Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - Graham Coutts

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Serial Killer Documentary - Graham Coutts · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:05
Speaker 1: In April two thousand and three, the emergency services were
0:09
Speaker 1: called to a strange looking fire on Wigenholt Common in
0:12
Speaker 1: West Sussex. Police found the burning body of missing thirty
0:17
Speaker 1: one year old special educational needs teacher and musician Jane Longhurst.
0:23
Speaker 2: She's been found naked, with a scarf covering her face
0:28
Speaker 2: and a pair of tights tied round her neck.
0:33
Speaker 1: Jane had been strangled by her best friend's boyfriend, Graham Coots.
0:38
Speaker 3: I don't know what snapped.
0:40
Speaker 4: I don't know what was going on in his mind
0:42
Speaker 4: where he's made the leap from pure fantasy to living
0:46
Speaker 4: out his fantasy and taking somebody's life in the most
0:48
Speaker 4: horrific way.
0:50
Speaker 1: As evidence piled up against Coots, he claimed to have
0:54
Speaker 1: killed Jane by accident in a sex game gone wrong,
0:58
Speaker 1: keeping her body in a storage unit for five weeks.
1:03
Speaker 3: He was a necrophiliac.
1:05
Speaker 5: He found sexual pleasure in the thought of dead women.
1:10
Speaker 1: As the police investigation against him gathered momentum, Graham Coots
1:15
Speaker 1: proved himself to be one of the world's most evil killers.
1:47
Speaker 1: On Friday, the fourteenth of March two thousand and three,
1:51
Speaker 1: Jane Longhurst left the home she shared with her boyfriend
1:54
Speaker 1: Malcolm in Brighton, East Sussex. I've owned her best friend Lisa,
2:02
Speaker 1: but it was Lisa's boyfriend, Graham Coots who answered.
2:07
Speaker 5: In fact, her friend was working that day. Coots answered
2:12
Speaker 5: the phone and suggested that they went swimming together. That
2:17
Speaker 5: was a very common thing between the young couples.
2:21
Speaker 2: I can only believe that Jane never saw Graham Coots,
2:27
Speaker 2: her friend Lisa's boyfriend, as anything of a threat. Why
2:32
Speaker 2: should she they were friends. What Jane Longhurst didn't know
2:38
Speaker 2: was the psychiatric background of her friend Graham Coots.
2:44
Speaker 1: Jane never made it to the swimming pool. She went
2:47
Speaker 1: with Coots to the whole flat he and his girlfriend shared,
2:51
Speaker 1: unaware of what he was planning to do. This killer's
3:02
Speaker 1: story begins in Scotland. Only child, Graham Coots was born
3:07
Speaker 1: on the twenty third of April nineteen sixty eight in
3:11
Speaker 1: eleven Fife.
3:13
Speaker 2: Coots went to a local school and then in fact
3:16
Speaker 2: the family moved south. He was not a particularly bright child.
3:23
Speaker 2: His passion, if there was one, was to become a guitarist.
3:27
Speaker 2: I think he saw himself as a sort of rock star.
3:31
Speaker 1: From his early teens, Graham Coots displayed worrying signs of
3:36
Speaker 1: a dysfunctional sexual appetite.
3:39
Speaker 6: There's quite a strong history with Graham Coots of problems
3:42
Speaker 6: with his sexual behaviors. We can see that it started
3:46
Speaker 6: very young. He knows what is turning him on, and
3:50
Speaker 6: he is using pornography a very very young age. The
3:56
Speaker 6: earlier in age that these things start to manifest, the
4:00
Speaker 6: more likely that it's going to become a much bigger problem.
4:03
Speaker 6: Further down the line, it.
4:05
Speaker 7: Appears that Graham Coats actually was addicted to stream pornography,
4:12
Speaker 7: death by as fix It, all this stuff, and I
4:14
Speaker 7: think since the age of fifteen, had a real real
4:18
Speaker 7: thing about those forms of sexual fantasy.
4:23
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, at the age of twenty three,
4:26
Speaker 1: Graham Coots confided in his GP that he was having
4:30
Speaker 1: elaborate sexual fantasies about killing women. Doctor Larry Culliford was
4:36
Speaker 1: the psychiatrist who saw Coots in Hove, where he was
4:40
Speaker 1: then living.
4:42
Speaker 8: It seemed to remember being perhaps surprised that this was
4:49
Speaker 8: a person who didn't necessarily want to change. You know,
4:54
Speaker 8: he was having troubling thoughts, but was he really uncomfortab
5:00
Speaker 8: with them or actually did he entertain them? That's a
5:04
Speaker 8: question I didn't know the answer to, and still don't.
5:08
Speaker 8: He investigated sexual pornography of the type he was interested in,
5:14
Speaker 8: and there you're sort of feeding the impulses rather than
5:21
Speaker 8: seeking to reduce the strength of them.
5:27
Speaker 1: Dr Culliff had concluded that Graham Coots needed specialist help,
5:32
Speaker 1: but Coots was never seen by anybody else.
5:37
Speaker 8: I think if Graham Coots had been seen by a
5:40
Speaker 8: forensic psychologist, he would have probably been invited to undertake
5:44
Speaker 8: a battery of psychological tests and some formal risk assessment
5:50
Speaker 8: whether to consider him a risk to others. That mental
5:54
Speaker 8: health legislation is such that you can't lock everybody up
5:58
Speaker 8: who might commit crime, so the probability is that he
6:02
Speaker 8: would have been free to go at that point.
6:06
Speaker 1: Instead of getting treatment, Graham Coots took his fantasies to
6:10
Speaker 1: the next level, acting them out on a string of
6:14
Speaker 1: local women.
6:15
Speaker 4: He was going about meeting women trying to get them involved.
6:19
Speaker 4: He basically would get turned on by pressing his hand
6:23
Speaker 4: round women's necks. One of his ex girlfriends said that
6:28
Speaker 4: he had pages and pages of pornographic material with a
6:32
Speaker 4: hand drawn noose on the women's necks, so clearly there
6:36
Speaker 4: was something very wrong in his psyche.
6:39
Speaker 3: The warning signs were clearly there.
6:42
Speaker 1: Graham Cootz's dark impulses had reached a turning point.
6:47
Speaker 6: When you think about whether he might have taken a
6:50
Speaker 6: different journey through life, I think it's unlikely he wasn't
6:55
Speaker 6: steering himself from that path. He was intensifying whatever it
7:00
Speaker 6: was that was going on in his head with his
7:02
Speaker 6: pornography use by actually indulging in those fantasies with his girlfriends,
7:09
Speaker 6: and for somebody who's doing that and in actually enjoying distress,
7:15
Speaker 6: I don't see how that can't be a red flag.
7:25
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, Kotz's sexual dysfunction escalated further when
7:31
Speaker 1: he was charged with spying on a woman in a
7:33
Speaker 1: swimming pool changing room in East Grinstead, Sussex.
7:37
Speaker 6: We do have him being caught filming somebody in a
7:40
Speaker 6: swimming pool, so he's being covert, he's being predatory, he's
7:45
Speaker 6: being inappropriately sexual in a public place. Now it's highly
7:52
Speaker 6: unlikely that was the first time that he'd done that.
7:56
Speaker 4: The case went to magistrates, but Coots was able to
7:58
Speaker 4: persuade the magistrates that he had done nothing wrong. Victim
8:04
Speaker 4: of this kind of unwanted attention. Was so concerned that
8:07
Speaker 4: she contacted the justices of the piece, but he was
8:11
Speaker 4: never brought to account for this.
8:17
Speaker 1: This was the man who came into the life of
8:19
Speaker 1: special educational needs teacher and talented musician Jane Longhurst. In
8:25
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. Graham Coots was living in Hove
8:29
Speaker 1: with his girlfriend Lisa when he met thirty one year
8:33
Speaker 1: old Jane and her boyfriend Malcolm.
8:36
Speaker 4: Lisa and Jane were friends. The four of them, Lisa
8:40
Speaker 4: and Jane and Graham and Malcolm would socialize. They would
8:45
Speaker 4: play tennis, Jane and Graham would go swimming together.
8:52
Speaker 1: Jane Longhurst was an accomplished viola player and teacher, living
8:57
Speaker 1: with her boyfriend of four years in Brighton, East Sussex.
9:01
Speaker 2: Jane Longhurst was really everyone's ideal daughter. She was hard working,
9:09
Speaker 2: she was talented. She was very close to her mum.
9:14
Speaker 2: She taught at school in Cambridge before moving to Brighton.
9:18
Speaker 2: She was in every sense the best of the best.
9:22
Speaker 1: Originally from reading. Jane was close to her mother Liz
9:26
Speaker 1: and her sister Sue, who still lived there.
9:29
Speaker 7: I think this was full of admiration for a daughter.
9:32
Speaker 7: She was deeply loved.
9:34
Speaker 4: Jane Longhurst was kind and thoughtful person who was well liked,
9:39
Speaker 4: had lots of friends, and she was happy and content.
9:43
Speaker 3: She had a lovely life.
9:45
Speaker 4: She was planning to start a family, so you know,
9:49
Speaker 4: she had everything to live for.
9:55
Speaker 1: Graham Coots, on the other hand, was not having the
9:58
Speaker 1: success he'd imagined for him.
10:01
Speaker 4: So Graham Coots was a bit of a loser, a
10:03
Speaker 4: drifter who'd gone through life. Wanted to be a professional
10:07
Speaker 4: musician but failed at it. He had to work as
10:10
Speaker 4: a daughter door salesman for a cleaning company. He just
10:14
Speaker 4: wanted to be in a band, but he wasn't onto it.
10:17
Speaker 4: He wasn't a great success in life.
10:19
Speaker 2: Jane never saw Graham Coots there's anything of a threat.
10:26
Speaker 2: She had no reason to suspect him. She didn't know
10:29
Speaker 2: that he had a history of addiction to pornography, that
10:32
Speaker 2: he'd been fascinated since the age of fifteen in strangling
10:35
Speaker 2: young women. How could she, and yet he was the
10:39
Speaker 2: most dreadful threat to her.
10:48
Speaker 1: On the morning of Friday, the fourteenth of March two
10:51
Speaker 1: thousand and three, Jane left her flat on Shastberry Road
10:55
Speaker 1: in Brighton on her day off. Her boyfriend marcam the
11:00
Speaker 1: first person to raise the alarm to Jane's mother lives
11:03
Speaker 1: when she failed to return home.
11:10
Speaker 2: He phoned her mother to see if she'd heard from Jane,
11:14
Speaker 2: phoned the orchestra that they both played, with no sign
11:18
Speaker 2: of her. It was most unusual. This wasn't something that
11:23
Speaker 2: Jane did. She was very upright, very orderly, the young woman.
11:31
Speaker 2: This was absolutely out of character. Malcolm looked for her
11:37
Speaker 2: himself in Brighton places they might have visited together, didn't
11:41
Speaker 2: find her.
11:44
Speaker 1: With still no sign of Jane into the early hours
11:47
Speaker 1: of the following day, worried boyfriend Malcolm reported her missing
11:52
Speaker 1: to Sussex Police.
11:54
Speaker 4: Like any police investigation then looking to find out what
11:57
Speaker 4: has happened to the missing person, and their lines of
12:01
Speaker 4: inquiry will immediately fall upon the people who are closest
12:05
Speaker 4: to Jane Longhurst, because you know, most murders are carried
12:11
Speaker 4: out by people who are known.
12:13
Speaker 2: The boyfriend is interrogated at length. It's pretty intimidating. You know,
12:21
Speaker 2: the girl you clearly are very fond of has gone
12:25
Speaker 2: missing in yours suddenly in the frame for having done
12:30
Speaker 2: something to her or but no one including Malcolm, who
12:35
Speaker 2: come up with any explanation about why Jane had gone missing.
12:39
Speaker 4: You know, there was nothing in her background which suggested
12:42
Speaker 4: that she wanted to vanish from her life that she
12:46
Speaker 4: clearly loved, so obviously the police were immediately suspicious that
12:50
Speaker 4: something was very amiss.
12:56
Speaker 1: Forty eight hours after Jane's last contact, her missing person's
13:01
Speaker 1: case was referred to the Criminal Investigation Department. Investigators analyzed
13:07
Speaker 1: Jane's bank and phone records looking for clues as to
13:10
Speaker 1: her whereabouts. No money had been withdrawn from her accounts
13:15
Speaker 1: over the weekend, and no phone calls had been made
13:18
Speaker 1: since the morning of her disappearance. This raised further concerns
13:23
Speaker 1: over Jane's safety. The last call from Jane's phone on
13:27
Speaker 1: Friday at ten oh five am was to the home
13:30
Speaker 1: of her friend Lisa and Lisa's boyfriend Graham Coots. Graham
13:36
Speaker 1: told police Jane had called looking for Lisa. He denied
13:40
Speaker 1: having seen Jane that morning.
13:43
Speaker 5: The police made extensive inquiries and they couldn't find anything,
13:50
Speaker 5: and they spoke to Coots and they spoke to his partner.
13:55
Speaker 5: Nothing and there were no signs of what had happened
13:59
Speaker 5: to her. And it's a difficult job there for the
14:02
Speaker 5: police because they don't know whether this is simply somebody
14:05
Speaker 5: who maybe wandered off as a missing person or whether
14:08
Speaker 5: it's more serious than that. Because they didn't have a
14:11
Speaker 5: body or any scientific evidence that would show that she'd
14:15
Speaker 5: come to.
14:16
Speaker 1: Harm with still no sign of Jane. Five days after
14:21
Speaker 1: her disappearance, on Wednesday, the nineteenth of March, Suseg's police
14:25
Speaker 1: launched Operation Keen to find her.
14:29
Speaker 2: They draft in extra officers, they go house to house,
14:34
Speaker 2: they start a careful search. It doesn't reveal anything, and
14:40
Speaker 2: after two weeks they are forced to conclude that this
14:46
Speaker 2: may not be simply a missing person investigation, that it
14:50
Speaker 2: may actually be a murder investigation.
14:53
Speaker 1: For five agonizing weeks, Jane remained missing. Then on Saturday,
15:02
Speaker 1: the nineteenth of April, a motorist made a horrifying discovery
15:06
Speaker 1: on Wiggenholt Common in West Sussex, twenty miles from Jane's
15:11
Speaker 1: Brighton home.
15:13
Speaker 2: A local man sees a fire in the brush and
15:17
Speaker 2: it's got strange color flames, and in decourse the fire brigade,
15:22
Speaker 2: they discover that the source of this fire is a body.
15:30
Speaker 2: It is, sadly, the body of Jane Longhurst. She's been
15:37
Speaker 2: found naked with a scarf covering her face and a
15:43
Speaker 2: pair of tights tied round her neck. There is no
15:48
Speaker 2: doubt in anyone's mind Jane Longhurst has been murdered.
15:53
Speaker 9: So far, police have no motive for this murder. They
15:56
Speaker 9: don't know whether or not Jane knew her killer, but
15:59
Speaker 9: they are determined to hunt down the person who carried
16:02
Speaker 9: out this brutal crime.
16:04
Speaker 10: The police believed she was murdered some weeks before and
16:07
Speaker 10: a body preserved somewhere cold.
16:09
Speaker 11: The police say, however much the killer tried to hide
16:12
Speaker 11: Jane's body, it would have been difficult to disguise as
16:14
Speaker 11: he brought it here. They want people to cast their
16:17
Speaker 11: minds back to anything suspicious.
16:21
Speaker 12: There's very few cases where an individual has done what
16:24
Speaker 12: he's done and then deposited the body and set fart
16:28
Speaker 12: without somebody close to that person knowing that something's not
16:32
Speaker 12: quite right.
16:37
Speaker 1: The discovery of Jane's body was the worst possible end
16:41
Speaker 1: to her family's hellish weight.
16:44
Speaker 4: This Longhurst is only just a widow getting over the
16:49
Speaker 4: death of a much loved husband from Alzheimer's, so you know,
16:52
Speaker 4: it's absolute body blow for the family. Really to have
16:56
Speaker 4: this beloved daughter who She's so close to going miss
17:00
Speaker 4: in such appalling circumstances, and for so long before the
17:03
Speaker 4: body was found, that must have been just dreadful state
17:07
Speaker 4: of limbo.
17:10
Speaker 13: No one can prepare you for something so terrible. To
17:14
Speaker 13: lose a loved one in such a way cannot ever
17:17
Speaker 13: be imagined, and we would not wish what we are
17:20
Speaker 13: going through on anyone.
17:22
Speaker 14: We have lost someone who was very loved and so special.
17:28
Speaker 15: Please, if you think.
17:30
Speaker 14: You know something, then find in your kind of called police.
17:43
Speaker 1: With those suspects in what was now a murder investigation,
17:47
Speaker 1: the forensics team would task with uncovering what had happened.
17:51
Speaker 16: Burning a body isn't very common, but when it does occur,
17:54
Speaker 16: it's usually in an attempt to try and disguise identity
17:57
Speaker 16: and try and dispose of the body. Now, identify of
18:00
Speaker 16: burning remains can be tricky, but there are several things
18:04
Speaker 16: which we can use. In Jane Longhair's case, the body
18:09
Speaker 16: was identified through dental records, so that would be using
18:12
Speaker 16: the expertise of a forensic codontologist comparing the teeth of
18:17
Speaker 16: the deceased with any dental records which were held in
18:20
Speaker 16: her name.
18:22
Speaker 1: Having confirmed Jane's identity, the next question for forensic analysis
18:28
Speaker 1: was the cause of death.
18:29
Speaker 16: When the body was discovered, there was a pair of
18:31
Speaker 16: tights around the neck. Now, as a pathologist, that would
18:35
Speaker 16: be very supportive of the use of a ligature strangulation.
18:39
Speaker 16: So using an item such as a rope or about
18:41
Speaker 16: or in this case a pair of tights, putting those
18:44
Speaker 16: around the neck and then pulling them tightly the ligature
18:47
Speaker 16: that causes the blood to cease going to the brain.
18:51
Speaker 1: With the forensic investigation underway, the police revisited the people
18:56
Speaker 1: closest to Jane to eliminate them from suspicion. On April
19:04
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, a detective constable interviewing Coots at his home
19:08
Speaker 1: for a second time, noticed a crucial detail that turned
19:13
Speaker 1: the investigation on its head.
19:15
Speaker 5: They saw some boxes there which were from the cleaning
19:20
Speaker 5: products company, and those were similar to the boxes that
19:24
Speaker 5: her body was founded.
19:27
Speaker 1: It was an important discovery for investigators. Graham Coots was
19:31
Speaker 1: suddenly the prime suspect in the brutal murder of Jane Longhurst.
19:37
Speaker 1: With nose solid alibi for the night in question, Sussex
19:41
Speaker 1: police were confident they'd found their man. As the eyes
19:46
Speaker 1: of the nation watched on the police, investigators focused their
19:50
Speaker 1: efforts on their prime suspect, Graham Coots. Detectives had grown
19:55
Speaker 1: suspicious of Coots when they found cardboard boxes that match
19:59
Speaker 1: ones from the crime scene at his flat, and because
20:04
Speaker 1: he couldn't provide a solid alibi for the night in question.
20:08
Speaker 1: Coots was arrested on April twenty fourth, two thousand and three,
20:13
Speaker 1: but in police custody, he refused to admit to any wrongdoing.
20:18
Speaker 3: How would you describe your left.
20:23
Speaker 15: Friends?
20:25
Speaker 3: Did you think more nod?
20:28
Speaker 6: Last?
20:29
Speaker 1: Jane?
20:29
Speaker 10: Not so before the books came over.
20:36
Speaker 3: And the last time is so to join.
20:43
Speaker 1: Without a confession or more evidence to support their suspicions,
20:47
Speaker 1: the police could only hold Coots for twenty four hours
20:50
Speaker 1: and he was released the following day. Turning to the
20:54
Speaker 1: public for help, detectives ramped up their search for evidence
20:58
Speaker 1: that might link Kot to Jane's murder.
21:02
Speaker 17: One week after Jane's body was found. Police are hoping
21:05
Speaker 17: these drivers will give them the vital clue they need.
21:08
Speaker 17: Their motorists who may have been using this road last week,
21:11
Speaker 17: they may have seen something which could lead police to
21:14
Speaker 17: jans killer. Early evening on a Saturday, at the same
21:17
Speaker 17: time as last week when police believed Jane longhurst body
21:21
Speaker 17: was brought to this West Sussex beauty spot where it
21:24
Speaker 17: was dumped and set a light. It was a light
21:27
Speaker 17: evening on the Bank holiday weekend. Police are convinced someone
21:30
Speaker 17: would have seen what happened here.
21:32
Speaker 10: All these motions will be stopped and questioned as to
21:34
Speaker 10: whether they were here last week, just to try and
21:37
Speaker 10: jog their memories to anything at all that was out
21:39
Speaker 10: of the ordinary, anything they may have noted that may
21:42
Speaker 10: give us just that significant lead.
21:45
Speaker 1: On the twenty eighth of April, Sussex Police received a
21:48
Speaker 1: call they'd been waiting for. The manager of a local
21:52
Speaker 1: storage company reported a strange smell coming from a unit
21:56
Speaker 1: and a man calling himself Paul Kelly acting suspicious.
22:00
Speaker 4: So when the manager of the storage company saw reports
22:04
Speaker 4: in the media about Jane Longhurst being missing, he kind
22:09
Speaker 4: of put two and two together. Initially thought it was
22:13
Speaker 4: the smell of a dead pigeon or some other dead animal,
22:16
Speaker 4: but the fact that they have got a missing woman
22:20
Speaker 4: and there's a foul smell coming from a storage unit,
22:23
Speaker 4: I think he thought the information was significantly important and
22:27
Speaker 4: that the police should at least check it out.
22:30
Speaker 1: When Sasax police came to check the CCTV footage, they
22:35
Speaker 1: saw Paul Kelly was in fact their main suspect, Graham Coots.
22:44
Speaker 2: It turns out to have been Nananah than Graham Coots,
22:47
Speaker 2: using a false name, and he's had the storage facility
22:51
Speaker 2: for about twenty eight days.
22:53
Speaker 5: Coots acquired the storage unit through a very simple process
22:58
Speaker 5: of using false information. Somebody turns up with a utility girl,
23:04
Speaker 5: another identification they accepted at face value.
23:10
Speaker 1: Gaining entry to Coots's storage unit, the police made a
23:14
Speaker 1: shocking discovery.
23:18
Speaker 2: The police open the storage facility hard by Paul Kelly,
23:23
Speaker 2: stroke Graundcoots and discover Jane's clothing, a mail shirt with
23:30
Speaker 2: blood and seamen on it, and a condom.
23:34
Speaker 1: They also found Jane's swimming costume, her cell phone, purse,
23:39
Speaker 1: and a gas can. Forensic analysis revealed Jane's DNA on
23:44
Speaker 1: both the bloodstain top and the used condom, which also
23:48
Speaker 1: contained Coots's seamen. CCTV footage showed Coots had made multiple
23:55
Speaker 1: visits to the unit when Jane was missing. The evidence
23:59
Speaker 1: was overwhelming. Police finally had the proof they needed to
24:03
Speaker 1: arrest Coots for a second time.
24:05
Speaker 11: The thirty five year old was arrested here just after
24:08
Speaker 11: nine o'clock last night without a struggle. The police say
24:12
Speaker 11: he was one of the men they had already questioned
24:14
Speaker 11: when Jane disappeared.
24:16
Speaker 2: And it dawns on the police. That is entirely possible
24:23
Speaker 2: that Coots has kept Jane's body in that storage facility
24:30
Speaker 2: for up to five weeks.
24:33
Speaker 1: The day before Jane's body was discovered in the woods,
24:37
Speaker 1: CCTV footage showed Coots had moved a large cardboard box
24:42
Speaker 1: from his unit into a van.
24:45
Speaker 5: He had just had a very large box with him.
24:47
Speaker 5: You couldn't tell what was in it. There was evidence
24:53
Speaker 5: at the storage unit to suggest that what was in
24:58
Speaker 5: the box had been a corpse.
25:02
Speaker 1: On April the thirtieth, Graham Coots was charged with murder
25:06
Speaker 1: at Brighton Magistrate's Court and put on remand. With Coots
25:13
Speaker 1: in custody, detectives seized his home computer and uncovered the
25:18
Speaker 1: disturbing truth about him.
25:20
Speaker 6: Not only did he appear to be kind of porn addicted,
25:25
Speaker 6: he was obsessed with women's necks, and he was obsessed
25:29
Speaker 6: with strangulation.
25:31
Speaker 5: When the police were able to obtain the details of
25:36
Speaker 5: the websites that he was paying for access to the
25:41
Speaker 5: contents of his computer filled the gap, as it were,
25:44
Speaker 5: as to why this happened in the way that it did.
25:48
Speaker 5: Because he was looking at all this necrophilia. Graham Coots
25:56
Speaker 5: had found sexual pleasure in the thought of dead women,
26:02
Speaker 5: and he was paying to subscribe to websites which contained
26:08
Speaker 5: that sort of material. So his girlfriend didn't know that.
26:13
Speaker 5: Nobody knew that, and that only came to light once
26:16
Speaker 5: he was arrested, and of course his computer was seized
26:20
Speaker 5: and then that material was found.
26:26
Speaker 1: It was a shocking development in the case, but despite
26:29
Speaker 1: the mounting evidence against him, Coots refused to admit to
26:33
Speaker 1: any crime. Then, several weeks after Coots was arrested, there
26:37
Speaker 1: was a breakthrough.
26:39
Speaker 2: To everyone's surprise, Coots actually admits that he killed her
26:46
Speaker 2: and says, and here is the most heinous part of
26:53
Speaker 2: it all, it was only a matter of consensual sex
27:00
Speaker 2: had gone wrong.
27:09
Speaker 1: Coots claimed that Jane Longhurst had died at his flat
27:13
Speaker 1: on the fourteenth of March two thousand and three, the
27:16
Speaker 1: date of her disappearance. He said they'd stopped by his
27:19
Speaker 1: home on their way to go swimming together.
27:22
Speaker 5: They were driving to the leisure center and he said,
27:25
Speaker 5: I just need to pop into the flat. The only
27:27
Speaker 5: account that we have of what went on in the
27:30
Speaker 5: flat is his account, where he said they started kissing,
27:35
Speaker 5: they went to the bedroom, and they started having consensual
27:40
Speaker 5: sex without a word being said between them. And he
27:46
Speaker 5: said that just by a nod, she agreed to breath
27:53
Speaker 5: control play during the course of the sexual intercourse, and
27:59
Speaker 5: he used around her neck accidentally she died in that process.
28:04
Speaker 3: Was his account.
28:07
Speaker 6: I don't believe for one minute that there was consensual
28:12
Speaker 6: sex that went wrong going on between Jane and Graham Coots,
28:17
Speaker 6: not given his history, not given the way that he
28:21
Speaker 6: was escalating.
28:26
Speaker 1: After Jane's death, Coots had stored her body in his
28:29
Speaker 1: shed before moving it to the storage facility on the
28:33
Speaker 1: twenty fifth of March, just days after his first interview
28:37
Speaker 1: with the police.
28:38
Speaker 4: It was a storage facility where people typically will store
28:42
Speaker 4: their belongings if they're moving house or if they need
28:44
Speaker 4: to clear out a property, so he basically put a
28:48
Speaker 4: body in a box which had fragile written on it.
28:54
Speaker 5: He kept a number of her belongings as a trophy,
28:59
Speaker 5: and he also condom that contained material that would be
29:06
Speaker 5: consistent with him having had sex with her, but he
29:11
Speaker 5: put everything in there, including all her effects. He then
29:14
Speaker 5: visited her regularly there for about a period of six weeks.
29:18
Speaker 1: But sickeningly, Coots wasn't just visiting the storage facility to
29:23
Speaker 1: make sure Jane's body was still there.
29:26
Speaker 7: The detectives had evidence to show that Graham Coots had
29:29
Speaker 7: visited the body of Jane Longhurst in the Yellow Box
29:33
Speaker 7: storage unit ten or eleven times.
29:36
Speaker 5: Initially, he just had ordinary daytime access to it, and
29:43
Speaker 5: clearly he then changed to twenty four hour access so
29:47
Speaker 5: that he could be there when there were no staff there.
29:50
Speaker 7: He was recorded visiting these extreme pornography shortly after visiting
29:56
Speaker 7: the body, so it was quite clear that this man
29:59
Speaker 7: was act out a perverse and deeply sickening sexual fantasy,
30:04
Speaker 7: not only in real time, but long after Jane had
30:08
Speaker 7: been so brutally murdered.
30:10
Speaker 2: It is the most chilling thought of all. He's paid
30:15
Speaker 2: for out of ours access so that he doesn't have
30:18
Speaker 2: to always be seen when he's visiting Jane's remains is
30:23
Speaker 2: truly horrifying.
30:26
Speaker 1: Eventually, after storing Jane's body for five weeks, Coots knew
30:31
Speaker 1: he had to try and hide the truth of what
30:34
Speaker 1: had happened to.
30:35
Speaker 5: Her, and then because of the state of the body,
30:41
Speaker 5: he went in late at night, and there was a
30:46
Speaker 5: very good CCTV of him with a palette truck taking
30:50
Speaker 5: a large box out, putting it in the back of
30:51
Speaker 5: his cur and he drove to West Sussex and set
30:55
Speaker 5: a light to her body there.
30:58
Speaker 1: Graham Coots's confess ession to strangling Jane and hiding her
31:02
Speaker 1: body was a pivotal moment in the investigation, but despite
31:07
Speaker 1: the evidence against him, Coots was going to plead not guilty.
31:12
Speaker 1: The detectives had to prove that this was no accident,
31:17
Speaker 1: there was no sex game that had gone wrong. Prosecutors
31:21
Speaker 1: would need to show to a jury that there was
31:23
Speaker 1: a motive for murder.
31:26
Speaker 5: It seemed me to be a compelling case where he
31:31
Speaker 5: was the person who had not only murdered her, but
31:34
Speaker 5: kept her body for his own purposes thereafter and then
31:39
Speaker 5: disposed of it.
31:41
Speaker 1: During the eleven day trial, the defense argued that Jane's
31:45
Speaker 1: death had been an accident, but the prosecution contradicted Keutes's
31:50
Speaker 1: version of events with forensic evidence that they claimed proved otherwise.
31:56
Speaker 1: A key part of the evidence came down to understanding
31:59
Speaker 1: the nature of the act that had caused her death.
32:03
Speaker 16: The defense would argue that the brief encounter of the
32:07
Speaker 16: pressure being applied to the neck has caused death rapidly. However,
32:12
Speaker 16: reality that's very unlikely. Death doesn't occur quickly, occurs over
32:17
Speaker 16: several minutes with sustained pressure to the neck, and the
32:21
Speaker 16: victim would certainly be showing signs that they're struggling. Now,
32:25
Speaker 16: if it was a consensual act, you'd expect the person
32:27
Speaker 16: inflicting that act to then realize that all this isn't
32:31
Speaker 16: right and I should stop. But obviously in this case
32:33
Speaker 16: that didn't occur.
32:35
Speaker 15: Hearing my sister's reputation being slurred as a form of
32:39
Speaker 15: defense totally and accept when very difficult to endure.
32:45
Speaker 1: Journalist Helen Carter covered the trial.
32:49
Speaker 4: He claimed that it was consensual sex that had gone
32:51
Speaker 4: wrong and that she was a willing participant in this
32:55
Speaker 4: sort of asphyxiation, which was a complete lie. He was
33:00
Speaker 4: pure gas lighting. They weren't involved in a relationship, she
33:04
Speaker 4: was planning a life with her boyfriend away from Sussex,
33:08
Speaker 4: and she was hoping to become a mother.
33:12
Speaker 1: While the facts of his actions were presented in court,
33:15
Speaker 1: Coots showed little emotion.
33:18
Speaker 5: Coots pleaded not guilty. Throughout he was a remarkably calm man.
33:24
Speaker 5: As I recall, I think always believed that he was
33:28
Speaker 5: going to be found not guilty.
33:31
Speaker 4: Graham Coots would like to convince the jury that he
33:37
Speaker 4: was a miscarriage of justice. He was at pains to
33:42
Speaker 4: deny any responsibility for her death, and it must have
33:45
Speaker 4: been so hard for Jane's partner, Malcolm, to sit there
33:49
Speaker 4: and listen to this person deny any irresponsibility for murdering
33:54
Speaker 4: his beloved partner who he was planning the rest of
33:57
Speaker 4: his life.
33:58
Speaker 1: With Coots's defense that the strangulation was consensual and Jane's
34:05
Speaker 1: death was an accident was not believed by the jury.
34:08
Speaker 1: After nine hours of deliberation at Lewis Crown Court, they
34:12
Speaker 1: unanimously found him guilty of murder on the fourth of
34:22
Speaker 1: February two thousand and four. Coots was sentenced to thirty years,
34:27
Speaker 1: later reduced to twenty six years on appeal, and was
34:30
Speaker 1: sent to HMP Wakefield. But the agony for Jane's loved
34:36
Speaker 1: ones was far from over.
34:38
Speaker 2: In the months that followed, Coots launched a number of
34:42
Speaker 2: appeals around a very specific legal ground that the jury
34:49
Speaker 2: had not been offered the alternative explanation that Coots had
34:54
Speaker 2: indeed killed her accidentally during consensual sex, in other words,
34:59
Speaker 2: that it was manslaughter rather than murder.
35:04
Speaker 1: Two and a half years later, the House of Lords
35:07
Speaker 1: granted Coots's appeal. His conviction was quashed on the nineteenth
35:11
Speaker 1: of October two thousand and six, and a retrial ordered.
35:15
Speaker 1: He would remain in custody.
35:19
Speaker 4: The friends and family of Jane Longhurst, they had the
35:22
Speaker 4: indignity of her being murdered in such horrific circumstances, then
35:26
Speaker 4: the denials of false stories, of lies, a smears that
35:29
Speaker 4: he's spread. But they have to go through one trial,
35:32
Speaker 4: the stress of that, and then for him to appeal
35:35
Speaker 4: it and there be a retrial. It's reliving that most traumatic,
35:40
Speaker 4: horrific part of the life.
35:43
Speaker 1: In June two thousand and seven, a second trial began,
35:48
Speaker 1: this time with manslaughter as a possibility. Ballister Richard Barton
35:53
Speaker 1: once again acted for the prosecution.
35:56
Speaker 5: Retrials are always more of a challenge, but I never
36:04
Speaker 5: had any doubt, and I'm sure that the police and
36:06
Speaker 5: the CPS never had any doubt of his guilt.
36:10
Speaker 1: On Wednesday, the fourth of July two thousand and seven,
36:14
Speaker 1: after Juras had deliberated for thirteen hours, Coots was once
36:18
Speaker 1: again found guilty of murder by a majority verdict and
36:22
Speaker 1: sentenced to life in prison.
36:26
Speaker 4: Crown courts are dignified places where high drama is not
36:31
Speaker 4: permitted by judges, but following the verdict in the retrial,
36:36
Speaker 4: there were cheers from the public gallery from the friends
36:40
Speaker 4: and family of Jane Longhurst.
36:42
Speaker 3: And I can hardly blame them.
36:44
Speaker 2: Judge Richard Brown told him at the second trial, and
36:49
Speaker 2: I quote in seeking perverted sexual gratification by way of
36:54
Speaker 2: your sordid and evil fantasies, You've taken her life and
37:00
Speaker 2: devastated the lives of those she loved and those who
37:04
Speaker 2: loved her. And he concluded by saying you've shown not
37:08
Speaker 2: one shot of remorse as.
37:11
Speaker 17: He was driven away. The prosecution described this murder as
37:15
Speaker 17: a despicable crime compounded by a despicable defense.
37:21
Speaker 1: Despite Coots being behind bars for the rest of his life,
37:25
Speaker 1: for Jane's mother, Liz and her sister Sue, the fight
37:28
Speaker 1: for justice wasn't over.
37:31
Speaker 15: It's been horrendous year for my family, with the murder
37:37
Speaker 15: of my sister, the violence, murder of my sister Jane
37:41
Speaker 15: Longhurst by the strangulation and rape ground Coots, who is
37:48
Speaker 15: now what life imprisonment for this murder was fueled by
37:53
Speaker 15: the Internet downloading images from websites do you pay by
38:00
Speaker 15: using your credit card?
38:01
Speaker 4: Following the conviction of Graham Coots, Liz campaigned to get
38:07
Speaker 4: the law changed because he was found to have pornography
38:12
Speaker 4: which sparked his interest in the nineteen nineties, and nothing
38:15
Speaker 4: was done about it.
38:18
Speaker 1: Martin Salter, labor MP for Reading at the time, worked
38:22
Speaker 1: on a campaign with Liz Longhurst.
38:26
Speaker 7: She felt desperately sad, obviously as to what happened to
38:29
Speaker 7: her daughter, and desperately sad that other young people could
38:33
Speaker 7: easily be put at risk. She wasn't ever seeking to
38:37
Speaker 7: outlaw pornography. What she was concerned about was those extreme
38:41
Speaker 7: imagery that would tip and I think it was her
38:43
Speaker 7: words tip an unbalanced mind into acting out their fantasies.
38:49
Speaker 7: I think when we started, we couldn't get ahead around
38:53
Speaker 7: the fact that it was perfectly legal to cast images
39:01
Speaker 7: of young women being murdered and raped, some cases in
39:05
Speaker 7: real time, for those images to be available and able
39:09
Speaker 7: to be disseminated right away across the United Kingdom.
39:14
Speaker 1: Even though the UK's Obscene Publications Act banned offensive material
39:20
Speaker 1: being published in Britain, it was no match for the
39:23
Speaker 1: millions of illicit images being posted on the Internet from
39:27
Speaker 1: all over the world.
39:29
Speaker 7: Much as they would have liked to the Metropotan Police
39:31
Speaker 7: Vice Squad or the law enforcement agencies in this country
39:35
Speaker 7: can't go after Internet sites that are hosted in South
39:38
Speaker 7: America or somewhere else in the globe.
39:41
Speaker 1: After eighteen months of Liz Longhurst campaigning, the UK's obscenity
39:46
Speaker 1: laws were changed, making it illegal to possess pornography that
39:51
Speaker 1: features rape or torture.
39:53
Speaker 5: Jane's mother, Elizabeth, was an extraordinary woman who was very
40:00
Speaker 5: dignified throughout and the worst nightmare for any parent that
40:06
Speaker 5: she went through. But she campaigned tirelessly thereafter along with others,
40:14
Speaker 5: and they achieved a change in the law. And I
40:17
Speaker 5: regularly prosecute people who have extreme pornography similar to much
40:22
Speaker 5: that KOTS at the time was looking at legally.
40:27
Speaker 3: I think bringing.
40:28
Speaker 7: About this change in the law meant everything to Lise,
40:32
Speaker 7: just what she strived for. I was privileged to be
40:36
Speaker 7: part of that exercise, to help her on that journey.
40:38
Speaker 7: And whilst it meant everything, clearly didn't mean as much
40:43
Speaker 7: as having her daughter back.
40:50
Speaker 1: The laws that Liz Longhurst campaign helped change are still
40:54
Speaker 1: keeping people like Graham Cootes off the streets and protecting
40:59
Speaker 1: other families from the living nightmare that Jane's loved ones
41:03
Speaker 1: went through.
41:05
Speaker 6: Graham Coots will always present a danger to women. He's
41:08
Speaker 6: presented a danger to women since he was a teenager,
41:12
Speaker 6: and that really is by his own admission. He wasn't
41:16
Speaker 6: saying I'm a potential rapist. He was saying I'm a
41:19
Speaker 6: potential killer. He was saying that right from the beginning.
41:23
Speaker 6: He is never going to be safe to be around women.
41:29
Speaker 5: He was a young man with a very dark side
41:35
Speaker 5: that he hid from everybody very well.
41:39
Speaker 3: What he did was evil.
41:42
Speaker 2: He could have saved her had he stopped strangling her,
41:46
Speaker 2: but he didn't. He could have told the police where
41:50
Speaker 2: she was, but he didn't. He'd endeavored to keep his
41:56
Speaker 2: perverted fantasy alive for as long as he possibly could
42:01
Speaker 2: before he dumped her naked body and set fire to it.
42:11
Speaker 1: Graham Coots was a man obsessed with satisfying his darkest
42:16
Speaker 1: sexual fantasies, fueled by violent pornography. He strangled Jane Longhurst,
42:22
Speaker 1: a young woman in the prime of her life, and
42:25
Speaker 1: then kept her body in a storage unit for his
42:27
Speaker 1: own twisted gratification. His cold blooded and depraved behavior sent
42:32
Speaker 1: shock waves around the country. Coots showed no remorse for
42:36
Speaker 1: his horrific actions, contend to destroy the victim's reputation to
42:41
Speaker 1: escape justice. Graham Coots will be remembered as one of
42:45
Speaker 1: Britain's most evil killers.