Black cab rapist John Worboys LOSES appeal to shorten life sentences for drugging and attacking female passengers

BLACK cab rapist John Worboys has lost a Court of Appeal challenge against his life sentence for spiking the drinks of four women.

The 63-year-old had mounted the challenge to his two life terms but was today knocked back.

He was jailed in 2009 for 19 sex attacks on 12 women.

Announcing the decision today, Lord Chief Justice, Baron Burnett of Maldon, said: "This applicant is now known as John Radford but was formerly known as John Worboys and as such became notorious as the black cab rapist.

"For reasons I will go into, this application for permission to appeal against sentence is refused."

The Parole Board decided he could be released in 2018 but the decision was quashed after a High Court challenge by victims and The Sun.

The outcry also sparked a fresh Met Police probe and Worboys was charged in 2019 with further crimes.

Worboys - who now goes by the name John Radford - was handed two life sentences in December that year after admitting four more attacks.

He today appealed his sentences but lost.

Police believe he may have carried out more than 100 rapes and sexual assaults on women in London between 2002 and 2008.

He targeted passengers who got into his cab, claiming he had won money on the lottery or gambling on horses, arming himself with a "rape kit".

The chilling kit hidden in the footwell of his cab included condoms, plastic gloves and a sex toy.

In 2019, a court heard Worboys attacked one victim in his cab after she left a bar on Dover Street in central London.

He claimed he had won money on the horses and told her he was a Chippendale stripper as he offered her champagne spiked with a "stupefying or overpowering drug".

MONSTER'S 'RAPE KIT'

She woke up the next day "naked, with her clothes left in a trail on the way to her bed".

The woman recognised Worboys seeing publicity about his case in 2009 and in December 2018 picked him out in an identity parade.

He attacked another - a university student - in London in 2003 as she left a nightclub on New Oxford Street using laced champagne.

The monster was first jailed in 2009 after giving his victims drug-laced champagne before attacking them in the back of his black cab.

In 2009, he was convicted of 19 charges of drugging and sexually assaulting 12 women, and jailed indefinitely with a minimum term of eight years.

In 2019, he pleaded guilty to two counts of administering a stupefying or overpowering drug with intent to commit rape or indecent assault.

He also admitted two further charges of administering a substance with intent to commit a sexual offence under the Sexual Offences Act.