A man who bludgeoned the artist Valerie Graves to death in a botched burglary has been jailed for life.

The killing of Graves, 55, days after Christmas in 2013 shocked residents in the village of Bosham in West Sussex. She was found with extensive head injuries in the ground-floor bedroom of a £1.6m property she was house-sitting.

Graves sustained extensive head injuries caused by forces similar to those exerted in a road crash, Lewes crown court heard.

Cristian Sabou, 28, previously of Dej, Romania, pleaded guilty to her murder when he appeared at the court on Monday. Sabou appeared in the packed courtroom flanked by three security guards. Speaking through an interpreter, he pleaded guilty to a charge of murder.

Prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC told the court that Sabou had entered the house intending to commit burglary, expecting it to be empty. He had worked odd jobs for the home’s owners in the previous couple of months.

The court heard he had been informed that a safe in the house contained a large amount of cash and ingots.

When he entered the home, Sabou found Graves and attacked her. He struck her with a hammer, causing horrific injuries to her head as she tried to defend herself.

Bennetts said: “There were extensive injuries to her head. The level of force used was extreme. Not dissimilar from the forces experienced during road traffic collisions.”

Graves had just moved down from Scotland to be closer to her family, with whom she had spent Christmas before she was found dead on 30 December.

The killing sparked one of the longest murder hunts in Sussex police history, but it was not until July 2019 that Sabou was arrested in Romania and charged and extradited to the UK.

Following Graves’s murder, her son Tim Wood said: “She was a free spirit who enjoyed her life and was a talented artist. She had lived in Scotland for about 10 years, a place she loved and which inspired her passion for art.

“This has been devastating for the family and has come as a complete shock.”

Her family described her as “an eternal student who was always hungry for a new challenge”.

Judge Christine Laing said: “Rather than simply running away in the hope you could not be identified by a woman waking from sleep you conducted this horrific attack on Graves.

“It was your dishonesty and greed that took you to the house. It was your cowardice and lack of morality that caused you to kill Valerie Graves.”

She jailed him for life with a minimum term of 23 years and 272 days.