A jury has found a man guilty of the death and sexual assault of a teenage girl more than 40 years ago.

Stephen Hough choked to death Janet Commins, 15, as he violently and repeatedly sexually assaulted her in Flint, in January 1976.

Hough, now aged 58, was arrested after a billion-to-one match of his DNA from samples taken from the crime scene and preserved for 40 years, Mold Crown Court was told.

The former soldier has been found guilty of her manslaughter.

Stephen Hough let another man, Noel Jones, go to jail after killing Janet.

But last year a sample of Hough's DNA was taken by police and fed into their database - and it matched semen samples taken from the body of Janet and stored for four decades.

The jury at Mold Crown Court heard the odds of the DNA being from anyone other than Hough was a billion-to-one.

He denied even knowing Janet and any wrongdoing but was convicted by the jury of rape, buggery and the manslaughter of Janet following a three week trial at Mold Crown Court.

Hough, from Flint, was cleared of the alternative charge of murder.

North Wales Police is now under investigation over how it handled the 1976 investigation and dealt with Noel Jones at the time of Janet's death.

Speaking outside the court Derek Ierston, Janet's uncle described his niece as a 'quiet innocent' 15 year old and "loving and caring."

He said it was "galling for the family" that the man responsible for her killing had been living in their community for so many years and had had a life.

He had "stolen" Janet's future, he said.