A man who hit a young woman in the head 20 times with a power tool faces life imprisonment after being found guilty of her murder.

Neculai Paizan is believed to have attacked 20-year-old Agnes Akom in a converted shipping container in north-west London, pulled her body into a bin and dumped it in a shallow grave.

Akom was found buried in a wooded area at Neasden Recreation Ground, hidden under a pile of branches and logs, a month after she went missing on May 11 last year. Her body was wrapped in a black plastic bag with a rope tied around her throat.

Paizan, 64, said Akom gave him poison in an iced coffee, he left the container for air and returned to find Akom had been attacked. He said he panicked and he told the Old Bailey jury, “I tried to take her to the park, put her in a good place.”

Paizan, who worked as a cement mixer driver and was originally from Romania, will be sentenced on Monday to life imprisonment, the mandatory sentence for murder.

Akom, also known as Dora, originally from Hungary, worked for a coffin manufacturer.

DCI Neil John, said: “The level of violence used by Paizan in his attack on Agnes is truly horrifying. What she went through inside the container can’t bear to think about.

“While it is unclear why he killed her that day, his attempts to conceal his crime in the hours and days that followed show a calculated effort to ensure that not only was Agnes never found, but let him not be caught.”

The two men had met 18 months before the murder and the court heard that Paizan had given money to Akom.

John said: ‘Our investigation and what we know of Agnes tells us that although she was vulnerable, he clearly lied about her background and personal circumstances in an attempt to influence the jury. It is likely that he took advantage of these vulnerabilities to abuse her, which ultimately led to her murder.

Paizan was linked to the murder through phone data, CCTV and blood matching Akom’s DNA found in the container.