A MONSTER who strangled a musician and kept her body as a trophy has been granted a switch to a Scottish prison.
Graham Coutts, 50, is serving a life sentence after keeping the murdered body of Jane Longhurst in storage for 35 days in Brighton in 2003.
But according to reports in The Scottish Sun, the extreme pornography obsessive has now been given a “dream move” from HMP Wakefield to a jail north of the border.
He is keeping a blog protesting his innocence, which a friend posts online, where he previously revealed his “beautiful view of a snow-topped mountain” at Saughton prison, where he was briefly held in 2010 and which sparked his desire for a transfer.
Now this week, he posted: “Finally, some good news, my cross-border transfer has now been approved.
“I even know which Scottish prison I will be going to — far, far, closer to my mother. I won’t say yet which prison, I don’t want any third-party interference.”
Coutts was 35 when he targeted Jane Longhurst, a talented 31-year-old viola player, of Shaftesbury Road, Brighton, in March 2003.
She worked in a school and also helped Brighton Youth Orchestra.
Coutts, of Leven, Fife, was the partner of her friend Lisa Stevens.
It was reported that he had held fantasies of strangling women from the age of 15.
He claimed “consensual sex had gone wrong” when he and Jane were at his flat in Waterloo Street.
He kept her body in a Big Yellow storage as a sick trophy and there was evidence of a used condom found there.
Eventually he took Jane’s body to woodlands near Pulborough and burned her remains.
He stood trial in 2004 and was found guilty of murder.
Judge Richard Brown told him: “In seeking perverted sexual gratification by way of your sordid and evil fantasies you have taken her life and devastated the lives of all those she loved and who loved her.”
The conviction in his first trial was quashed on a technicality, but he was again found guilty in July 2007 after a retrial, and was sentenced to life in prison, to serve at least 26 years.
Jane’s mother Liz Longhurst led a battle to make possessing pornographic images of torture, rape and necrophilia a criminal offence, and gained 50,000 signatures in 2009.
Coutts has now been granted his wish to switch prison, but whinged that he doesn’t want to share a prison cell.
He wrote: “One slightly concerning aspect — the Scottish Prison Service asked this prison if I was a smoker and my sexual orientation.
“That rings alarm bells for me – are they considering making me share a cell?
“I’ve written to the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) and the Scottish prison to find out if a shared cell is really a consideration.”
The Scottish Sun reported that Coutts’s “intra-UK transfer” had been accepted.
A source told the newspaper: “He will not be given a choice of cell, whether single or shared – and he is not guaranteed views of anything.”
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