A judge ruled in a court in Belfast yesterday that it could now be reported by the media that Robert Howard had been found guilty of murdering a schoolgirl and dumping her body in a disused cement works.
Howard (61) was jailed for life for the murder of 14-year-old Hannah Williams in October 2003.
The teenager disappeared near her home in Deptford, southeast London, two years earlier.
But details of Howard's conviction in Maidstone, Kent, could only be made public yesterday after separate sex charges he faced in Northern Ireland were dropped.
Howard, who had a string of previous sex convictions stretching back to 1964, strangled Ms Williams with a 12-metre rope.
The killer, whose address was given as Lions Close, Mottingham, southeast London, then dumped her body at the former cement works in Northfleet, Kent.
Ms Williams's badly-decomposed body was not found until a year after her murder.
Earlier this year a jury at Belfast Crown Court cleared Howard of murdering Co Tyrone teenager Arlene Arkinson.
The 15-year-old went missing in August 1994 but her body has never been found. - (PA)