James Warnock has been sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in jail
A man will spend a minimum of 25 years behind bars after being convicted of the rape and murder of a teenage girl, 34 years after he committed the "cruel, brutal" crime.
Self-employed tiler James Warnock was 22 when he killed 17-year-old Yiannoulla Yianni at her home in Hampstead, north London, in August 1982.
The divorced father-of-two, now 56, was caught after his DNA was matched to the crime scene last year.
It followed another investigation during which an undercover officer caught him sharing indecent pictures of children online.
He was still living in the local community.
On the day of the murder, Yiannoulla had been with her parents at the family's shoe repair shop near their home, before her mother sent her home to begin preparing a leg of lamb.
The Old Bailey heard that Warnock, who had stalked her before, followed her home after spotting her around the shop.
He knocked on her door - just half a mile from where he lived - at about 2pm on 13 August.
Yiannoulla Yianni was raped and murdered in her home in 1982
When Yiannoulla's parents arrived home half an hour later, they found their daughter's partially naked body lying on their bed.
During the subsequent investigation, more than 1,000 people came forward with information, while detectives travelled as far afield as Australia.
The judge, Nicholas Hilliard QC, said Yiannoulla had endured a "terrifying ordeal" at knifepoint and was killed in a way that was "cruel, brutal and without mercy".
In addition to a life sentence for murder, he also sentenced Warnock to 20 years for rape.
Plus he was given a range of terms, lasting between five months and four years, after he admitted six counts of distributing indecent images in 2013, all to run concurrently.
The judge said that the killer, who gave no reaction as he was sent down, was likely to die in jail.
During the trial, Yiannoulla's family were forced to listen as Warnock claimed he had had a secret affair with her, and used to go to their home to have sex.
He was asked, during a police interview, what he had looked like in the 1980s.
"How can I put it? Er, John Travolta?" he replied.
When detectives finally tracked him down, he was balding and portly, drinking beer in his underpants.
Following the verdict, Yiannoulla's family said the murder had left them "saturated by grief".
"Thankfully the long arm of the law has reached out from the past to bring this evil being to justice," said her brother Rick.
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