A jury has found David Munley guilty of the "callous" murder of 87-year old recluse Jean Barnes at her Worthing home.

Munley systematically burgled the kindly and highly intelligent woman before and after the murder, stealing thousands of pounds worth of family antiques.

The conniving murderer and thief even forged notes to the milkman and cheques to pretend Jean Barnes, a former civil servant and one of the first ever women Cambridge graduates, was still alive.

Mr Justice Alliott, sentencing 57-year old odd job man Munley to life imprisonment, said it was "beyond belief" Munley, who lived 240 yards from the spinster's home, had continued to burgle the home while his victim's body lay in the house.

Munley, a failed businessman, returned again to plunder valuables from the home while the body of the 87-year old woman he had murdered with several blows to the head lay decomposing in an upstairs room.

He was found guilty of murder and seven counts of burglary and five of forgery at the end of a month long trial at Lewes Crown Court. The jury found him not guilty of one charge of burglary, relating to candlesticks which were never recovered.