David Newton was charged with Mrs Crown's murder last year and was found guilty following a trial at Cambridge Crown Court.
He was charged more than a decade later after scientists made a DNA breakthrough, having tested nail clippings from Mrs Crown's dominant right hand using techniques that were not available in 2013.
The former kitchen installer of Magazine Close in Wisbech - which is close to Mrs Crown's address in Magazine Lane - had been interviewed as a suspect and later arrested on suspicion of murder 12 years ago.
Detective Superintendent Iain Moor, of Cambridgeshire Police, said after the trial that the force had apologised to Mrs Crown's family for "mistakes... made during the initial investigation in 2013".
But police had not initially considered Mrs Crown's death suspicious - and there was a two-day delay in preserving the scene because of what prosecutor John Price KC described as a "grave error of judgment by police officers who went to the house".
