Guitarist Graham Coutts was this afternoon found guilty of the murder of Brighton special needs teacher Jane Longhurst.

The part-time salesman faces at least 30 years in prison after a jury of five women and seven men at Lewes Crown Court reached a unanimous verdict after more than nine hours' deliberation.

Coutts, 35, strangled viola player Miss Longhurst, 31, with a pair of tights on March 14 last year.

He had denied killing Miss Longhurst, of Shaftesbury Road, Brighton, claiming her death came when a consensual strangling sex session went wrong.

He kept her body in storage for 35 days, at first in a flat above the home he shared with his pregnant girlfriend in Waterloo Street, Hove, and later at the Big Yellow storage warehouse in Brighton.

Coutts visited Jane's body on several occasions and a used condom was found by detectives who searched the store upon his arrest.

On April 19, he took her naked body to Wiggonholt Common near Pulborough and set it on fire.

Jailing Coutts for life, Judge Richard Brown said: "Everything that this court has heard about Jane showed her to be the sort of person who enriched all those who came into contact with her.

"The undoubted love of her partner, her life, her work and her music and her family screamed off every page of the evidence I have heard in this case. 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.

"By persisting in your denial you have put them through the ordeal of this courtroom and have forced them to live the last moments of her life and by the unbelievable degradation of her body you have shown not one jot of remorse."

Jane's partner, Malcolm Sentance, shouted "Bastard" at Coutts as he was sent down to the cells.

Coutts' former partner, Sandra Gates, leant towards him over the dock and shouted in his face: "You pervert."

Jane's sister, Sue Barnett, and her mother Liz Longhurst wept openly in the public gallery.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Dennis, who was in charge of the case, said outside court: "A very dangerous man had been put away and I'm very pleased for that."