Ben Lacomba, 39, who has been found guilty of murdering mother-of-five Sarah Wellgreen, showed no emotion as the guilty verdict was read out.

He stood in the dock wearing a dark suit, shirt and dark blue tie.

It took the jury three-and-a-half hours to reach its verdict.

A date for sentencing has yet to be decided.

Police faced a "huge challenge" to secure a conviction against "calculated" liar Ben Lacomba for killing his ex-lover because her body has never been found.

Mother-of-five Sarah Wellgreen has not been seen since October 2018, when she vanished overnight without a trace.

But despite her body never being found, taxi driver Lacomba, 39, was found guilty of killing her after a lengthy trial at Woolwich Crown Court.

Murder prosecutions in cases where the body of the victim has not been found are rare because of the unique challenge it poses to police and prosecutors, according to the senior officer in the Wellgreen investigation.

Detective Chief Inspector Ivan Beasley told the PA news agency: "The biggest challenge we faced in this investigation was the fact that even a year down the line now we still haven't found Sarah.

"In a traditional murder investigation you would have a victim and their body, a pathologist would be able to give in evidence that the person has died and also how that person has died.

"Now we haven't got that in this case so as much as I needed to show who was responsible, I also needed to show to the jury that Sarah is dead, and without having a body that was a huge challenge."

Mr Beasley said convictions in "no-body" prosecutions are "very rare and very difficult".

In securing a conviction against Lacomba, police and prosecutors pointed not only to the fact that Ms Wellgreen was gone, but also what she left behind.

"She was very happy, she had real prospects ahead of her.

"She just secured a new job, she had custody of her children, [and] she had secured a mortgage to be able to move away with her children from Lacomba or at least buy the house and he would have to leave.

"We also had what she left behind: her car, her car keys and house keys, purse, all her money and cards, all of her clothing.

"In fact we could account for everything that we knew that she had apart from her one personal mobile phone. That was the only thing that was missing."

But despite Lacomba being convicted of her killing and facing the reality of many years behind bars, Mr Beasley said the suffering is not over for Ms Wellgreen's family.

"We still haven't found Sarah and that is a massive gap in their life.

"The fact they've not been able to understand exactly what happened to Sarah, where she is, and be able to lay her to rest in their way is really, really causing a big impact on the family.

"There is one person that knows where Sarah is and he won't tell us.

"He won't tell us to enable us to find her for his children who desperately want to know what happened to their mum."