Coutts jailed for life over teacher's murder

Musician Graham Coutts has been jailed for life after murdering special needs teacher Jane Longhurst to fulfil a perverted sex fantasy.

Coutts, 39, must serve a minimum of 26 years in jail for the March 2003 death of Ms Longhurst, 31, who lived in Brighton but was originally from Reading.

She was strangled with a pair of tights and her body was put into storage and then taken to a secluded spot and set alight.

Coutts, of Hove, East Sussex, denied murder, claiming her death was an accident during consensual sex. But the jury accepted the prosecution case that he strangled Miss Longhurst after forcing her into sex.

Miss Longhurst's partner, Malcolm Sentance, and her mother Liz, 76, sat in the public gallery as Coutts was jailed by Judge Richard Hone.

The judge said he had "not the slightest doubt" that the victim, who used to go swimming with Coutts, did not consent to sex with him.

He rubbished the killer's account that they had been "indulging in consensual asphyxial sex from which she tragically and accidentally died".

Rather than attempting to revive her, he had kept her in a car boot, then a garden shed, and finally at a storage unit before burning the body on a secluded common.

"Your meticulous attempts to cover up what you did are the keys to your true intentions," the judge said, adding: "This re-trial must have been a difficult and traumatic experience for Malcolm Sentance and Jane Longhurst's family."

Philip Katz QC, prosecuting, told the court Coutts had been looking at "horrific" images on pornography websites the day before the murder.

Afterwards Coutts repeatedly visited the body, which he kept in a storage unit and regarded as his "trophy", for a "sexual thrill".

He was found guilty on Wednesday by an 11 to one majority after the jury had been deliberating for 13 hours. There were cheers from the public gallery where Miss Longhurst's family were sitting.

Coutts was first found guilty of Miss Longhurst's murder in 2004 but a re-trial was ordered after Law Lords ruled his conviction was unsafe because jurors were not offered the alternative count of manslaughter. He was originally jailed for life with a minimum of 30 years, later reduced to 26.

Following the first trial, Miss Longhurst's mother led a successful campaign to outlaw the viewing of violent and extreme pornography on the internet.

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