The 31-year-old music teacher was strangled by Coutts

Graham Coutts, 35, was cleared in 1997 of spying on a woman changing at an East Grinstead swimming pool.

Now Georgina Langridge, a sales director from the West Sussex town, has said she wrote to the JPs who cleared Coutts to say he was a threat.

Coutts, of Waterloo Street, Hove, has been convicted and jailed for at least 30 years for the teacher's murder.

'Accept responsibility'

The mother-of-two, who had claimed she caught Coutts spying on her in the changing room cubicle with a video camera, said: "When I realised who Jane's killer was, I felt sick.

"I did not sleep that night.

"I couldn't believe he escaped prosecution for what he did to me and I tried to warn the legal system about him."

After the three female magistrates found Coutts not guilty of spying, Mrs Langridge wrote to the JPs and said: "History often proves that this type of behaviour continues.

"You now have to look to yourselves and your motives for your decisions and therefore accept responsibility for any further offences that this person will commit."

She said: "Unfortunately, justice was not carried out."

'His word over mine'

In March last year, Coutts took 31-year-old Miss Longhurst to his Brighton flat and strangled her with a pair of tights.

He stored her body for 35 days and then burnt the corpse in woodland near Pulborough, West Sussex.

A source at Sussex Police told the Press Association officers did not know about the peeping tom allegation at the time of the investigation into Jane Longhurst's murder, because the police national computer showed Coutts had no previous convictions.

Mrs Langridge said: "The justice system failed me that day and in a way it has failed Jane and her family."

She said: "They believed his word over mine."