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Danilo Restivo, 39, was convicted on Wednesday by a jury of seven men and five women after just five hours of deliberation.
He was remanded in custody for sentencing today, where Mr Justice Burnett dealt him a whole life sentence.
The body of Mrs Barnett, a mother-of-two, was badly mutilated at her Bournemouth home in 2002.
Her throat was cut from ear-to-ear and her breasts removed and placed on either side of her head.
Winchester Crown Court heard Restivo, who had a fetish for secretly cutting women's hair, killed her by hitting her over the head with a blunt object, possibly a hammer.
Bizarrely, some hair snipped from her own head was found below her left hand and a clump of hair belonging to an unknown person was left in her right hand.
The tests found traces of Restivo's DNA on it but the Italian claimed he had taken the towel over to the seamstress' house to provide a colour sample for a pair of curtains she was making for him.
In court, Mrs Barnett's daughter Caitlin sobbed quietly as the guilty verdict was handed down but Restivo showed no emotion.
Speaking outside court after the verdict, Mrs Barnett's sister said: "Heather would have been horrified by the cruel and callous way Danilo Restivo designed her murder and mutilation so her children would find her body on return from school."
Detective Superintendent Mark Cooper, who led the inquiry, added: "I believe that this dangerous predator had watched over Heather for some time and carefully planned this horrendous crime, even attempting to construct a false alibi to deceive the police.
"Despite his guilt, Restivo never moved away from his house that looked out onto Heather's property and, perhaps most chilling of all, he even consoled her two children the afternoon following his cold and calculated actions."
Dorset Police had suspected Restivo of the murder for many years but did not initially have enough evidence to charge him.
They carried out covert operations to keep the Italian under extensive observation, including bugging his house and car.
He was finally arrested on May 19 last year, shortly after the discovery of the body of Elisa Claps, an Italian girl missing since 1993, in the loft of a church in Potenza, Italy.
Restivo knew the 16-year-old girl and admitted to Italian investigators at the time that he loved her but she had rejected him. He was also the last person to see her alive.
He is now subject to a European Arrest Warrant and is expected to be extradited back to Italy to stand trial for Miss Claps' murder.
SKYNEWS
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