A rapist abducted two women working as prostitutes and made them believe he was going to kill them.

Kenneth Williamson, 33, formerly of Dundee, was asked by one of his victims if he was going to kill her after revealing a shovel in his car boot.

She was told to let him do what he wanted to her so he would not "get violent", the High Court in Edinburgh heard.

A previous victim also feared she was going to die after being driven out to a field, assaulted and raped.

Williamson denied assaulting and raping the two women but was found guilty of both offences on Wednesday after a trial which heard statements from both victims, one of whom has since died at the age of 36.

He first struck on January 5 last year after picking up a woman on Arbroath Road in Dundee.

Williamson went on to carry out a similar attack on a second woman who had been working in Leith, Edinburgh, three months later on April 6 or 7.

His first victim, aged 35, told the court it was only her second night on the streets when she agreed to get into Williamson's van.

She told advocate depute Graeme Jessop: "He said to me he had somewhere to take me. I told him to stay in the city. But he kept on driving and driving further out of Dundee.

"I was really, really worried by what he was doing. I had no idea where I was."

She said Williamson stopped at a field somewhere outside the city.

The woman said: "He was very intimidating. I was scared of him. I knew what was going to happen.

"I knew what he was going to do to me. I asked him to stop and not to do anything."

She said her head was repeatedly struck off the floor and she was raped.

The witness told the court: "I thought I was going to die. I thought he was going to kill me."

After the attack he drove back to Dundee and the woman said she was forced out of the van while it was still moving.

She said: "He just threw me out the vehicle."

The second victim, who has died, gave details of the attack to police at the time.

She said she had been in a street near Leith police station working as a prostitute when a car appeared.

The woman got into the car and was taken to Levenhall Links leisure park in Musselburgh, East Lothian, near the race course.

Williamson made her lie down in the car and raped her. Later, the woman said he grabbed her hair and threw her before raping her again.

Afterwards, she asked him to leave her there but he told her "no". He put items back in the car and she saw a shovel.

She asked him "Are you going to kill me now?" She said he laughed. She asked him to take her back to where he picked her up.

The woman told police that during the journey he was not making much sense and talking about John the Baptist.

He told her she could go to police but she would probably get a weekend in the cells for being a prostitute.

Williamson, a married father-of-three, accepted he had picked up both women to have sex with them and he had used prostitutes before.

He claimed he was ashamed and told the court: "Of course it is something I regret."

Sentence was deferred until next month for the preparation of a background report.

The trial judge, Lord Turnbull, remanded Williamson in custody.