A paranoid schizophrenic stabbed a prostitute 43 times while on the run over a murder conviction more than two decades earlier.

Noel Dooley was described by a judge as an 'explosion waiting to happen' and said the authorities' failure to trace him had enabled him to try to kill again.

Leeds Crown Court heard how Dooley had already served 19 years for murdering a young mother and was wanted for breaching his licence conditions when he viciously stabbed Nichola Hirst.

As the jury delivered its guilty verdict yesterday, the 42-year-old exploded with rage, shouting at the seven men and five women: "I hope you all rot in hell."

Today he was beginning two life sentences - one for the attempted murder and the other a re-sentencing for the original murder because he breached the terms of his licence.

The court adjourned while he was led away, still screaming abuse. Two jurors and Dooley's victim Nichola Hirst were in tears at the outburst which continued loudly in the court cells. The jury had taken little more than two hours to convict the burly odd job man of attempted murder.

In the early hours October 29 last year he approached Miss Hirst, 27, who was working in red light area of Listerhills, Bradford. He lured her to an isolated industrial yard in Norcroft Street and pulled a knife, demanding money before stabbing her several times. As she lay horrifically injured, Dooley fled but returned three times to 'finish the job'.

He calmly told her: "I have got to kill you because you can identify me."

Throughout the police interviews, Dooley maintained he had been to a nightclub, visited a 24-hour garage and could remember nothing else about the night. He refused to enter the witness box to be cross-examined.

The jury heard how, as a married 18-year-old in 1979, Dooley had murdered Linda Evans, a woman 'he struck up a relationship with' in his native Coventry. He had savagely beaten her, smashed her back over his knee and threw her half-naked and still breathing into a canal where she drowned.

He was released in 1998 but last year breached his licence conditions by missing probation and psychiatric appointments. Facing jail, Dooley went on the run, living in a dilapidated caravan by a building site at Ashely Mills. Without medication and using drugs and alcohol Dooley was an 'explosion waiting to happen' said Judge Maurice Kay.

He said: "If the authorities knew where he was Nichola Hirst would never have been attacked. He would have been in prison."

He said it was a "miracle" Miss Hirst survived, calling her ordeal "appalling beyond belief".

"There can be no doubt that Noel Dooley is a very dangerous man, particularly towards women and especially when his psychiatric condition is not being monitored, treated and redressed."

Although Dooley can apply for parole in nine years, Judge Kay called this "quite academic", adding: "It may well be that Noel Dooley's future in custody will endure many, many years beyond that."

Detective Superintendent Chris Gregg, who headed the investigation, said: "He has

killed before and is an exceptionally dangerous man. "The sentence today reflects the danger this man presents and the ferocity of his attack on this young woman.

And he added: "If he had not been caught he would, undoubtedly in my view, have killed again or tried to."