Murder victim's family condemn websites

BRITAIN: The family of an English schoolteacher strangled to satisfy the macabre sexual fantasies of a musician called yesterday…

BRITAIN: The family of an English schoolteacher strangled to satisfy the macabre sexual fantasies of a musician called yesterday for Internet sites peddling images of death and rape to be shut down.

Graham Coutts (35) was jailed for life for strangling Ms Jane Longhurst with a pair of tights while fulfilling his "sordid and evil" obsession with necrophilia and asphyxial sex.

Ms Longhurst's mother Liz (72) spoke after a jury convicted Coutts, saying the government should act to close or "filter" websites selling violent images of women being throttled and then raped.

Part-time salesman Coutts, from Hove, in England, had surfed the net for such websites just hours before killing the special needs teacher.

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Coutts, who denied murder at Lewes Crown Court but admitted storing his victim's naked body in a box for 35 days, was told he would serve at least 30 years.

Ms Liz Longhurst said: "I feel pressure should be brought to bear on Internet service providers to close down or filter out these pornographic sites which have played such a prominent part in this trial so that people like Jane's killer may no longer feed their sick imaginations and cause such harm to others."

The court heard how Coutts attacked his victim at his flat on March 14th last year following a chance phone call on her day off. She called to have a chat with Coutts's pregnant girlfriend but ended up agreeing to meet him for a swim. Coutts persuaded her to go back to his flat where he strangled her with a pair of tights, which were later found embedded in her neck.

As he killed her, he "had his way with her", satisfying a "macabre" desire to rape, strangle and kill a woman, the court heard.  - (PA)