Former Oxford barman Gregory Mills was today starting a life sentence for the brutal murder of a north London landlady.

Australian backpacker Mills, 28, stabbed 36-year-old Carol Fyfe to death with a penknife after she disturbed him raiding the safe at the Prince Arthur, in Euston, on April 18 last year.

The former live-in barman at the Prince Arthur had left the pub a few days earlier to go and work at The Crown, in Cornmarket Street, Oxford.

It took a jury at the Old Bailey four-and-a-half hours to reach a unanimous guilty verdict yesterday.

Afterwards, police revealed that Mills, who fled to America after the killing, was caught thanks to the Internet.

His name was entered on an Interpol 'most wanted' website when Scotland Yard detectives discovered he had flown to America after checking the records of an Oxford travel agent.

AJust two hours later, a Colorado state trooper in Yuma, county Washington, , arrested Mills for speeding on a motorbike. A routine call revealed he was wanted for a horrific murder in London.

Sydney-born Mills had saved up money to travel around Europe and the States and was staying at the backpackers' hostel, in Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, at the time of the murder.

After a heavy night's drinking at Rosie O'Grady's, in Park End Street, Oxford, he jumped on a coach and went to London, arriving at the Prince Arthur in the early hours of April 18. The court heard that £2,400 was in the cellar safe and Mills had the key to a fire exit and the know-how to deactivate the alarm system.

Victor Temple, prosecuting said Edinburgh-born Ms Fyfe - described as 'a little battler, a regular Scottish woman' - must have confronted Mills as he tried to leave, forcing a balaclava he was wearing onto the floor.

Mills, now recognised by Ms Fyfe, used a penknife to stab her in the throat three times, hit her with a rolling pin and left her for dead while he went back to Oxford.

None of the cash was ever recovered, nor was a huge whisky jar full of £500 in pub donations towards a pensioners' outing. But Mill's fingerprints were found in the dead woman's bedroom - and on a rolling pin recovered in a nearby alley.

Bloodied prints from a pair of steel-capped boots were found on Miss Fyfe's bed sheets. Two weeks later Mills gave the boots to Mr Richard Carter, a colleague at The Crown.

In the weeks that followed, witnesses from The Crown spoke of Mills splashing out on drinks and gambling £20 a time on slot machines. On May 12, after telling a friend he was 'sick and tired' of being questioned by police, Mills used cash to buy an air ticket to New York and then headed to Denver, Colorado, where he was arrested.

During lengthy extradition proceedings, Mills made no mention of the fact he had been to London on the night of the attack.

But in court he claimed he had spoken on the phone to Miss Fyfe, whom he sometimes called 'Auntie', and went to the pub because he was worried about her.

Mills claimed he saw the body and 'freaked out', running out of the house without telling anyone.

Defence counsel, Mr Anthony Evans, claimed his client's only mistake was not telling people what he had found there and then - and from that point found it harder to admit he had been to the pub.

Prosecutor Mr Temple said Mills had 'contrived and lied' to make his account fit the overwhelming forensic evidence linking him to the money-motivated killing.

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