Bulgarian drug addict Deyan Deyanov found guilty of stabbing and beheading British pensioner in Tenerife

British grandmother Jennifer Mills-Westley (PA)

A Bulgarian drug addict who beheaded a British grandmother in a frenzied knife attack on the holiday island of Tenerife was today found guilty of murder.

Homeless Deyan Deyanov, 29, was convicted by a jury of nine at the Provincial Court in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

He repeatedly stabbed and beheaded Jennifer Mills-Westley, 60, who had been shopping in the popular resort of Los Cristianos on May 13, 2011.

Deyanov had denied murder. His defence had argued he was not criminally responsible for his actions because he suffers acute paranoid schizophrenia.

He faces a sentence of 15 to 20 years in a psychiatric unit.

His victim, a retired road safety worker originally from Norwich, was attacked while she was in a Chinese-owned general store near the beach.

That morning, Deyanov had walked into another shop and asked for a knife "this big" because he was going to kill someone.

At 10.30am he went into the Mas Articulos Mejor Precios shop on Avenida Juan Carlos I, picked up a 22cm-long knife and plunged it repeatedly into Ms Mills-Westley's neck.

He then walked out carrying her head, to the horror of onlookers, before being wrestled to the ground and arrested.

Living rough in Los Cristianos, the crack cocaine and LSD user was well-known to police on the island and had been arrested at least four times since January 2011 for violent offences.

A warrant for his arrest had been issued just three days before the killing but officers were unable to locate him.

He had previously been sectioned in the summer of 2010 under the Mental Health Act in Glan Clwyd Hospital, North Wales, and again at Tenerife's La Candelaria hospital before being bailed in early February 2011.

PA