A WOMAN said yesterday she warned that killer Graham Coutts was a dangerous sex offender five years before he murdered schoolteacher Jane Longhurst.
Coutts, 35, was charged after mother-of-two Georgina Langridge caught him spying on her in a swimming pool changing room in East Grinstead, Sussex, with a video camera in September 1997.
Mrs Langridge, a sales director from East Grinstead, was so shocked when Coutts persuaded three female magistrates at Mid Sussex Magistrates' Court, near Horsham, that he was innocent that she wrote a letter warning he was a threat.
She revealed that she felt sick on discovering Coutts, from Hove, had been jailed for a minimum of 30 years at Lewes Crown Court last month for strangling Miss Longhurst, 31, from Brighton, to satisfy a sexual fascination for dead women before burning her body.
She said: ''When I realised who it was, I felt sick. I couldn't believe he escaped prosecution for what he did to me and I tried to warn the legal system about him. Had he been found guilty, he would have been picked up sooner for what he did to poor Jane.''
A Sussex Police source said they did not know about these allegation against Coutts while investigating Miss Longhurst's death, as records showed he had no previous convictions.
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