not specifically recall singing in the town.

The jury was read his interview, during which details of the attack were put to him.

He told police: “I think that’s outrageous.”

But when asked by a detective if he was responsible, Khannan replied: “It absolutely wasn’t me.

“I don’t know anything about it. It wasn’t anything to do with me.”

Asked about the DNA match, revealed from tests on a semen stain sample from the victim’s underwear, Khannan replied: “I can’t comment, I don’t know anything about it.”

The court has heard that he was later to try to explain away the DNA match by claiming he had a twin brother from whom he was separated at a young age when both were fostered.

But Amanda Rippon, prosecuting, told the jury that the explanation was “a deliberate lie”.

The trial continues.