Graham Coutts: The Dark Truth | World’s Most Evil Killers | Forensic Files

in April 2003 the Emergency Services were called to a Strang looking fire on Wigan halt common in West Sussex police
found the burning body of missing 31-year-old special educational needs teacher and musician Jane Longhurst
she's been found naked with a scarf covering her face and a pair of tights tied round her
neck Jane had been strangled by her best friend's boyfriend greme Coots I don't know what snapped I don't know what was
going on in his mind where he's made the leap from Pure Fantasy to living out his
fantasy and taking somebody's life in the most horrific way as evidence piled up against Coots
he claimed to have killed Jane by accident in a sex game gone wrong keeping her body in a storage unit for 5
weeks he was a necrophiliac he found sexual pleasure in the thought of dead women as the police investigation
against him gathered momentum Graham Coots proved himself to be one of the world's most evil killers
[Music] [Music] on Friday the 14th of March 2003 Jane Longhurst left the home she shared with
her boyfriend Malcolm in Brighton East Sussex she telephoned her best friend Lisa but it was Lisa's boyfriend Graham
CS who answered in fact her friend was working that day uh CS answered the phone and
suggested that they went swimming together that was a very common thing between the young
couples I can only believe that Jane never saw Graham Coots her friend Lisa's boyfriend is anything
of a threat why should she they were friends what Jane Longhurst didn't know was the
psychiatric background of her friend Graham CS Jane never made it to the swimming
pool she went with Coots to the ho flat he and his girlfriend shared unaware of what he was planning to do
this killer Story begins in Scotland only child Graham Coots was born on the 23rd of April 1968 in Le
F CS went to a local school and then in fact the family moved South he was not a
particularly Bright Child his passion if there was one was to become a guitarist
I think he saw himself as a sort of rock star from his early teens Graham CS displayed
worrying signs of a dysfunctional sexual appetite there's quite a strong history
with graham Coots of problems with his sexual behaviors we can see that it started very young he knows what is
turning him on and he is using pornography a very very young age the earlier in age that these things start
to manifest the more likely that it's going to become a much bigger problem further down the line it appears that
grae CS actually was addicted to extreme pornography death bias fix all this stuff and he I think since the age of 15
had a real real thing about those forms of sexual fantasy in 1991 at the age of 23 Graham
Coots confided in his GP that he was having elaborate sexual fantasies about killing women Dr Larry culliford was the
psychiatrist who saw Coots in hve where he was then living I seem to remember being perhaps
surprised that this was a person who didn't necessarily want to change you know he was having troubling
thoughts but was he really un comfortable with them or actually did he entertain them that's a question I
didn't know the answer to and and still don't he investigated sexual pornography
of the type that he was interested in and there you sort of feeding the impulses rather than seeking
to reduce the strength of them Dr culford concluded that Graham CS needed specialist help but Coots was
never seen by anybody else I think if Graham CS had been seen by a forensic psychologist he would have
probably been invited to undertake a battery of psychological tests and some formal risk assessment whether to
consider him a risk to others the mental health legislation is such that you can't lock everybody up who might commit
crime so the probability is that he would have been free to go at that point instead of getting treatment
Graham CS took his fantasies to the next level acting them out on a string of local women he was going about meeting
women trying to get them involved he basically would get turned on by pressing his hand round women's necks
one of his ex-girlfriends said that he had pages and pages of pornographic material with a handdrawn noose on on
the women's neck so clearly there was something very wrong in his psyche the warning signs were clearly
there Graham cs's dark impulses had reached a turning point when you think about whether he might have taken a
different journey through life I think it's unlikely he wasn't steering himself from that path he was
intensifying whatever it was that was going on in his head with his pornography use by actually indulging in
those fantasies with his girlfriends and for somebody who's doing that and in actually
enjoying distress I don't see how that can't be a red flag in 1997 cs's sexual dysfunction escal ated
further when he was charged with spying on a woman in a swimming pool changing room in East grinstead Sussex we do have
him being caught filming somebody in a swimming pool so he's being covert he's being predatory he's being
inappropriately sexual in a public place now it's highly unlikely that was the first time that he'd done
that the case went to magistrates but Coots was able to persuade the magistrates that he had done nothing
wrong the victim of this kind of unwanted attention was so concerned that she she contacted the um justices of the
peace but he was never brought to account for this this was the man who came into the
life of special educational needs teacher and talented musician Jane Longhurst in
2001 Graham Coots was living in move with his girlfriend Lisa when he met 31-year-old Jane and her boyfriend
Malcolm Lisa and Jane were friends the four of them Lisa and Jane and Graham and Malcolm would socialize
they would play tennis Jane and Graham would go swimming together Jane Longhurst was an
accomplished Viola player and teacher living with her boyfriend of four years in Brighton East
Sussex Jane Longhurst was really everyone's ideal daughter she was hardworking she was talented she was
very close to her mom she taught her school in Cambridge before moving to Brighton she was in every sense the best
of the best originally from reing Jane was close to her mother Liz and her sister Sue who still live there
I think Liz was full of admiration for her daughter she was deeply loved Jane Longhurst was kind and
thoughtful person who was well liked had lots of friends and she was happy and content she had a lovely life she was
planning to start a family so you know she had everything to live [Music] for Graham Cs on the other hand was not
having the success he'd imaged for himself so gra CS was a bit of a loser a Drifter who'd gone through life wanted
to be a professional musician but failed at it he had to work as a doorto door salesman for a a cleaning company he
just wanted to be in a band but he wasn't up to it he wasn't a great success in life Jane never saw Graham
Coots just anything of a threat she had no reason to suspect him she didn't know
did he had a history of addiction to pornography that he'd been fascinated since the age of 15 in strangling young
women how could she and yet he was the most Dreadful threat to her on the morning of Friday the 14th of
March 2003 Jane left her flat on shury Road in Brighton on her day off her boyfriend and Malcolm was the
first person to raise the alarm to Jane's mother Liz when she failed to return home he phoned her mother to see she'd
heard from Jane phoned the orchestra that they both played with no sign of her it was most unusual this wasn't
something that Jane did she was you know very upright very orderly young woman this was absolutely out of
character Malcolm looked for her himself in Brighton places they might have visited together didn't find
her with still no sign of Jane into the early hours of the following day worried
boyfriend Malcolm reported her missing to Sussex police like any police investigation they're looking to find
out what has happened to the missing person and their lines of inquiry will immediately fall upon the people who are
closest to Jane lur because you know most murders are carried out by people who are
known it's a boyfriend is interrogated at length it's pretty intimidating you know the girl you
clearly are very fond of has gone missing and you're suddenly in the frame for having
done something to her or but no one including Malcolm who come up with any explanation about why Jane had gone
missing you know there was nothing in her background which suggested that she wanted to vanish from her life that she
clearly loved so obviously the police were immediately suspicious that something was very a
Miss 48 hours after Jane's Last contact her missing person's case was referred to the criminal investigation department
investigators analyzed Jane's bank and phone records looking for Clues as to her
whereabouts no money had been withdrawn from her account over the weekend and no
phone calls had been made since the morning of her disappearance this raised further
concerns over Jane's safety the last call from Jane's phone on Friday at 10:05 a.m. was to the home of her friend
Lisa and Lisa's boyfriend Graham Coots Graham told police Jane had called looking for Lisa he denied having seen
Jane that morning the police made extensive inquiries and they couldn't find anything and they spoke to Coots and
they spoke to his partner nothing and there were no signs of had happened to her and it's a
difficult job there for the police because they don't know whether this is simply somebody who maybe wandered off
as a missing person or whether it's more serious than that because they didn't have a body or any scientific evidence
that would show that she'd come to harm with still no sign of Jane 5 days after her disappearance on Wednesday the
19th of March Sussex police launched operation Keen to find her they draft in extra offices they go house to house
they start a careful search it doesn't reveal anything and after two weeks they are forced to conclude that
this may not be simply a missing person investigation that it may actually be a murder
investigation for five agonizing weeks Jane remained missing then on Saturday the 19th of April a
motorist made a horrifying discovery on Wigan halt common in West Sussex 20 M from Jane's Brighton home a local man
sees a fire in the brush and it's got strange color flames and in De calls the fire brigade they discover that the
source of this fire is a body it is sadly the body of Jane Longhurst she's been found naked with a
scarf covering her face and a pair of tights tied round her neck there is no doubt in anyone's mind Jane Longhurst
has been murdered so far police have no motive for this murder they don't know whether
or not Jane knew her killer but they are determined to hunt down the person who carried out this brutal crime the police
believe she was murdered some weeks before and a body preserved somewhere cold the police say however much the
killer tried to hide Jane's body it would have been difficult to disguise as he brought it here they want people to
cast their minds back to anything suspicious there's very few cases where an individual has done what he's done
and then deposited the body and set far it without some body close to that person knowing that something's not
quite right the discovery of Jane's body was the worst possible end to her family's
hellish weight this longer is only just a widow getting over the death of a much
loved husband from Alzheimer's so you know it's absolute body blow for the family really to have this beloved
daughter who she so close to going missing in such appalling circumstances and for so long before the body was
found that must have been just Dreadful state of [Music] limbo no one can prepare you for
something so terrible to lose a l one in such a way cannot Ever Be Imagined and we would not wish what we are going
through on anyone we have lost someone who was very loved and so special pleas please if you think you
know something then find in your conscious to call the police with no suspects in what was now
a murder investigation the forensics team would tasked with uncovering what had happened burning a body isn't very
common but when it does occur it's usually in an attempt to try and disguise identity and try and dispose of
the body body now identification of burning remains can be tricky but there are several things which we can use in
Jane Long her's case the body was identified through dental records that would be using the expertise of a
forensic odontologist comparing her the tee of the deceased with any dental records
which were H in her name having confirmed Jane's identity the next question for forensic analysis
was the cause of death when the body was discovered there was a pair of tights around the neck now as a pathologist
that would be very supportive of the use of a ligature strangulation so using an
item such as a rope or a bout or in this case a pair of tights putting those around the neck and then pulling them
tightly the ligature that causes the blood to cease going to the brain with the forensic investigation
underway the police Revisited the people closest to Jane to eliminate the from suspicion on April 24th a detective
Constable interviewing Coots at his home for a second time noticed a crucial detail that turned the investigation on
its head they saw some boxes there which were for the from the cleaning products
company and those were similar to the boxes that her body was found in it was an important discover y for
investigators Graham Coots was suddenly the prime suspect in the brutal murder of Jane
Longhurst with no solid Alibi for the night in question Sussex police were confident they'd found their man as the
eyes of the nation watched on the police investigators focused their efforts on their Prime Suspect Graham Coots
detectives had grown suspicious of Coots when they found cardboard boxes that match ones from the crime scene at his
flat and because he couldn't provide a solid Alibi for the night in question CS was arrested on April the 24th 2003 but
in police custody he refused to admit to any wrongdoing how would you describe your relationship with
J um friend anything more no when did you last see before the came over and the last time you spoke to
Jane without a confession or more evidence to support their suspicions the police could only hold Coots for 24
hours and he was released the following day turning to the public for help detectives ramped up their search for
evidence that might link Coots to Jane's murder one week after Jane's body was found police are hoping these drivers
will give them the vital clue they need their motorists who may have been using this road last week they may have seen
something which could lead police to Jane's killer early evening on a Saturday at the same time as last week
when police beli Jane Longhurst body was brought to this West susi's Beauty Spot
where it was dumped and set a light it was a light evening on the bank holiday weekend police are convinced someone
would have seen what happened here all these motorists will be stopped and questioned as to whether they were here
last week um just to try and Jog their memories to anything at all that that is out of the ordinary anything they may
have noted that may give us just that significant lead on the 28th of April Sussex police
received the call they'd been waiting for the manager of a local storage company reported a strange smell coming
from a unit and a man calling himself Paul Kelly acting suspiciously so when the manager of the storage company saw
reports in the media about Jane Longhurst being missing he kind of put two and two together initially he
thought it was a smell of a dead pigeon or some other dead animal but the fact that they have got a missing woman and
there's a foul smell coming from a storage unit I think he thought the information was significantly important
and that the police should at least check check it out when Sussex police came to check the
CCTV footage they saw Paul Kelly was in fact their main suspect Graham Coots it turns out to have been none
other than Graham Coots using a false name and he's had the storage facility for about 28
days CPS acquired the storage unit with through a very simple process of using false information somebody turns up with
a utility bill another identification uh they accepted at face value gaining entry to cs's storage unit
the police made a shocking Discovery the police open the storage facility hard by Paul Kelly stroke
Graham cots and discover Jane's clothing a male shirt with blood and seamen on it
and a condom they also found Jane's swimming costume her cell phone purse and a gas
can forensic analysis revealed Jane's DNA on both the bloodstained top and the used condom which also contain cs's
seen CCTV footage showed CS had made multiple visits to the unit when Jane was missing the evidence was
overwhelming police finally had the proof they needed to arrest cots for a second time the 35-year old was arrested
here just after 9:00 last night without a struggle the police say he was one of the men they had already questioned when
Jane disappeared and it Dawns on the police that it's entirely possible that Coots has kept Jane's
body in that story St facility for up to 5 weeks the day before Jane's body was discovered in the woods CCTV footage
showed Coots had moved a large cardboard box from his unit into a van he had just
had a very large box with him you couldn't tell what was in it there was evidence at the storage
unit to suggest that what was in the box had been a corpse on April the 30th Graham CS was
charged with murder at Brighton magistrates court and put on remand with Coots in custody detectiv
seized his home computer and uncovered the disturbing truth about him not only did he appear to be kind of porn
addicted he was obsessed with women's neck and he was obsessed with strangulation when the police were able
to obtain the details of the websites that he was paying for access to the contents of his computer filled the Gap
as it were as to why this happened in the way that it did because he was looking at all this
necrophilia Graham Coots had found sexual pleasure in the thought of dead women and he was
paying to subscribe to websites which contain that sort of material so his girlfriend didn't know
that nobody knew that and that only came to light once he was arrested and of course his computer was
seized and then that material was found it was a shocking development in the case but despite the mounting
evidence against him CS refused to admit to any crime then several weeks after Coots was arrested there was a
breakthrough to everyone's surprise CS actually admits that he killed her and says and here is the
most heinous part of it all it was only a matter of con sensual sex that had gone
wrong Coots claimed that Jane Longhurst had died at his flat on the 14th of March 2003 the date of her disappearance
he said they'd stop by his home on their way to go swimming together they were driving to the Leisure Center and he
said I just need to pop into the flat the only that we have of what went on in the flat is his
account where he said they started kissing they went to the bedroom and they started having
consensual sex without a word being said between them and he said that just by a nod she agreed
to breath control play during the course of the sexual intercourse and um he used a ligature around her
neck accidentally she died in that process was his account I don't believe for one minute
that there was consensual sex that went wrong going on between Jane and Graham Coots not given his history not given
the way that he was escalating after Jane's death C had stored her body in his shed before
moving it to the storage facility on the 25th of March just days after his first
interview with the police it was a storage facility where people typically will store their belongings if they're
moving house or if they need to clear out a property so he' basically put a body in a box um which had fragile
written on it he kept a number of her belongings as a trophy and he also kept a condom that contained material that
would be consistent with him having had sex with her but he put everything in there including all her effects he
then visited her regularly there for about a period of 6 weeks but sickeningly Coots wasn't just visiting
the storage facility to make sure Jane's body was still there the detectives had
evidence to show that Graham cson visited the body of Jay Longhurst in in in the Yellow Box Storage Unit 10 or 11
times initially he just had ordinary daytime access to it and clearly he then changed to 24hour
access so that he could be there when there were no staff there he was recorded visiting these extreme
pornography sites shortly after visiting the body U so it was quite clear that this this man was acting out a a
perverse and deeply sickening sexual fantasy not only in in real time but long after Jane had been so brutally
murdered it is the most chilling thought of all he's paid for out of hours access
so that he doesn't have to always be seen when he's visiting Jane's remains it it's truly
horrifying eventually after storing Jane's body for 5 weeks Coots knew he had to try and hide the truth of what
had happened to her and then because of the state of the body he went in late at
night and there there was a very good CCTV of him with a pallet truck taking a large box out putting it in the back of
his car and he drove to West Sussex and set a light to her body there Graham cs's confession to strangling
Jane and hiding her body was a pivotal moment in the investigation but despite the evidence
against him CS was going to plead not guilty the detectives had to prove that this was no accident there was no sex
game that had gone wrong prosecutors would need to show to a jury that there was a motive for
murder it seemed to me to to be a compelling case where he was the person who had not only murdered her but kept
her body for his own purposes thereafter and then disposed of it during the 11-day trial the defense
argued that Jane's death had been an accident but the prosecution contradicted cs's version of events with
forensic evidence that they claimed proved otherwise a key part of the evidence came down to understanding the
nature of the act that had caused her death the defense would argue that the Brief Encounter of the pressure being
applied to the neck has caused death rapidly however in reality that's very unlikely death doesn't occur quickly it
occurs over several minutes with sustained pressure to the neck and the victim would certainly be showing signs
they're struggling now if it was a consensual act you'd expect the person in inflicting that act to then realize that
oh this isn't right and I should stop but obviously in this case that didn't occur he my sister's reputation being
slurred as a form of Defense totally unacceptable and very difficult to endure journalist Helen
Carter covered the trial he claimed that it was consensual sex that had gone wrong and that she was a willing
participant in this sort of asphixiation which was a complete lie it was pure gaslighting they weren't involved in a
relationship she was planning her life with her boyfriend away from Sussex and she was hoping to become a
mother while the facts of his actions were presented in court CS showed little emotion CS pleaded not guilty throughout
he was a remarkably calm man as I recall I think always believed that he was going to be found
not guilty Graham CS would like to convince the jury that he was a miscarriage of Justice he was
at at pains to deny any responsibility for her death and it must have been so hard for Jane's partner Malcolm to sit
there at listen to this person deny any responsibility for murdering his beloved
partner who he was planning the rest of his life with cs's defense that the strangulation
was consensual and Jane's death was an accident was not believed by the jury after 9 hours of deliberation at Louis
Crown Court they unanimously found him guilty of [Music] murder on the 4th of February 2004 CS
was sentenced to 30 years later reduced to 26 years on appeal and was sent to hmp
Wakefield but the agony for Jane's loved ones was far from over in the months that followed Coots launched a number of
appeals around a very specific legal ground that the jury had not been offered the alternative
explanation that CS had indeed killed her accidentally during consensual sex in other words that it was
manslaughter rather than murder 2 and a half years later the House of Lords granted cs's appeal his conviction was
quashed on the 19th of October 2006 and a retrial ordered he would remain in custody the friends and family of Jane
Longhurst they had the indignity of her being murdered in such horrific circumstances than the denials of false
Stories the lies the smears that he spread but they they have to go through one trial the stress of that and then
for him to appeal it and they be a retrial it's reliving that most traumatic horrific part of their
life in June 2007 a second trial began this time with manslaughter as a possibility ballister Richard Barton
once again acted for the prosecution retrials are always is more of a challenge but I never had any doubt and I'm sure
that the police and the CPS never had any doubt of his guilt on Wednesday the 4th of July 2007 after jurors had
deliberated for 13 hours CS was once again found guilty of murder by a majority verdict and sentenced to life
in prison Crown courts um dignified places where High drama is not permitted by judges but following the verdict in the
retrial there were cheers from the public gallery from the from the friends and family of Jane Longhurst and I can
hardly blame them judge Richard Brown told him at the second trial and I quote in seeking perverted sexual
gratification by way of your sworded and evil fantasies you've taken her life and devastated the
lives of those she loved and those who loved her and he concluded by saying you have shown not one jot of remorse as he
was driven away the prosecution described this murder as a Despicable crime compounded by a Despicable
defense despite C's being behind bars for the rest of his life for Jane's mother Liz and her sister SU
the fight for justice wasn't over it's been a horrendous year for my family with the murder of my sister the
violent murder of my sister Jane lur by the strangulation and uh rape gra CS who has now got life
imprisonment um for this murder was fueled by the internet downloading images from websites do you pay by using
your credit card following the conviction of Graham CS Liz campaigned to get the law changed because he was
found to have um pornography which you know sparked his interest in the in the 1990s and nothing was done about
it Martin Suter labor MP for reading at the time worked on a campaign with Liz Longhurst she felt desperately sad
obviously as to what happened to her daughter and desperately sad that other young people could easily be put at risk
she wasn't ever seeking to Outlaw pornography what she was concerned about was those extreme imagery that would tip
and I think it was her words tip an unbalanced mind into acting out their fantasies I think when we started we
couldn't get our heads around the fact that it was perfectly legal to broadcast images of young women being
murdered and raped some cases in real time for those images to be available and able to be
disseminated right away across the United Kingdom even though the UK's obscene Publications act banned offensive
material being published in Britain it was no match for the millions of illicit images being posted on the internet from
all all over the world as much as they would have liked to the Metropolitan Police vice squad or or or the law
enforcement agencies in this country can't go after internet sites that are hosted in South America or somewhere
else in the globe after 18 months of Liz loners campaigning the UK's obscenity laws were changed making it illegal to
possess pornography that features rape or torture Jane's mother Elizabeth was an extraord ordinary
woman who was very dignified throughout and the worst nightmare for any parent that she went through but she campaigned
tirelessly thereafter along with others and they achieved a change in the law and I regularly prosecute people who
have extreme pornography similar to much that CS at the time was looking at legally
I think bringing about this changeing the law meant everything to Liz it's what she strove for I was privileged to
be part of that exercise to help her on that journey and whilst it meant everything clearly didn't mean as much
as having a daughter back the laws that Liz Longhurst campaign helped change are still keeping
people like Graham Coots off the streets and protecting other families from the living nightmare that Jane's loved ones
went through Graham Coots will always present a danger to women he's presented a danger to women since he was a
teenager and that really is by his own admission he wasn't saying I'm a potential rapist he was saying I'm a
potential killer he was saying that right from the beginning he is never going to be safe to be around
women he was a young man with a very dark side that he hid from everybody very well what he did was
evil he could have saved her had he stopped strangling her but he didn't he could have told the police
where she was but he didn't he endeavored to keep his perverted f fantasy alive for as long as
he possibly could before he dumped her naked body and set fire to it Graham Coots was a man obsessed with
satisfying his darkest sexual fantasies fueled by violent pornography he strangled Jane Longhurst a young woman
in the prime of her life and then kept her body in a storage un for his own Twisted gratification his coldblooded
and depraved Behavior sent shock waves around the country cou showed no remorse for his horrific actions content to
destroy the victim's reputation to escape Justice Graham CS will be remembered as one of Britain's most evil
killers [Music] for

Musician and special needs teacher Jane Longhurst vanished during her day off work after making a plan to go swimming with her friend’s boyfriend. Five weeks later, Jane’s partially decomposed body was found burning 25 miles from her home.

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Brief Summary

Jane Longhurst was murdered by Graham Coots, who kept her body for weeks before disposal, leading to a controversial trial and legal reforms.

Key points

The Discovery of Jane's Body. In April 2003, Jane Longhurst's body was found in a burning field, leading to a murder investigation.
Graham Coots Becomes Prime Suspect. Evidence links Graham Coots to Jane's murder, turning the investigation on its head.
Coots' Shocking Confession. Graham Coots admits to killing Jane Longhurst, claiming it was an accident during consensual sex.
The Chilling Discovery. Coots kept Jane's body in a storage unit for weeks, visiting it regularly.
The Verdict. After a retrial, Coots is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Legal Changes Post-Tragedy. Jane's mother campaigns for legal changes regarding extreme pornography after her daughter's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I don't know what snapped.

Reflecting on the killer's sudden shift to violence.

0:35WatchSep 1, 2024

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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