A man accused of killing his lover, nearly sawing her head off in the process because she told him she was a lesbian, has been found guilty of murder.

James Seaton, 46, is expected to face life in jail after he confessed to killing Jacqueline Queen, following a frenzied attack using a hammer and a 12-inch knife. He then dumped her body, wrapped in bloody sheets, on a grass verge in Elmhurst Crescent, East Finchley.

James Seaton, of Thorpdale Road, Finsbury Park, killed his 38-year-old partner in the lounge of his flat after she told him she told him she was leaving him for a woman. He then wrapped her body in bedsheets and hid it in a wardrobe before recruiting his unsuspecting brother to help him move it. The body fell out of the wardrobe as they went to move it, and James Seaton, along with his brother, John Seaton, dumped Miss Queen's body on November 30, 2005.

Afterwards, John Seaton, from Stantonbury, Milton Keynes, called the police.

A jury of 11 people rejected James Seaton's claims that he was suffering with mental illness at the time, finding him guilty of murder after more than 14 hours' deliberation on Friday.

Both brothers will be sentenced tomorrow for perverting the course of justice, having pleaded guilty, and James Seaton will also be sentenced for Miss Queen's murder.

Of James Seaton, Judge David Radford, said: "The only sentence that the law permits me to pass is one of life imprisonment."

Detective Inspector John Nicholson said: "I am pleased the jury recognised that James Seaton was neither provoked into his violent actions nor suffering from such abnormality of mind that he could claim the defence of diminished responsibility."