Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (11 page)

He told another girlfriend that he had an increasing urge to rape and strangle a woman and she persuaded him to see a psychiatrist. But Coutts quickly stopped treatment and instead began to frequent websites such as Hangingbitches, Necrobabes and Deathbyasphysixia. (These sites were shut down after details of his reliance on them came to light.) He searched for further images of sadism and necrophilia by entering the terms ‘strangled women’ and ‘dead women’

into a search engine.

As the years passed, Graham Coutts’ behaviour became increasingly misogynistic. When one of his girlfriends wept because of a family problem he told her that the tears were a turn-on and he began to masturbate. On another occasion he completely depersonalised her by putting a pillowcase over her head before they had sex.

Graham had originally hoped to be a full-time professional musician but he’d settled for playing the guitar in a pub band. It was respectable creative work but a far cry from the worldwide fame he’d longed for and his sense of frustration doubtless intensified his fantasies of being sexually in control.

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The victim

Graham Coutts now began to fantasise about a specific victim – 31-year-old Jane Longhurst who taught English and music to children with special needs. Jane had been friends with Graham’s girlfriend, music teacher Lisa Stephens, for the past five years and was delighted that the couple were expecting twins. Jane and her boyfriend Malcolm spent time with Lisa and Graham at their Brighton flat, and Jane, who loved keeping fit, sometimes went swimming with Graham.

She tended to see the best in people: she came from a close family, had met Malcolm in church and was adored by her pupils. She had no reason to think that her friend’s partner was fantasising about slowly strangling her. Sadists often choose strangulation as a method of torture and eventual death as they can tighten then loosen the ligature pressure, enjoying their victim’s struggle for breath.

The obsession deepens

Meanwhile, Graham Coutts’ fetish was getting worse. He’d now downloaded over 800 images of women being raped, hung and strangled. Many of the images he downloaded also involved necrophilia, either real or staged. Coutts wanted a woman whom he could rape and strangle and a body which he could return to again and again.

Power and control were becoming increasingly important to this prematurely-balding man. His guitar playing didn’t bring in a sufficient wage so he’d become a part-time Kleeneze salesman – delivering catalogues door to door and taking orders for cleaning products – to make ends meet. In a few weeks he’d be responsible for twins; yet more stress.

He told his girlfriend to change the password on their computer so that he could no longer use the Internet to 89

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access the asphyxiation-oriented sites as he thought this was inconsistent with fatherhood. But trying to ignore his desires only made them stronger, and on 13 March 2003 he spent two hours downloading images of strangled women and masturbating over them.

The following afternoon Graham Coutts engineered events so that he had Jane to himself. All that’s certain is that she phoned her friend Lisa in the morning as Lisa had been off work for several days with morning sickness. But she’d gone back to work that day and Jane spoke to Graham instead. He probably asked her to go swimming with him – her costume would later be found at his storage unit along with her clothes and mobile phone.

Raped

When Graham Coutts had Jane alone in his flat (Lisa wasn’t due back for several hours) he overpowered her and tightly wound a stocking around her throat. He raped her as he strangled her – the strangulation would have taken approximately three minutes and it left the nylon deeply embedded in her neck. He then hid her body in an empty upstairs flat to which he had the keys, probably returning to it frequently and re-enacting his strangling fantasies. In any case, he’d later bound a green scarf around Jane’s neck.

Eleven days later, knowing that the new tenants of the flat were about to arrive, he rented a storage unit under the pseudonym of Paul Kelly and drove the body there, returning to it ten times for sexual pleasure, making a visit every three to four days.

Body found

By mid April the decomposing corpse had begun to give off a noticeably rank odour so on the nineteenth he removed it 90

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from the storage company: the company noticed that when he took away a large box from his unit, the foul smell which had permeated the area disappeared. Coutts then drove to a bird sanctuary at Wiggonholt Common near Pulborough, West Sussex and set fire to Jane’s body, using petrol from a can that he’d bought at a service station in Hove. But he’d covered her head with a box marked ‘Fragile’ – and there was a very similar box at his home also marked with this word. Furthermore, unknown to him, his movements at the storage unit and at the service station had been caught on CCTV.

Semen

Interviewed by police, he initially denied everything. But when he was shown the evidence they’d found in his storage locker –

a used condom and Jane’s blouse smeared with Coutts’ semen, her bloodstained trousers and a bloodstained rope – he began to rock back and forth. Becoming tearful, he said, ‘I can’t talk about it. I just don’t know what happened.’

Blaming the Internet

As word of Coutts’ interest in misogynistic websites became public knowledge, various individuals and groups blamed the Internet for Jane Longhurst’s murder. But there were lust murders long before the Internet was available, with would-be killers finding source material in everything from the Bible to lingerie catalogues. Paedophiles can even become aroused by toy and baby catalogues. There have also been instances of killers with a hanging fetish taking ordinary photos of women from newspapers and drawing nooses around their necks. Admittedly the sites Coutts visited were particularly misogynistic, but they wouldn’t have driven the average man to kill.

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Arrest and trial

On Monday 28 April, Coutts was arrested and remanded in custody. Appearing at Lewes Crown Court in November 2003 he pleaded not guilty. Taking the stand, he claimed that he and Jane had had consensual breath-restricting sex using a stocking and that her death by strangulation had been an accident; in his words ‘a tragic and totally unforeseen blunder’. In reality, Jane had been very happy with her live-in boyfriend Malcolm and they had been talking about getting married. Malcolm was devastated by her death.

But the prosecution’s case was stronger, for they argued that if Jane had died during a consensual session leaving Coutts horrified, why would he debase her corpse again and again?

Coutts wept as he watched video footage of himself buying petrol at a garage and removing the box containing Jane’s body from the storage unit. He was so upset that the court had to briefly recess. He admitted that he’d had a fetish about women’s necks since he was 15 and said that his strangulation fantasies also hailed from that date.

The judge said that the strangler had been seeking perverted sexual gratification and, on 4 February 2004, sentenced him to a minimum of 30 years, ensuring that he’d be 65 before he could apply for parole.

In 2004, Court of Appeal judges rejected his appeal against conviction but reduced his 30 year minimum jail sentence to 26 years. But they added that his case raised issues of ‘general public importance’ fit for consideration by the House of Lords.

Coutts’ legal team then approached the House of Lords, arguing that there was insufficient evidence of intent and so alternatives to a murder conviction should have been offered to the jury. In June 2005, five Law Lords agreed 92

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that the jury should have had the opportunity to bring in a manslaughter verdict. They referred the matter back to the Court of Appeal. There is now a possibility that Graham Coutts will be retried for Jane Longhurst’s death, with manslaughter

– rather than only a murder conviction or acquittal – as one of the options available for the jury to select.

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PART TWO

MOVING ON: AMERICAN SADISTS

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CHAPTER SEVEN

ROBERT BEN RHOADES

Rhoades abducted an unknown number of young
girls throughout America from the late 1970s to
1990. Though only convicted of murdering one
teenager, the police suspect him of up to 50 unsolved
homicides. He was finally caught with a naked and
bridled young woman in his truck.

Formative horror

Robert was born on 22 November 1945 to Betty and Ben Rhoades. Ben was a 32-year-old army man, whilst Betty was a 31-year-old housewife. Robert was their third child and they would go on to have a fourth.

The family lived in a small house in County Bluffs, Iowa.

Initially, Ben Rhoades was stationed overseas but when he came home he found a job as a fireman. He was a strict disciplinarian and an obsessive paedophile.

It’s known that Robert’s formative years were deeply unhappy, writing of his sadism, his biographer commented that ‘Rhoades’s childhood marked him to become what he was’. Robert would later hint to his third wife that he’d been sexually abused and admit that he’d had a terrible upbringing but he couldn’t bring himself to go into further detail about what had taken place. (Decades later he would still remain 96

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mute about what he’d endured, when admitting to being an abuse victim might have warded off the death penalty.) Outwardly, he did reasonably well at school, joining the choir and the French Club. But he got into trouble with the police for tampering with a car and for fighting. In retrospect, these might have been cries for help.

Just before Robert graduated from school, his father was arrested for paedophilia, having sexually assaulted his 12-year-old niece. He received a suspended sentence. But he went on to sexually molest his 12-year-old nephew, was caught and committed suicide rather than go to jail.

Three failed marriages

By now Robert had joined the Marine Corps, but the following year he was arrested for robbery and discharged from the service. He returned to Iowa and married, the marriage producing a son. But after four years the relationship broke down and he took his two-year-old boy on a road trip in order to keep him away from his mother, the actions of an immature and very angry man. Forced to return the child, Robert then spent his life savings on prostitutes. His second marriage also failed and he married for a third time, but within six months he was bored with the relationship and introduced his wife to a swingers’ club.

When he wasn’t evidencing his sadism, Rhoades displayed a strong masochistic streak. He persuaded several of his lovers to urinate on him, and he took the slave role when he went to a fancy dress party. He also gave his wife a male slave he’d contacted through an advertisement, and whom he clearly identified with.

But he remained sadistic, and this showed in the way that he increasingly humiliated his third wife. She’d had a previous failed marriage and he preyed on her fear of being alone again.

He did what the classic sadist does, choosing a woman with 97

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low self-esteem then isolating her from her relatives. Soon she became his figurative whipping boy, as he told her that virtually everything she did was wrong. But after a particularly vicious argument he raped her anally and vaginally and she found the courage to walk out on him.

Rhoades now had the freedom to victimise young girls, something he’d probably done before – the police would later surmise that he was actively abducting and torturing hitch-hikers throughout the 1980s, no doubt killing some and terrorising others into keeping silent. Superficially charming, the long haul truck driver could quickly persuade vulnerable young women to enter his vehicle.

Shana’s abduction

In January 1990, he ate at a truck stop in San Bernardino, California – but his mind wasn’t on his meal as he had other appetites he wished to satisfy. He offered 18-year-old hitchhiker Shana Holts a lift, she accepted and soon fell asleep in his cab.

Shana awoke to find the truck driver pulling in to the side of the deserted highway. Frightened, she tried to get out of the cab but he slapped her across the face and pushed his pistol into her ribs. He then forced her, at gunpoint, into the sleeper compartment where he handcuffed her to chains which hung from a ceiling bar. He also cuffed her ankles and adjusted her until she was spreadeagled on the bed.

Rhoades removed the terrified girl’s blouse before forcing a horse’s bit into her mouth and buckling it around her head.

Her suffering still not complete for him, he tortured her with pins. Her ordeal would last until the following month. Later, he chained her to the outside of the truck and cut off her long hair before whipping her with a leather-thonged whip.

Rhoades would cut off the hair of each of his female victims

– it was part of his signature. Abusive fathers often force their 98

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children to have humiliatingly short haircuts, so perhaps this was done to him.

For the next few hours, the sadist felt a measure of peace.

He’d used the horse bridle to show his victim that she had the lowly status of an animal and had made her scream, getting a misguided revenge on the woman or women who had failed him in his childhood. He’d ejaculated whilst witnessing her pain, and this tends to cause a temporary reduction in a sadist’s rage.