‘I tried to make him seek help but he wouldn’t,’ Sandra continued. ‘Now a lovely girl is dead. Everyone says it could have been me.’ She ended by saying, ‘He is an evil, perverted psychopath and is where he belongs, in prison. Hopefully, he will never be able to hurt another woman again.’
Detective Chief Inspector Steve Dennis, who had led the case, was in complete agreement, saying that ‘a very dangerous man’ had been removed from society.
Looking back into Graham Coutts’s recent history, it is possible to see a warning of a tragedy to come. Seven years before murdering Jane Longhurst, he had unceremoniously intruded into the life of a lady named Georgina Langridge, and she had never forgotten it.
When Mrs Langridge caught Coutts secretly filming her daughters in a changing cubicle at a public swimming pool, she yelled at him. He had been poking the camera over the top of the cubicle, videoing her daughters as they undressed. Confronted by the irate mother, the Peeping Tom fled but was quickly arrested by police after poolside staff contacted them.
Subsequently, he was charged with the offence but was later acquitted by magistrates. On learning of this, Mrs Langridge was swift in writing to them. Her letter shows remarkable foresight into the misdeeds of a fledgling sexual criminal. In part of her letter, she had angrily written, ‘History often proves that this type of behaviour continues, you now have to look to yourselves… and therefore accept responsibility for any further offences this person will commit.’
After the trial, Liz Longhurst would have a meeting with then Home Secretary David Blunkett, who was very keen to stamp out violent online pornography. Following a brief investigation, it was agreed that Blunkett would take his findings to the USA and call for a clampdown on sick internet websites, the view being taken that the two countries are jointly responsible for the spirit of lawlessness. After a meeting with the Deputy Attorney General, Jim Comey, it was agreed that they should take this step.
The Home Office has claimed that websites devoted to necrophilia are rare but did warrant action. (The authors can confirm that there are more of these sites than most people would like to believe.)
The Home Office official spokesman said, ‘We have agreed that a specific group of officials would meet jointly to work out what the next stage would be. We agreed that we would put our heads together to get some action on the issue. The Deputy Attorney General said it was something they had been increasingly concerned about. Experts make clear however that this kind of manoeuvre can be difficult legally, especially if sites are hosted overseas.’
The head of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit recently said that websites devoted to necrophilia and cannibalism are ‘corrupting vulnerable people and should be closed’. Chief Superintendent Len Hynds, who heads the unit, says, ‘For the internet to continue to grow as a mainstream medium for businesses, education and entertainment, it must design out the minority factors that inhabit cyberspace for their own perverse gratification.’
But, as one IT security manager has commented, ‘On the pragmatic side, just how do they think that this can be enforced – it wasn’t christened the “worldwide web” without good reason. Like all “vices” they will always find an outlet and a supplier for the depraved and corrupt in society. Let’s stop wasting our time and effort on what we can’t control and go for the organised crime syndicates that peddle this filth.’
The Internet Watch Foundation also warned that, from a legal position, a complete cessation of these kinds of sites could be very complicated. ‘At the IWF we do sometimes receive complaints about websites and material which contains adult content, but unless they are hosted in the UK and may potentially be “borderline extreme” in terms of content, i.e. it is unclear as to whether the images may be illegal, it is not within our remit to further investigate these sites.’
A further statement read, ‘Due to the increasing diversity in social attitudes, “adult” content, the context in which it is viewed and possessed and any “influence” it may have, is very difficult to govern.’
While society is now protected from Graham Coutts, the myriad deviant websites he habitually patronised are still fully accessible. It seems that Mr Blunkett and Mr Comey have not had quite the impact on internet-based purveyors of violent pornography that they intended.
There must be scores of latent sex monsters waiting to emerge into the real world once their daily diet of internet horrors is no longer enough to quench their dark and morally perverse cravings. The beast that is Graham Coutts was just one of them.
The tragic case of Jane Longhurst raises more questions than it provides answers. Clearly, Jane was a thoroughly decent and lovely young woman whose precious life was brought to an end at the hands of a depraved monster. This loss can never be replaced. However, I am obliged to focus this postscript more towards the worthless Graham Coutts than his victim, for we can learn much from his behaviour.
Clearly, Coutts was a man predisposed towards anti-social behaviour, as this account has shown, whose tendencies were catered for by certain websites. It is also correct to say that many individuals of his ilk commit similar crimes without being exposed to pornography published on the internet. We only have to look at other men – Ted Bundy, Michael Bruce Ross, Ed Kemper and legions of others who have been exposed to pornography through magazines and video – to know that before the advent of the internet the same types of sex-related murders were being committed.
Invariably, most of these offenders shift the blame for their actions on to their exposure to pornography, as Ted Bundy has stated unequivocally, ‘I was exposed to pornography for years. It led me to my violent ways.’
The argument as to whether long periods of exposure to hardcore porn encourages or triggers rape or sexual homicide has led to a division of opinion into two main camps. There are those who say that there is no empirical evidence to support the contention that exposure to this type of material encourages and triggers these crimes. The other side maintains the opposite.
I would be failing in my role as a criminologist if I did not highlight the obvious fact that millions of men, and a smaller number of women, do enjoy access to hardcore pornography, whether through the internet or through other media, and this appears to have no adverse effects on them as far as anti-social behaviour is concerned.
This being said, we are quite sure most will agree that for a minority of people – those with a latent disposition to committing such offences, as well as those without the normal psychological balancing mechanisms enjoyed by most of us, coupled with low self-esteem and, perhaps, underlying psychiatric problems – exposure to hardcore porn of the kind enjoyed by Graham Coutts is extremely destructive indeed.
Going further, Steven Morris, my co-author, has made an interesting and, I believe, valid observation. He suggests that people like Coutts who harbour such destructive fantasies may actually find support for their warped thinking when visiting these sites which boast tens of thousands of seemingly like-minded users.
‘Subconsciously, Coutts felt he was joining some kind of club,’ says Steven. ‘With his already predisposed warped mindset, these sites started to legitimise his way of thinking.’
This is a perceptive line of thought, and the same rationale may be applied to other types of website, for those concerned with giving help to would-be suicides and with euthanasia offer similar ‘membership-type’ content that implies ‘that one is not alone’. For loners, in most cases people who are lacking in connection with the real world, these sites become very powerful influences and motivators.
For most people, visiting these sites is merely a ‘healthy’ outlet for their fantasies and no real long-term harm is done. However, there will always be a few individuals – as is illustrated by the cases of the cannibal Armin Meiwes and his victim; the suicidal Suzy Gonzales; and Sharon Lopatka, who wanted to be murdered by an internet lover – who will go beyond the norm, however extreme the ‘norm’ on the internet might appear to be.
Whether Cou
tts would have killed Jane had he not visited the sites he did is a matter for conjecture – we cannot get inside his head and read his mind. But we can say with confidence that his exposure to these sites pushed him further into his fantasy world.
And it is here that I would like to leave you with a few chilling facts. Please make of them what you will.
There are over 80,000 websites dedicated to snuff rape and killings, cannibalism and necrophilia.
Law-enforcement agencies in the USA, including the FBI, the Customs Service and the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), say that medium- to long-term exposure to pornography can trigger sex crimes, including serial rape and sexual homicide.
It is interesting to note that the FBI found that 81 per cent of the serial murderers they interviewed had been exposed to pornography for long periods and indulged in compulsive masturbation.
Every single day of the week, thousands more men, and some women, are committing sex-related crimes, including rape and murder, after exposing themselves to internet pornography, when, without the exposure, they would not have done so.
X-rated internet pornography is a cancer. But there seems to be no way to cut out this social disease and the number of crimes involved is growing exponentially: at any one time over three thousand such crimes are listed on internet pages. Almost every US state has sites dedicated to listing internet-generated sex crimes within its legal jurisdiction. (Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg, for there is also a thriving world of sexual offences not related to the internet.)
In 2003, the web filtering service N2H2 reported that the number of pornographic web pages topped 260 million and that the figure was still growing at an unprecedented rate. N2H2’s database contained 14 million identified pages of pornography in 1998, so the growth to 260 million represents an almost 21-fold increase in just five years. In five years’ time… well, you can work that out for yourself.
For an individual interested – and many are well and truly hooked – in all forms of pornography, this is the equivalent of having instant access to pornographic books and magazines offering a total of 260 million pages of illicit material and images – with hundreds more such publications, covering every conceivable sexual subject, being delivered daily to his home.
Long gone are the days when Dad popped down to the newsagent to collect his fishing magazine and returned home to discreetly slip a copy of Playboy under the bedroom carpet.
At the time of writing there are more than 1.3 million porn websites, and N2H2 says that more than 32 million individuals visited at least one in September 2003 – figures for 2005 are not yet available – and of these nearly 22.8 million (71 per cent) were male.
SUZY GONZALES: INTERNET SUICIDE
‘I’m no toothpick supermodel, though. I am just your average Joan who has everything to lose and is willing to lose it for absolutely no reason. I am tired. I want to sleep.’
SUZY GONZALES IN A SUICIDE NOTE
It was bound to happen. First, proponents of the culture of death brought us physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Now we must contend with IAS – internet-assisted suicide. For the promotion and facilitation of self-destruction has entered cyberspace. And how indifferent to the value of human life certain segments of our society have grown, and how callous they are when faced with a despairing person driven to contemplate suicide.
First they bestow moral permission.
Then they teach the intending suicide how to do it.
Finally they keep the person company until the deed is done.
It is the modern version of the howling crowd yelling ‘Jump! Jump!’ at the suicidal figure standing on the window ledge of a tall building.
Wearing a fuchsia wig and carrying a stuffed two-headed cat that she’d stitched together from scratch, 19-year-old Suzy Gonzales zipped around the small ranching town of Red Bluff, Florida, on a red scooter. She came from a tight-knit family, favoured tartan skirts with green sneakers, had earned a full scholarship to Florida State University and possessed a radiant smile.
But she was severely depressed and wanted to kill herself.
Unbeknownst to her loved ones and friends, the teenager logged on to an obscure internet site to confide her darkest thoughts to strangers. There she found people who told her that suicide was an acceptable way to end her despair, and who gave her instructions on how to obtain a lethal dose of potassium cyanide and mix it into a deadly cocktail.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. America’s assisted-suicide advocacy groups have promoted the idea of suicide as the ‘ultimate civil right’ for years. And, just as the denizens of the internet site taught Suzy Gonzales how to kill herself, some publications have long instructed readers how to commit suicide, while conventions regularly feature guest speakers who bring their newly invented suicide machines for conventioneers to ooh and aah over. The devices are a much favoured, and almost instantly available, method of self-dispatch.
During the early hours of Sunday, 23 March 2003, after she cleaned her apartment and fed her kittens, Gonzales checked into a Tallahassee motel, where she stirred the poison into a glass of tap water, checked its acidity with a pH meter and drank it.
Her family, her best friend and the Tallahassee Police were notified of her death by time-delayed emails that she had prepared with the help of another member of the online community.
‘One last note – I will make this short, as I know it will be hard to deal with. If you haven’t heard by now, I have passed away.
‘I know I should have told you, but I have been depressed and suicidal for a long, long time – it is all right to be sad and it is all right to cry. These types of things tend to happen, and it really isn’t that big of a deal. Death is just another part of life.’
Gonzales’s is the fourteenth confirmed suicide associated with the online discussion group, which the authors do not identify. An additional 14 suicides are listed as ‘success stories’ but cannot be verified because the individuals used anonymous screen names and the group has refused to disclose their identities.
In fact, the number of suicides linked to the group may be higher. There is evidence that at least one person, who never actually communicated with the group, killed herself after downloading its instructions on how to commit suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide.
Founded in 1990, the group defines its philosophy as being ‘pro-choice’ as regards suicide. Participants view the act as a civil right that anyone should be able to exercise, for whatever reason.
Every day the internet site is filled with hopeless rants about life’s miseries, advertisements for suicide partners and requests for feedback on self-murder plans. Among the hottest items is a ‘Murder Methods file’, a step-by-step guide on how to commit suicide, by methods ranging from asphyxiation to rat poison.
The group vigorously defends itself, citing what it sees as a need for people to express suicidal thoughts without fear of being hospitalised by their therapists or alarming their families. But mental-health experts, and the relatives of group members who have died, charge that the group actually encourages depressed people to kill themselves.
The suicide group that Suzy Gonzales found has made a few headlines outside America. In one case, a 20-year-old Norwegian man placed an ad for a suicide partner. It was answered by a 17-year-old Austrian girl, the two met and in February 2000 they flung themselves off Norway’s 1,900-foot Pulpit Rock.
A year later a German man and a Californian woman, both in their forties, made a similar pact and shot themselves dead in a Monterey hotel.
Again in America, a 30-year-old unemployed salesman drove to a campsite overlooking the scenic Colorado River, lit the two charcoal grills he had stowed in his car and closed the windows. He died from inhaling the noxious gases.
Then there was the English teenager who hanged himself. Just before doing so, the 17-year-old created a website that opened with the message: ‘Hi, and welcome to the homepage of my death.’
&nb
sp; Suzy Gonzales first contacted the group on 12 January 2002, when she started a survey entitled ‘Why Do You Want To Die?’ She answered her own question first.
‘I’m bored. I am bored with life,’ she wrote. ‘I cannot possibly think of anything I want to do that is worth doing. I just want to sleep all day.’ She added that she was tired, sad and could enjoy nothing.
Over the next two months, Suzy sent more than 100 messages to the group. She described taking antidepressants that didn’t improve her mood, dropping out of Florida State University, where she was studying maths and meteorology, and calling a suicide hotline about ‘a friend’ before losing her nerve and hanging up to cry.
‘I have a wonderful family who will support me in all that I do,’ she wrote. ‘I make enough money to get by. I have a few close, excellent friends. I’m not hideous nor morbidly obese. I’m no toothpick supermodel, though. I am just your average Joan who has everything to lose and is willing to lose it for absolutely no reason. I am tired. I want to sleep.’
Like the relatives of other members of the online group who have killed themselves, Mike and Mary Gonzales had no idea of their daughter’s involvement with it until after her death.
When Suzy’s father, a robust 43-year-old retired firefighter, speaks of the online group, rage simmers beneath his controlled exterior. ‘She went to that group, and it was like throwing gasoline on a fire,’ said Mike Gonzales, whose own father died from a long-term illness a week before his daughter killed herself. ‘I’m all for free speech, but, once you start telling young impressionable kids how to kill themselves, that’s crossing the line. Someone should be held accountable.’
Mike Gonzales was particularly close to his daughter. They frequently chatted online and by telephone. Such was his devotion to Suzy that, when she became distressed after the September 11th terrorist attacks, he flew across the country and drove her back home to be with her family.
Murder.com Page 7
