Court hears more about strangled teacher (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Court hears more about strangled teacher

STRANGLED Jane Longhurst whispered to a friend how she had indulged in asphyxia sex, a court heard on Tuesday.

Fellow teacher Ruth Davis told how Miss Longhurst confided in her during a break in a crowded school staff room.

Ms Davis said it was after Miss Longhurst had spent a weekend with former boyfriend Lincoln Abbott, a 33-year-old music specialist with BBC orchestras.

Miss Longhurst, she said, told her how they had sex involving cutting off breathing.

Ms Davis contacted Sussex Police with this information after learning Miss Longhurst had died from 'compression of the throat'. She said: "I thought I should say something."

Miss Longhurst's partner Malcolm Sentance and Mr Abbott earlier testified how they had enjoyed normal 'straight' sex with her and there was never anything kinky.

Graham Coutts, 35, denies murdering Miss Longhurst at his flat in Waterloo Street, Brighton, on March 14 last year.

The prosecution said he strangled her to fulfil his sexual fantasies of violent sex, something he viewed regularly on the internet.

Coutts, a guitarist and part-time salesman, said her death was an accident during consensual strangulation sex.

Coutts grew up in the Cotswolds and went to the old Westwoods Grammar School in Northleach.

Ms Davis, a teacher at Netherhall School, Cambridge, said Miss Longhurst joined the staff there in 1996.

It was Miss Longhurst's first teaching job and she was a Year Seven tutor and music teacher.

Ms Davis, a drama teacher, said: "She was very well liked by the rest of the staff and the pupils. She was very busy ... she did the music for our production of A Christmas Carol and the Wizard of Oz.

"There were lots of lunchtime and after-school rehearsals - we could not have done them without her.

"She was a brilliant musician and was very proud of her viola."

Miss Longhurst would go away weekends with her boyfriend Mr Abbott and would talk to Ms Davis about the relationship in the staff room.

"It was obvious she had a lot of affection for him but it did not sound like a long-term commitment. It was a very physical relationship.

"There was one occasion when she had been away the previous weekend to see him.

"She had always said it was a very exciting relationship but she said something about a kind of sex, something to do with stopping breathing or cutting off breathing.

"I did not ask her about it but it was something she had done intentionally.

"It struck me as a very strange thing for someone to do but it did not seem like she was disturbed by it at all. I don't think it was something she initiated. I got the impression it was something Lincoln was into.

"I would have been concerned if she had been disturbed by it.

"It was a whispered conversation in a crowded staff room.

"If you read about this you would think it was a bit sleazy but I don't think Jane would ever give the impression of being like that."

Ms Davis wept in the witness box at Lewes Crown Court: "When she was talking about it she was laughing. She obviously thought it was exciting ... not necessarily sexually exciting but something that was okay, not something that disturbed her."

Cross examined by John Kelsey Fry QC, Ms Davis agreed Miss Longhurst had seemed 'amused and bemused' by her experience.

She said: "I can't be 100 per cent certain what she was talking about but it left the impression that it was some sort of asphyxiation...it was something to do with cutting off breathing."

Fighting back more tears, Ms Davis said: "Jane was always bubbly, full of life and positive. "She was just a lovely person."

The court heard from one of Coutts' former lovers how he bound her hands with tape during sex.

Norma Blundell, 45, formerly of Welbeck Avenue, Hove, was a regular at the Portland pub in Portland Road, Hove, where Coutts often played the guitar.

She had split with her boyfriend when the couple had a one-night stand. Ms Blundell was in Coutts' bedsit, crying over the breakup with her boyfriend. Coutts, she said, began comforting her and this led to sex.

Coutts, she said, tied her wrists together with masking tape: "There was no discussion. I felt surprised and a little embarrassed.

"I thought this was what he wanted to do and I was not forced in any way. "I was vulnerable but it was not a concern because he was being very gentle with me, not forceful or frightening."

Earlier, Coutts said he had never forced himself on a woman or caused injury. He denied deliberately hurting Miss Longhurst.

Coutts admitted he had a fetish for women's necks and a pornography habit.

He had viewed violent sex web sites on the eve of Miss Longhurst's death including scenes of asphyxiation, rape and murder.

But he said he only trawled these web sites for pictures of women's necks, something he described as his special interest. He was not interested in murder or rape.

The body of Miss Longhurst, a 31-year-old special needs teacher of Shaftesbury Road, Brighton, was found burning in woods near Pulborough on April 19 last year.

Coutts had kept her body hidden for five weeks and visited it several times before dumping it.

Records showed Coutts viewed violent sex web sites two days before driving the body to Pulborough.

Coutts said he was addicted to pornography and admitted: "I thought I was going down the road where someone might die."

He tried to rid himself of his addiction and at one time he deleted pictures from his computer.

He said if he had not given it up by the time his pregnant partner had given birth last October he would have given away his computer modem. The trial continues.