Man who hid woman’s body from police then buried her in woods jailed for 18 years

A man who buried a woman’s body in a shallow woodland grave has been jailed for 18 years for killing her.

Ground worker Mohammed Durnion, 42, has been sentenced for manslaughter over the killing of Reanne Coulson, 33, who was strangled inside his flat in Coventry on May 21 last year.

neighbors had alerted the police after hearing a woman ‘screaming in fear’ inside Durnion’s apartment.

But officers who arrived to investigate the complaint failed to discover Ms Coulson’s body hidden under a mattress.

Jurors at Warwick Crown Court cleared the 42-year-old of murder but convicted him of manslaughter by a majority 11-1 verdict on Tuesday after hearing how he used petrol to set part of the victim’s body on fire.

Durnion had claimed Ms Coulson had died from a drugs overdose on the night of May 21, when he had taken ‘stupid amounts’ of cocaine and panicked before burying her body in the woods.

However, prosecutors said that the mum-of-two had been attacked and strangled, causing her death.

Durnion’s friend and fellow grounds worker, Adam Moore, 39, was jailed for six years at the same court for assisting an offender on May 22 by helping him to hide the body in Binley Woods.

Police bodycam footage showed how Durnion took officers to a makeshift grave after seeing a media appeal made by Ms Coulson’s family.

He had initially refused to answer police questions.

Moore, 39, of Marlcroft, Willenhall, Coventry, had denied the charge, claiming he went to the woods simply to look for Durnion.

Passing sentence on both men, Judge Kristina Montgomery KC said Ms Coulson had been deeply loved by her entire family and was someone who helped others without hesitation.

The judge said Durnion had ‘showed total contempt for her in life and in death.’

She told Durnion: ‘You put her body into a suitcase. You drove around with it on board, covering some considerable distance, to scope out locations where you might dispose of her body on land or in water.’

The judge also ruled that while the cause of death could not be established, the evidence showed Durnion had strangled the victim.

She said: ‘There were fractures to the structures of the neck. I am satisfied that a hand placed around her neck was the means by which they were sustained.’

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