A farm labourer has been found guilty of murdering a the retired librarian from Co Tyrone.
Trevor Hamilton (23) had denied murdering Attracta Harron (65), who vanished in December 2003 on her way home from Mass.
The court heard he murdered her less than four months after completing a rape sentence.
The mother of five's body was discovered four months later in a shallow grave at the rear of Hamilton's home on Concess Road, Sion Mills, Co Tyrone.
DNA tests on blood samples taken from his burnt out car also revealed there was a billion to one chance that they belonged to anyone other than Mrs Harron.
She was last seen walking back to her home in Strabane after a church service in Lifford, Co Donegal.
It took the panel of six men and six women four-and-a-half hours to return a guilty verdict at Craigavon Crown Court after a seven-week trial.
Hamilton had been released from a young offenders' centre less than four months before the murder. He was sent there after being convicted of raping a 29-year-old woman in February 2000 when he was aged just 17. For the first time in Northern Ireland legal history details of his conviction for that sex attack were disclosed to the jury, but the judge imposed reporting restrictions until after the trial.