The serial rapist who killed 18-year-old Elsie “Yolanda” Hernandes in a vacant Roxbury lot 26 years ago was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said today.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted SULTAN OMAR CHEZULU (D.O.B. 10/2/48), who changed his name from ROBERT LOUIS SCOTT in 1997, of first-degree murder under all three theories: deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and felony murder during the commission of an aggravated rape.

Shortly after jurors returned that verdict, Judge Peter Lauriat imposed the mandatory life term.

“After more years than Yolanda lived on this earth, her family finally got the justice they deserved,” Conley said. “And after too long, a violent rapist was finally taken out of society for good.”

Jurors did not hear of the defendant’s criminal record, which included convictions for kidnapping, rape, sodomy, armed robbery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon dating back to 1969.

During about a week and a half of trial, Conley’s chief of Superior Court prosecutions proved that Chezulu, then known as Scott, grabbed the 18-year-old girl as she walked to a friend’s home after work on the evening of Dec. 28, 1984.

As Hernandes walked near the corner of Washington and Ball streets, the evidence showed, Chezulu pulled her into a vacant lot. He beat her with his fists and a rock, raped her twice, and strangled her to death using a sock. Her remains were found the next day by passersby.

“The things done to her were fiendish,” Conley said. “Even decades later, the crime scene photos were some of the worst that investigators had ever seen.”

Prior to sentencing, Lauriat heard an impact statement from Jessica Garcia, Hernandes’ younger sister. It was after an email that Garcia sent to Boston Police that cold case detectives renewed the investigation into Hernandes’ death, obtained a DNA profile from the evidence, and matched it to Chezulu, who was by then living in Georgia.

“We couldn’t just leave her memory in that field,” Garcia said. “We all fought so hard to see this day.”

Katherine Moran was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Chezulu was represented by attorney Bernard Grossberg.