A man accused of raping women in Dundee and Fife has been cleared of some charges.
Paul Hill, 54, was acquitted of eight charges at the High Court in Livingston on Monday.
The former nightclub bouncer still faces 15 charges including five rape allegations involving four women, nine assaults on eight females – four of the alleged attacks to danger of life – and one breach of the peace.
All the offences were allegedly committed in Aberdeen and Dundee between 1987 and 2010.
Two of the charges include allegations that he killed two family pets – a parakeet which was drowned in a kitchen sink and a kitten which was found dead among rubbish dumped in a flat – and that he threatened to harm a German shepherd dog.
The dropped charges include raping a woman at an address in Dundee, between October 2001 and April 2002.
An allegation he raped a woman at an address in Dunfermline, between July 1 2014 and May 31 2015 was also withdrawn.
A total of five breach of the peace charges and one of vandalism were dropped before the Crown closed its case on Monday.
Giving evidence in his own defence, Hill, from Ayr, flatly denied any of the alleged rapes, assaults to danger of life and other offences had happened.
He claimed he had no idea why seven females had come forward to give almost identical evidence at the High Court that he had beaten them, pulled their hair, strangled and raped them.
He told the jury that he never lost his temper, denied ever being violent and insisted that all sexual intercourse with the women had been consensual.
Advocate Depute Bernard Abbott reminded Hill one witness had told how his eyes would go really dark and he would look “evil” when angry. Another witness had said he had “a really evil face” when he had been drinking.
Hill told him: “I don’t get angry. I just discuss things. It might get heated occasionally, that’s it.”
He specifically denied harming any animals.
Hill, who is currently unemployed, said he struck up relationships with most of the women after meeting them at nightclubs and pubs where he worked as a bouncer from the late 1980s onwards.
The trial continues.
