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FACTFILE
1991,
Coutts admitted to psychiatrists that he had enjoyed
'murderous thoughts' about women 'every day since being
a teenager.'
He said he was aroused by the idea of strangling women
and told doctors he was worried the fetish could lead to
'criminal behaviour.
14th March
2003, Music teacher Jane Longhurst made a phone call
to her friend Lisa Stephens, Coutts who was the
boyfriend of Ms Stephens answered the phone.
The two
arranged to meet up to go swimming. Coutts drove to
Shaftesbury Road in Brighton, to pick Ms Stephens up and
took her back to his house, he persuaded her in for a
cup of tea.
Once in the
house he pounced.
He strangled
her with a pair of his girlfriends tights, using a
ligature so he could masturbate with his free hand while
she was dying.
To Coutts this
was a prize, and he did not want to be parted from the
dead body, he stored her in a box in the garden shed for
11 days, until finally dragging her lifeless corpse in a
box to a Storage company in Brighton.
14th March - Miss Longhurst's boyfriend, Malcolm Sentance phones Jane's mobile but it
is switched off
14th March - Mr Sentance rings police and reports Jane's
disappearance
14th to 18th March - Police search for Jane and decide to
treat her disappearance as a serious crime.
19th April
2003, A woman's burning body is found on Wiggonholt
Common/.
20th April
2003, A Post-mortem examination confirms the
body is that of Jane Longhurst.
24th April - Coutts is arrested and struggles to answer
detectives' questions
25th April - Coutts is released without charge
28th April - Police search the Big Yellow Storage Company
29th April - Coutts is rearrested and charged with murder
Tuesday 3rd
February 2004, at his trial at Lewes Crown court Graham Coutts
was found guilty of kidnapping, strangling with a pair
of tights then after storing the body, setting fire to
School teacher Jane Longhurst. Coutts denied murder
instead saying it was a sex game that went wrong.
Coutts admitted hiding the body in a shed and then at a
storage Company - The Big Yellow storage company.
He was
caught on CCTV moving the body, and it was revealed at
the trial that while the body was in storage he went to
visit it on several occasions, presumably for sexual
gratification. He was also caught on camera buying
petrol which he put into a container on 19th April 2003.
It was on that same day that the body was found alight
in woodlands in west Sussex.
From the hard disk of his computer police were able to
confirm that Coutts had visited many internet web sites
about rape and murder, and subscribed to several
pornographic web sites.
Wednesday 4th February 2004 at Lewes Crown court
the jury found him guilty of murder, the judge sentenced
him to life imprisonment with a recommendation he should
serve a minimum of 30 years.
19th July 2006, Coutts murder conviction was
quashed by the court of appeal, a new trial was ordered.
12th June
2007, New trial starts
4th July
2007, Coutts found guilty again.
Jury returns a
guilty verdict with an 11 to 1 majority after 13 hours
of deliberation.
5th July
2007, Coutts was sentenced once again to a life
term, with a minimum of 26 years.
Graham Coutts
still maintains that this was consensual sex and that it
was a sex game that went tragically wrong. He has a
website,
here
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