A rapist who tried to evade justice by fleeing Scotland then faking his own death in the US has had his prison sentence extended.

Kim Avis, a market trader from Inverness, was on bail when he flew to Los Angeles in February 2019.

He faked a fatal swimming accident on a Californian beach but was later arrested and returned to Scotland where he was convicted of rape and sexual abuse offences and jailed for 15 years.

Avis has had two months added to his sentence after he was found guilty of possessing a personal communication device at HMP Edinburgh in May last year.

He was sentenced at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last week.

Nine days after arriving in the US in 2019, Avis’s son reported him missing at Monastery Beach, telling the local sheriff’s office that his father had gone for an evening swim.

The beach is near Carmel-by-the-Sea on Big Sur, a rugged and mountainous stretch of Californian coastline.

But the authorities became suspicious after they were made aware that Avis was facing charges of sexual attacks against women and girls in the Highlands.

Five months after he disappeared, US Marshals traced Avis in Colorado Springs – more than 1,300 miles (2,092km) away from where he was reported missing.

The following week, in July 2019, he was arrested.

Avis was returned to Scotland, where he was held in prison until his trial in May 2021.

A jury at the High Court in Glasgow found him guilty of raping three women.

He was also found guilty of attempting to rape one of them when she was 12, and guilty of sexually assaulting a girl when she was 11.

He was further convicted of failing to appear for the previous trial.

In total, Avis was found guilty of 14 charges from between 2006 and 2017. He had denied all the charges.

In June 2021, he was jailed for 12 years for the sex crimes he committed, and three years for failing to appear in court.

Judge Lord Sandison said at the time that Avis had been a well-known street trader in Inverness for many years, busking and selling jewellery from his market stall and even receiving a good citizen award.

But the judge said there was another side to Avis, with a background report describing him as “a controlling and dominant personality”.

He said Avis had manipulated, managed and coerced his victims.