Notorious rapist Kim Avis who faked own death in US has prison sentence extended at HMP Edinburgh

Kim Avis carried out a decade-long campaign of sexually assaulting women and children while living in Inverness between 2006 and 2017.

The eccentric busker and market trader then fled the country and staged a drowning to avoid charges but was tracked down and arrested by US marshals before being extradited back to Scotland.

He was subsequently jailed for 15 years after being convicted of charges including rape and sexual assault following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow in 2021. Avis, now 60, was back in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last week where he admitted possessing a mobile phone while serving his sentence at HMP Edinburgh.

The court was told two prison officers were “operating a mobile phone detection device which gave an indication of a phone being used” in a nearby cell at around 5pm on May 20 last year.

Kim Avis faked his own death at a US beach.

The cell was said to have been “occupied solely by the now accused Kim Avis” and the warders discovered the device after Avis “engaged and willingly indicated towards the bucket within his cell”.

Sheriff Joseph Stewart sentenced the rapist to a two month custodial sentence that will run consecutively to his current sentence.

Avis used a host of aliases - including Vince Avis, Kem Avis, Ken Gordon-Avis, Kim Gordon and Cameron MacGregor - and is believed to have moved to Inverness in the 1980s.

He was first reported missing in February 2019 when his teenage son alerted police his father had failed to return from a swim at Monastery Beach in Carmel, California.

Avis was originally treated as a missing person but it soon emerged he had failed to appear in court in Scotland to face rape and sexual assault charges. He was only captured by US marshals after a woman he befriended asked her police officer friend to check his license plates.

Avis eventually went on trial at the High Court in Glasgow and was found guilty of 14 offences committed against two girls and two women between 2006 and 2017.

The extraordinary story of Avis was the subject of the BBC documentary Disclosure: Dead Man Running that was aired in April last year.