Beyond Murder:

Convicting Jane’s Killer

director

1 x 60’, BBC1

Documentary on the sexual murder of teacher Jane Longhurst and how police and prosecution lawyers brought her killer, Graham Coutts, to justice.

Obsessed with asphyxiation and necrophilia, Coutts strangled Jane with a pair of tights and kept her body in a storage unit for a month, returning to it regularly before setting it alight in woodland. He claimed Jane had died during a consensual sex game that went wrong. But Coutts had harboured thoughts about raping and strangling a woman for years, a fantasy fuelled by his addiction to morbid and violent internet pornography.

In the last decade the number of men in the UK using the ‘rough sex’ defence, most recently seen in the case of murdered backpacker Grace Millane, has increased by 90%, with 30 women killed in what was claimed to have been consensual violent sexual activity. The youngest of these victims was just 16 years old.

Campaigners are now demanding a change in the law, saying the ‘rough sex’ defence allows men to get away with murder.