A stepdad who murdered his 19-year-old stepdaughter after becoming ‘sexually fixated’ on her smirked as he was found guilty today.

Carla Georgescu’s body was found in her room at the University of Lancashire campus in Preston on what would have been her 20th birthday in February.

Her stepdad Nathan Owens, 34, had driven 100 miles through the night before to launch his attack, strangling her to death during a ‘violent sexual assault’.

Prosecutor Nicholas Lumley KC told jurors at Preston Crown Court that Owens ‘had a wholly improper and dangerously entrenched sexual obsession with his stepdaughter’.

He took hundreds of photos of Carla in her underwear or pyjamas, doctored innocent images of her into indecent ones, and even filmed himself having sex with a life-sized effigy of the teenager in her bedroom.

Owens denied murder but was convicted after just three hours of deliberations.

He will be sentenced tomorrow.

In a moving press release issued after the verdict, Lancashire Police said Carla ‘had her whole life ahead of her’.

‘She was described by a professional as “intelligent, gentle and articulate”. She was studying clinical psychology at undergraduate, with plans for the future to take post-graduate studies in Romania.

‘Carla had friends, in fact, she was meant to travel to Romania the day after she was found, with her friend to meet her boyfriend the first time.

‘Owens took all of that away from her.’

Carla’s mum went to Preston to stay with her daughter the weekend before she was killed.

They went out shopping and got dinner together before Owens joined them for a birthday meal on February 1.

Carla said what would turn out to be her final goodbye to her mother at around 9pm that night.

Just over 72 hours later, Owens was setting off on a secret drive back to Carla’s flat while her mum slept.

CCTV footage captured his arrival, parking in a side street instead of his usual spot in the halls of residence.

Another clip shows Carla coming downstairs to open the door for Owens, who is still hiding his appearance underneath a blanket.

That was the last time she was seen alive.

Officers who attended hours later initially believed the ruse, until a closer look revealed the teenager’s injuries.

When he was eventually arrested, Owens claimed he had nothing to do with Carla’s death and had not harmed her.

After forcing his wife to listen to weeks of harrowing evidence about how her daughter died, he decided not to step into the witness box and repeat his version of events.

The jurors did get a glimpse into his mind, though, as he smirked his way through the prosecutor’s closing speech.

Mr Lumley told them Owens had made the long drive that night because ‘he knew that was the last chance to catch her’ before she flew to Romania the next day. He was determined ‘to satisfy his sexual needs, come what may’, he added.

Owens will be sentenced tomorrow.

DI Pete Macdonald said: ‘Carla was a young woman with her whole life ahead of her, a life that was taken away by someone she should have been able to trust.

‘Owens had a despicable, perverted sexual obsession with his stepdaughter, an obsession that ended with him killing her. He has now been brought to justice for his crimes.

‘No verdict brings Carla back, but I hope that her mum and the rest of her loved ones can feel some sense of justice that the man responsible for taking her future away has been brought to justice.’

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