Pervert Coutts gets life (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Pervert Coutts gets life

GRAHAM Coutts has been sentenced to life for murdering Jane Longhurst.

A jury of five women and seven men at Lewes Crown Court unanimously found him guilty of a murder that had fulfilled his chilling ambition.

Coutts, 35, a part time musician who grew up in Borton-on-the-Water and attended Westwoods Grammar School in Northleach, faces at least 30 years in prison after being convicted of strangling special needs teacher Jane, 31, with a pair of tights on March 14 last year.

He had denied killing the Brighton viola player, claiming her death happened when a consensual sex session went wrong.

Jailing Coutts for life, Judge Richard Brown said: "Everything that this court has heard about Jane showed her to be the sort of person who enriched all those who came into contact with her.

"In seeking perverted sexual gratification by way of your sordid and evil fantasies you have taken her life and devastated the lives of all those she loved and who loved her.

"By persisting in your denial you have put them through the ordeal of this courtroom and have forced them to live the last moments of her life and by the unbelievable degradation of her body you have shown not one jot of remorse."

Coutts kept Jane's body in storage for 35 days, at first in a flat above the home he shared with his pregnant girlfriend in Hove and later at the Big Yellow storage warehouse in Brighton.

On April 19, Coutts took the naked body to common land and set it on fire.

Police have no direct evidence he committed necrophilia but have strong suspicions.

He visited the body in the Big Yellow storage unit in Coombe Road 11 times, sometimes only for a few minutes.

He said he couldn't bring himself to dump it.