Musician freed on bail by police after being questioned twice in hunt for teacher's killer

A man questioned about the murder of a schoolteacher whose body had been preserved for weeks before being set alight in woodland was released on police bail last night.

Jane Longhurst, 31, vanishedon 14 March. Her charred remains were found last Saturday at a bird sanctuary on Wiggonholt Common, 20 miles from her home in Brighton.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Dennis, from Sussex Police, said a 35-year-old musician from Hove, East Sussex, had been arrested at his home, which he shares with his teacher girlfriend, on Thursday evening. The man has previously been questioned in the investigation, Det Ch Insp Dennis said.

Murder squad detectives had earlier said that Ms Longhurst had probably known her killer and that he was likely to have been a regular visitor at the bird sanctuary near Pulborough, West Sussex. Ms Longhurst, who taught at a school for children with special needs, was returning to her seafront flat, which she shared with her long-term partner, Malcolm Sentance, when she vanished. She had just text-messaged a friend to say she was buying some paint to decorate her flat.

Ms Longhurst's family and Mr Sentance, 34, an education welfare officer, paid her a moving tribute and renewed appeals to the public for information. Speaking of his heartbreak at the loss of his "best mate", in a statement read by Ms Longhurst's mother, he said: "I am missing Jane every hour of every day and night that passes. It is heartbreaking when your life turns a corner and new experiences occur and the one person you want to share them with is not there.

"Jane will always be a very special friend to me, she was loving, warm, beautiful, a fantastic musician and teacher, a great laugh, my best mate and I would have happily spent the rest of my life with her.

"She enjoyed the challenge of teaching children and would have loved to have had some of her own. We were going to buy a house, travel ... we had so many plans for the future."

Her sister, Sue Barnett, 39, from Reading, Berkshire, added: "If you have a loved one who you suspect might have done this, we understand how hard it must be to pick up the phone to the police – but a young woman has lost her life in the most horrific way, and we have lost someone who was very loved and so special."

Ms Longhurst's mother Liz, 71, also from Reading, spoke of the family's living nightmare at losing such a special person.

"There were many times in the weeks that Jane was missing when we believed the worst, but there was always a shred of hope she would return home safe and well. That hope has now been taken away from us and we know we will never see Jane again," she said.

Officers believe Ms Longhurst was strangled shortly after her disappearance.