A woman who was beaten unconscious as she walked her dogs on Ilkley Moor has spoken for the first time about her ordeal.

The 52-year-old victim described the attack on her as "cold-blooded" and said she did not think the culprit felt guilty.

The woman was walking across the moor above Panorama Reservoir at about 4pm on Monday, June 26, when she was approached by a man wielding a knife, who has since been linked by DNA to an horrific sex attack on a 16-year-old girl at a beautyspot in Leeds nine years ago.

The Ilkley victim was knocked to the ground but grabbed the knife.

The blade came away and she used it to jab her attacker in his body, but she was overpowered and lost consciousness.

When she came round the man was strangling her.

She passed out again and when she regained consciousness she was alone on the moor.

She suffered severe facial injuries but medical tests have failed to establish whether she was sexually assaulted while unconscious.

Speaking anonymously she said: "I feel I can't understand the person who has done this to me," she said.

"I can't understand their motive or why they would just want to inflict pain on another person, a woman in particular who has done nothing to deserve anything like that - and not just the physical pain, but the mental torture now.

"I can't understand how he's going about his life now. What does someone like that do after they have attacked you? Where do they go? How can they carry on?

"I'd like to think that they must feel some guilt, but I rather suspect that that is not the case. It was done in a very cold-blooded way."

Detective Superintendent Paul Kennedy, of West Yorkshire Police's Homicide and Major Enquiry Team, who is leading the dual investigation, will make a renewed appeal for information to find the attacker on BBC TV's Crimewatch programme tonight.

The victim of the July 9, 1997, attack will also be interviewed for the first time in the programme.

She was 16 when a knifeman attacked her at Primrose Valley in Halton, Leeds.

She had been collecting frogspawn with her 11-year-old brother when they were marched into bushes where the knifeman sexually assaulted and then raped her, at one point holding the knife to her throat while her brother was forced to lie face down next to them.

Det Supt Kennedy will be stressing the link between the two locations for the assaults and the attacks themselves.

He says both attacks showed sickening levels of brutality and the man being hunted is dangerous and violent.

The suspect is a white man, 5ft 9in tall, toned and athletic but not muscular, aged about 40, with medium brown hair cut short.

He had a distinctive skin-coloured round mole or blemish, a quarter of a centimetre in diameter, above his lip and had a scruffy appearance and unusual rugged skin on his face.

On the day of the Ilkley attack he was wearing a dark blue waist-length jacket, believed to be cotton, with a darker blue polo shirt beneath and dark blue cotton or chino trousers.

Anyone with information can contact the incident room on (01535) 617195 or text police on 07786 200806 starting the message with the word Ilkley. The public can also call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

e-mail: steve.wright@bradford.newsquest.co.uk