A man who evaded justice for more than two decades has been found guilty of the “horrific” 2003 rape for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongfully jailed for 17 years.

Paul Quinn, 52, was convicted by a jury on Friday after a fresh forensic analysis found traces of his DNA on the victim.

The father-of-six sat with his head bowed as he was convicted of two counts of rape, attempted strangulation and grievous bodily harm. He will be sentenced on 5 June.

It can now be revealed that Quinn is being investigated as a potential suspect in other serious sexual assaults, including three rapes that took place while he was at large.

Greater Manchester police are facing questions about why he was not investigated at the time of the 2003 rape despite being a convicted sex offender who lived near the scene of the attack.

Instead, detectives focused on Malkinson, who was jailed in 2004 and went on to spend 17 years in prison while protesting his innocence.

His conviction was eventually quashed in 2023, becoming one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in modern British history.

In a statement read by a police officer after the verdicts, the victim of the rape said she was very pleased with the result but added: “It does not change the fact that two lives have been impacted in such a way.”

The mother-of-two, who was 33 at the time of the attack, said the investigation had “robbed Mr Malkinson of 17 years” and “robbed me of the life I wanted to have”. She added: “The impact of what happened that day has stayed with me and will stay for life.”

Malkinson said in a statement he was content that the right result had been reached but that Quinn “could have been caught a long time ago”.

He added: “Instead, they wanted a quick conviction and I was a handy patsy forced to spend over 17 years in prison for his horrific crime. All those responsible for allowing this dangerous man to wander free whilst I was locked up must now be held to account.”

A jury at Manchester crown court was told that Quinn’s DNA was identified on samples of the victim’s clothing in October 2022 after a fresh forensic review.

Police and prosecutors knew as long ago as 2007 that an unidentified man’s DNA was found on the victim but decided not to carry out further tests at the time.

The organisation responsible for investigating potential miscarriages of justice, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, also declined to commission further forensic work and refused twice to refer Malkinson’s case to the court of appeal.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating five former Greater Manchester police officers on suspicion of gross misconduct, including one who is under criminal investigation. A sixth officer, still serving at GMP, is being investigated on suspicion of misconduct.

The police watchdog is examining GMP’s destruction of evidence in the Malkinson case, its failure to disclose the criminal histories of two key witnesses in the 2004 trial, and whether those witnesses were offered incentives to testify against the innocent man.

Steph Parker, an assistant chief constable at GMP, said the verdicts had come “two decades too late for all involved in this horrendous case”.

Parker paid tribute to the victim and Malkinson, offering both an unreserved apology on behalf of the force, which she said would continue to support the IOPC and the public inquiry.

She added: “Paul Quinn is a dangerous man. He is the one responsible for this horrific attack, and he has known it all along for more than 20 years. The harm he has done to the victim and the cowardice of watching the wrong man go to prison for his crime is unforgivable.”

Quinn admitted in court that it was his DNA on items of the victim’s clothing, including a vest top above her left nipple that had been partly severed in the attack.

He suggested the woman may have been one of “hundreds” of local women he claimed to have “copped off with” in Little Hulton, Greater Manchester.

Quinn had lived in the area all his life until he moved to Exeter in 2017 over what police said they believed was a drug debt he owed.

Jurors at Manchester crown court were not told about the drug dispute or that Quinn had been convicted of twice raping a 12-year-old girl in 1990 and 1991, when he was 16.

Four years earlier, when he was 12, he received a criminal caution for the indecent assault of a woman.

By the end of his teens, Quinn had convictions for burglary, actual bodily harm, possessing an air gun, and arson with intent after setting fire to a wheelie bin outside the home of an ex-girlfriend while she was inside with her children.

It emerged during the trial that he had repeatedly searched online for details about the rape case.

In 2019, before Malkinson’s case was widely known as a miscarriage of justice, he looked up an article from the original trial before Googling “wrongly convicted cases UK”. He claimed this was because he was fascinated by true crime documentaries.

Quinn had given his DNA to police in 2012 as part of a nationwide operation to get samples from serious offenders whose crimes were carried out before the national DNA database was established in 1995. It was this sample that eventually led the police to his door in 2022.

He appears to have known the day would come, however. The trial heard he had searched repeatedly “how long is DNA kept in database” in the weeks after the Guardian revealed in 2022 that a fresh analysis linked another man to the 2003 attack.