A barbaric killer who carved the Batman symbol on to the naked body of a barmaid he had battered and stabbed to death in Finsbury Park has been jailed for life.

Kasim Lewis, 31, pounced on Iuliana Tudos as she walked home through the park on Christmas Eve last year, binding her hands and legs with cable ties while inflicting injuries during a 90-minute ordeal.

Lewis - fuelled by sexual desires - is believed to have bludgeoned the 22-year-old with a bottle, and she may have been unconscious or already dead when Lewis set about mutilating her body with the broken glass.

Worried friends launched an extensive search when Iuliana failed to turn up for Christmas festivities the following day, eventually finding her body hidden under a jacket and pieces of wood in a burnt-out shed in the park two days later.

Describing her injuries, prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC told the Old Bailey a police officer at the scene "described the incised injury to the centre of Iuliana's chest as looking like either the logo for the character Batman or else the letter 'M'."

Sentencing Lewis to life with a minimum of 29 years behind bars, Judge Richard Marks QC, the Common Serjeant of London, said the murder had caused "wide devastation" for Ms Tudos' friends and family.

"In that park, she had the gravest misfortune to meet you, and it was there you murdered her with the utmost callousness and brutality", he said.

He said seven-stone Ms Tudos was "slightly built and vulnerable in the extreme", adding: "She must have died a terrible death, what you did to her was wicked beyond belief."

The judge said the murder was both "barbaric" and sexually driven, saying: "This was a killing that involved the most appalling brutality."

Moldovan-born Ms Tudos, a popular barmaid at The World's End pub in Camden, had spent Christmas Eve socialising after work with friends, before taking the bus back to her home in Finsbury Park to collect some possessions.

She was last seen on CCTV walking into Finsbury Park at just past 8.30pm, and "never made it out of the park", said Mr Aylett.

He said during the attack, believed to have lasted for 90 minutes, Lewis forced Ms Tudos to hand over her bank PIN number.

When her body was finally discovered, she had been badly beaten over the head, brutally stabbed in the neck, abdomen and wrists, and used cable ties were found nearby.

Bi-sexual Lewis, who moved as a refugee to the UK from Monserrat in 1995, was caught in the early hours of New Year's Day at the Dalston home of his on-off boyfriend.

When told he was being arrested for murder, Lewis replied simply: "I did it".

He had been captured on CCTV using Ms Tudos' bank card in Tottenham Court Road to withdraw £30, and had also stolen her mobile phone.

The court heard Lewis occasionally went to Finsbury Park for sexual encounters with random men.

Mr Aylett told the court a pornographic video was also found on his phone, showing a young woman being chased and captured with white cable ties put round her wrists.

Jeremy Dein QC, mitigating, said Lewis had given his lawyers no instructions other than to express remorse for the murder.

He said the killer's actions were "irrational beyond comprehension", it was a robbery while drunk and high on cocaine and cannabis that evolved into a murder, and that Lewis' "mind was bedevilled by a concoction of drink and drugs".

The court heard Lewis was convicted in 2005 for sexual assault and exposure on a bus, and he has a lengthy criminal record including for theft, burglary, robbery.

He was also locked up twice for failing to comply with the terms of being on the Sex Offenders' Register.

In a victim impact statement, Ms Tudos' friend Agnieska Jackman, who was among the group who searched the park that night, said the murder has had a devastating impact on their large friendship group.

"For me it is a constant struggle to try to function day to day - the image of what I saw that evening will remain with me forever", she said.

"Mainly I want to know why he did this to our beautiful friend.

"The actions of one person have affected all of us, he took one life and destroyed many others."

She added: " It is unimaginable what she went through that night, the idea she was scared and felt pain haunts use all. We just hope she didn't suffer."

Lewis, from Bounds Green, north London, pleaded guilty today to murder.