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Man convicted of teacher murder | Man convicted of teacher murder |
(10 minutes later) | |
A man has been convicted of the murder of special needs teacher Jane Longhurst in Sussex. | A man has been convicted of the murder of special needs teacher Jane Longhurst in Sussex. |
Graham Coutts, 39, of Waterloo Street, Hove, was found guilty at a retrial after a previous murder conviction in 2004 was quashed on appeal. | Graham Coutts, 39, of Waterloo Street, Hove, was found guilty at a retrial after a previous murder conviction in 2004 was quashed on appeal. |
Ms Longhurst, 31, originally from Reading in Berkshire, was strangled with a pair of tights in March 2003. | Ms Longhurst, 31, originally from Reading in Berkshire, was strangled with a pair of tights in March 2003. |
Coutts kept her body in a storage unit before taking it to a beauty spot in West Sussex and setting fire to it. | Coutts kept her body in a storage unit before taking it to a beauty spot in West Sussex and setting fire to it. |
Jurors at the Old Bailey found Coutts guilty, by an 11 to one majority, after 13 hours of deliberations. | |
Ms Longhurst's relatives threw their arms in the air and there were cheers from the public gallery, where her mother Liz, 76, was sitting, when the verdict was read out. | |
Coutts had killed her to satisfy a "long-standing and perverted interest" in the strangling to death of women, the Old Bailey had been told. | |
The jury rejected his claims that Ms Longhurst's death was the result of a tragic accident. |