A NIGHTCLUB boss has been convicted of offering cocaine to a woman who compared him to the movie serial killer Hannibal Lecter as a judge warned Darren Pinches that prison is a possibility.

The Bushwackers and Browns owner will have to wait until this afternoon (Wednesday) to learn his fate after a trial which has lasted nearly a month, far longer than the 10 days anticipated.

Pinches, 52, of Bromyard Road, Worcester was unanimously acquitted of a sex attack in a Bushwackers storeroom and of forcibly administering cocaine by a jury on Monday.

He was also cleared on Monday of supplying cocaine to a 19-year-old woman between February 9 and 15, 2016 at the Crypt in Bushwackers and later at an apartment at the Quay.

But yesterday (Tuesday) the jury convicted him by a majority of 10 to 2 of offering to supply cocaine to a third woman, now 44, in a private room in Browns at the Quay between September 10 and 13, 2015. Pinches showed no emotion as the last verdict (count five) came in after the jury had been deliberating for nine hours and 13 minutes.

It was his second conviction on this indictment after being found guilty of possession of cocaine on Monday.

Judge Anthony Potter said: “At this stage all options are open as far as sentencing is concerned.”

He granted Pinches bail until the sentencing hearing but warned him: “Don’t read into that that custody is not an option in this case. It is.”

Pinches was interviewed by a probation officer yesterday to assist the judge with sentencing. A victim personal statement has already been supplied to the judge and two references have been handed to him by Michael Burrows QC who represented Pinches throughout the trial.

The woman who prepared the victim impact statement had described Pinches as ‘like a raving animal’ and a ‘predator’, sucking air between his teeth like Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in the hit film Silence of the Lambs.

She described him snorting cocaine. She told the jury when she refused to take any herself Pinches told her it would be ‘our secret’. The woman also said he swiped the table clear and demanded sex, ordering her to take off her trousers.

The woman told a jury she fled Browns and locked herself in her car, believing her drink had been spiked.

The jury decided on Monday they could not be sure that Pinches had carried out any attack in the early hours of New Year’s Day. However, the father-of-two was convicted of possession of cocaine after police caught him flushing cocaine down the bathroom sink of his then home in Berkley Gardens, Fernhill Heath, near Worcester on January 13 last year.

Mr Pinches told the Worcester News of his three acquittals: “It’s nice to believe in the British justice system. Now I just want everyone to get on with their lives.”

The Worcester News was the only press at court as the verdicts were delivered over the last two days.