A computer games fanatic who murdered his former partner in a savage attack has been jailed for life.

Miklos Verebes , 29, must now serve at least 28 years before he can be considered for release.

After a week of harrowing evidence, a jury at Carlisle Crown Court this morning returned a unanimous guilty verdict on Verebes.

Melinda Korosi suffered horrific injuries, including a gaping neck wound that was deemed unsurvivable. The prosecution said those injuries were inflicted by Verebes using a sharp rock as a weapon.

When he took his seat in the dock before being asked to stand to hear the verdicts, Verebes smiled broadly and looked relaxed.

Then, as the jury forewoman announced the verdicts, Verebes stood impassively, showing no emotion other than a fleeting expression of surprise as the three rape verdicts were announced.

It took the jury just one hour and 45 minutes to return their unanimous verdicts.

The Honourable Mr Justice Openshaw thanked the jury for doing their public service.

Sentencing Verebes to life, he said: "It was a murder of quite unusual savagery and brutality, causing the most dreadful of injuries."

The trial heard how police responding to a 999 call at 6am on September 15 last year found the defendant in Miss Korosi's house. The 33-year-old was sprawled on her first floor landing, fatally injured.

Covered in her blood, and standing next to her, Verebes told the police officers who forced their way into her Orton Road home in Carlisle: "It's too late. She's dead."

Two days earlier, police had released Verebes without charge after arresting an interviewing him on suspicion of raping Miss Korosi. The couple split after he was jailed in the previous July for attacking her.

Miss Korosi told police that he had routinely subjected her to abusive and controlling behaviour, which included forcing her to have sex whether she wanted it or not.

At Carlisle's police HQ, after being arrested for murder, Verebes appeared to admit responsibility, telling a police officer: "I know what I did. I wanted to kill her."

Two months afterwards, the defendant admitted the killing in court, but he said that he was guilty of manslaughter through a "loss of control" rather than guilty to murder.

He later went back on that, claiming he had arrived at Miss Korosi's home that morning after the attack. In evidence, he claimed he arrived there to be confronted by a knife-wielding stranger.

He said the killer had spoken his native Hungarian but the man was a stranger, Verebes told the jury. He claimed the man threatened to kill him also if he spoke of what he had seen.

That was why he admitted manslaughter, said the defendant.

He also denied three counts of raping Miss Korosi, 33 who like him hailed from Hungary but settled in Carlisle.

As he opened the case for the prosecution, QC Andrew Thomas said that Miss Korosi and his victim had been in a relationship since before their move to the UK. Just before 6am on the day she died, neighbours were woken by a loud banging from Miss Korosi's house.

They saw Verebes clambering into her house through the smashed kitchen window - and then heard the victim scream.

"The neighbours immediately realised that Miss Korosi was in danger," said Mr Thomas. The jury heard the 999 call made that day by Orton Road resident Rebecca Wilkinson.

She was heard telling the call handler: "He's gone upstairs. He's going to kill her....Hurry up, please. She's just screamed like a baby."

Police were quickly on the scene.

But by the time officers had forced their way into the house, Miss Korosi was beyond saving, with blood gushing from a wound in her neck. She sustained a total of 40 injuries.

On the issue of Verebes's release two days earlier, Judge Openshaw said: "For reasons which I don't begin to understand, [Verebes] was released without charge, still subject to the terms of his licence, and that decision is now under review by the Independent Police Complaints Commission."