Serial rapist Phillip Gordon Lindsay 'may die in five years' A SERIAL rapist whose offences were "every woman's worst nightmare" may be dead within five years due to severe emphysema, a South Australian Supreme Court has heard. Phillip Gordon Lindsay, 52, was found guilty last October of five counts of burglary, 12 of rape, one of false imprisonment and one of taking a motor vehicle without consent between 1990 and 1993. He was found to have raped five women at knifepoint in their own homes, disguising his face before blindfolding and tying them up during the attacks. Lindsay was only arrested years later after DNA testing linked him to the crimes. In sentencing submissions on Thursday in Adelaide, his lawyer Paul Charman said doctors had given Lindsay a very grim prognosis. "He has a 40 per cent chance of still being alive in four and a half years," he said. Every year of his sentence to time in prison is a significant portion of his life. Mr Charman said Lindsay had been a heavy user of methamphetamines, alcohol and heroin around the time of the offences, and had no recollection of them, perhaps due to a drug-induced "amnesia." "These are very serious offences, it's never been suggested otherwise," Mr Charman said. But he said none of the women had ever identified Lindsay and it had been a case based on DNA evidence. Lindsay accepted the guilty verdict and was remorseful, he said. "He feels genuine compassion about what happened to the women, and is genuinely distressed about what they went through, but at the end of the day he doesn't remember it," Mr Charman said. He said Lindsay hoped to live long enough to see his grandchildren out in the community, having made an effort to be rehabilitated over the last decade. "This is not necessarily the same man who committed these offences," he said. But prosecutor Carmen Matteo said Lindsay's offences were "every woman's worst nightmare." Upon hearing the testimony of his victims, Lindsay "felt the same sort of horror any human would," she said. "Just because the matter hasn't come before the court until he's late in life doesn't mean he should be shown leniency," she argued. Justice Tim Stanley will sentence Lindsay on May 31.