WELLINGTON, Aug 2, 2007 (AFP) - An itinerant farm worker was Thursday found guilty of murdering a German backpacker who was beaten and stabbed to death in a New Zealand forest nearly two years ago.

Michael Scott Wallace, 46, was found guilty by a jury in New Plymouth High Court of the murder of 28-year-old Birgit Brauer on September 20, 2005.

Brauer had been beaten about the head with a metal bar and stabbed once through the heart. Her body was left at Lucy's Gully, a scenic reserve near New Plymouth on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island.