Yiannoulla Yianni was raped and strangled in her home in 1982
A John Travolta fantasist has been found guilty of the "horrifying" rape and murder of a teenage girl 34 years ago.
James Warnock strangled 17-year-old Yiannoulla Yianni in her own home in broad daylight, just half a mile from where he lived with his wife in north London.
It happened on 13 August 1982 after Yiannoulla, known as Lucy or Noodles, was sent home from her parents shoe repair shop minutes away from their house in Hampstead.
Her mother, Elli, asked her to start preparing a leg of lamb for supper, saying she would join her soon.
James Warnock
Yiannoulla was playing the latest Patrice Rushen hit Forget Me Nots on the record player when Warnock knocked on the door at about 2pm.
A young man was spotted chatting with her on the doorstep, and 20 minutes later a neighbour heard a scream, jurors were told.
The prosecution said Yiannoulla's parents arrived home half an hour later to "a sight beyond their worst imagining" - her partly naked body lying on their bed.
Police efits of suspect issued in 1984
Despite high-profile public appeals, including a televised reconstruction featuring her sister Maria, and over 1,000 people coming forward, no real suspects were identified.
It was not until last December that Scotland Yard got a "lucky break" when Warnock, 56, was arrested over indecent pictures of children.
His DNA was added to the national database and found to be a match for samples taken from Yiannoulla's body.
The bedspread on which Yiannoulla was found murdered
The divorced father-of-two, who was still living nearby, tried to explain away the evidence by claiming to have had a secret affair with Yiannoulla.
This was despite the fact she was brought up in a traditional Greek Cypriot family and never had a boyfriend.
At the time of the murder, 5ft 6in Warnock was aged 22 and his hair was styled like Hollywood star John Travolta's in the hit film Saturday Night Fever.
In a police interview he was asked what he looked like in the 1980s. He replied: "How can I put it? Er, John Travolta?"
Family photo of Yiannoulla
During the trial, Yiannoulla's brothers and sisters relived the nightmare of her violent death while her mother, now 86, was among those to give evidence.
The family were forced to listen as Warnock, formerly of Harrington Street in Camden, maintained his claim that he used to go to their home to have sex with Yiannoulla.
They wept and hung their heads as he told jurors: "It was always nice. It was not, you know, vigorous or anything. We didn't go mad. It was gentle."
The jury at the Old Bailey took just over two hours to find Warnock guilty on Thursday, but the verdict could only be reported after he admitted six charges of distributing indecent images of children in 2013 and 2015.
He will be sentenced later for all the offences
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