The sadistic picture revealed a police officer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered a woman while walking home. The deeply-disturbing complete portrait of a sadistic rapist and killer has been unveiled after a former police officer pleaded guilty to a crime that shocked the world.
On Friday, Wayne Couzens, 48, who served in the Metropolitan Police’s elite diplomatic protection unit, confessed to murdering 33-year-old London woman Sarah Everard at the Old Bailey court.
Everard went missing while walking home in south London on March 3. She had been visiting friends in the Clapham area and had returned to her home in nearby Brixton when she disappeared.
Her body was discovered a week later in woods some 80 kilometers away in Kent, southeast England.
Her disappearance led to vigils and protests and prompted the government to promise enhanced police patrols at night and funding to make the streets safer for women.
In court via video link from a high-security prison, Couzens swapped the police uniform for khaki pants and a blue shirt. He bowed his head as he admitted to the killing.
Everard’s family sat in the court as Couzens entered his plea.
Because Couzens pleaded guilty, British newspapers are now free to publish content they previously could not run for legal reasons. The Sun newspaper revealed that colleagues in the Civil Nuclear Constabulary gave the married father-of-two the nickname The Rapist. He worked before the Metropolitan Police because “he gave women the creeps”.
The newspaper wrote that several women had made historic accusations of harassment since Couzens was arrested and that his guilty plea is “more chilling” to friends who thought he was “completely harmless”.
Other accusations published on Friday include that Couzens was suspected of “driving naked from the waist down” and “flashing twice within a few hours at a McDonald’s in Kent three days before snatching Sarah”.
Shocking details of Everard’s murder have been revealed in court.
The Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Carolyn Oakley said Couzens “lied to the police when he was arrested, and to date, refused to comment”. “We still do not know what drove him to commit this appalling crime against a stranger,” she said. Couzens had just finished a 12-hour shift when he committed the crime. Police were alerted when Everard was reported missing by her boyfriend.
Couzens had booked a hire car and bought a roll of self-adhesive cling film days before the murder, the court heard. Camera footage from a passing bus appeared to capture when Couzens intercepted Everard in Balham, south London, as the pair stood by the hire car.
A post-mortem examination revealed Everard died from compression on her neck.
The arrest of a serving officer and the heavy-handed approach to dispersing a vigil in Everard’s honor — which contravened coronavirus rules — led to criticism over the culture within London’s Metropolitan Police force. A month later, two officers were also charged over inappropriate photographs believed to have been taken of two murdered sisters and later circulated with colleagues. The victims’ mother, Wilhelmina Smallman, accused the media and police of not taking their case seriously because the sisters were not white.
