A convicted sex offender who killed two women and hid their bodies in a freezer has been given a life sentence with a minimum term of 38 years. Zahid Younis, 36, who was described as a “manipulative predator”, subjected both women to “very significant violence” in the days before he killed them. The body of one of the victims, Henriett Szucs, remained hidden in a small padlocked chest freezer for almost three years before it was found by police. Szucs, 34, vanished in August 2016 after having gone to live with Younis at his home in Canning Town, east London. The other victim, Mihrican Mustafa, 38, who was known as Jan, went missing in May 2018. The bodies of both women were found in Younis’s flat on 27 April last year. Younis, known as Boxer, admitted putting the women in the freezer and pleaded guilty to two counts of preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body. He denied two counts of murder but was found guilty of both charges by a jury at Southwark crown court on Thursday. Younis showed no emotion as the verdicts were read out and he later refused to leave his cell to be sentenced. Members of Mustafa’s family who attended every day of the three-week trial said “yes” in the public gallery as the verdict was read out. Her older sister, Mel Mustafa, said: “Thank you, God, thank you.” A statement written on behalf of Szucs’ mother, Maria, who is in Hungary and could not attend court due to the pandemic, said she had lost touch with her daughter after she arrived in the UK. “The fact that Henriett lay deceased in a freezer for two and a half years with no one looking for her or realising she was missing torments Maria on a daily basis,” the statement said. “The inner turmoil she suffers is as you would expect for a mother mourning the death of her child, and to make matters worse she hasn’t been able to see her or lay her to rest. This is most unimaginable for any family member, but particularly a mother.” Mustafa’s family described her as a “fantastic mother” to her three children, and said her death had “changed our family forever”. During the trial, both women were described by the prosecutor Duncan Penny QC as vulnerable. He said both women were living “somewhat chaotic lives” and had been homeless for a time, making them easy prey for a man with controlling and manipulative tendencies. The court heard that Younis bought a freezer shortly after killing Szucs, “for the sole purpose” of concealing her body. Penny said that when police went to Younis’s flat to look for him, a uniformed officer found the appliance surrounded with flies in a cupboard and pried it open with a crowbar. The court heard that the officer was acting on “an old-fashioned police hunch” when he discovered the women’s bodies, which had started to decompose after periods when the flat’s electricity had been cut off. The victims had been subjected to “very significant violence” and suffered injuries consistent with kicking or stamping, Penny said. They both had numerous rib fractures, Szucs had sustained “dreadful” head injuries, and Mustafa’s sternum and larynx had been fractured. Younis claimed he had been out when Szucs died at his flat and he had not told police because he was “panicking”. He told jurors he did not kill Mustafa and did not know how she died. He said he paid a man to help him get Szucs’ body into the freezer and that his accomplice later blackmailed him into putting Mustafa’s corpse in the same place. DCI Simon Harding, the senior investigating officer on the case, described Younis as a “repugnant and dangerous individual who preyed on vulnerable women to control them and cause significant injury”. He said Younis had shown no remorse as he subjected his victims’ relatives to a trial. “They have been incredibly brave throughout this entire ordeal. It is an ordeal in court listening to his lies. It is hard to listen if you are a family,” he said.