A Metropolitan Police officer has pleaded guilty to the murder of Sarah Everard in London. The 33-year-old was originally from York and her family still live here.
Ms Everard’s disappearance led to an intensive police investigation, with her body being found in a woodland in Ashford, Kent, a week later.
Wayne Couzens, a 48-year-old firearms-trained parliamentary and diplomatic protection officer clocked off from a 12-hour shift that morning and then went on to rape and strangle Sarah.
Carolyn Oakley, Crown Prosecution Service specialist prosecutor in the Special Crime Division, said: “Today, Wayne Couzens pleaded guilty to the murder of Sarah Everard. This plea is as a result of a great deal of hard work by the prosecution team.
“The police should be commended for their thorough and tireless investigation into Sarah’s disappearance.
“Wayne Couzens lied to the police when he was arrested and to date, he has refused to comment. We still do not know what drove him to commit this appalling crime against a stranger.”
Before adjourning the case, Lord Justice Fulford discussed legal precedents for whole life sentences. He said: “This has been a mammoth investigation which has produced some very significant results in terms of being able to understand what happened.”
He set a two-day sentencing hearing starting on September 29.
Related
Last month, Couzens, who is from Deal in Kent, accepted responsibility for killing Ms Everard and pleaded guilty to her kidnap and rape.
Prosecutor Tom Little QC told the court: “Before the defendant kidnapped Sarah Everard on the South Circular on March 3 this year, he had not previously met her, he did not know her and had no direct or indirect contact with her.
“They were total strangers to each other.”
The court heard that investigators are still analysing scientific evidence relating to Wayne Couzens’ own car, into which he transferred Ms Everard from the hire car he used to kidnap her.
“That may seek to establish where it was that Sarah Everard was raped and where she was murdered.”
Wayne Couzens appeared at the Old Bailey by video link from Belmarsh jail wearing a light blue sweater and khaki trousers.
He entered his guilty plea to murder with his head bowed and spoke in a whisper.
Five of Sarah Everard’s family members attended the packed court 12.
Jim Sturman QC, defending, said: “His pleas today represents a truly guilty plea and remorse for what he did and, as he put it to us this morning, he will bear the burden for the rest of his life – in his words: ‘as I deserve’.”
Sky News reports that Couzens claimed he had run into financial difficulties after getting into trouble with a gang of Eastern Europeans who threatened him and his family and demanded he deliver “another girl” after underpaying a prostitute a few weeks before.
He told officers that after the abduction, he had handed Ms Everard over, still alive and uninjured, to three Eastern European men in a van in a layby in Kent. The defendant went on to make no comment in formal interview and was charged on 12 March.
Ms Everard was last seen leaving a friend’s house on Leathwaite Road in Clapham, southwest London, at around 9pm on 3 March.
Commissioner Cressida Dick said: “My thoughts and those of everyone in the Met Police are with Sarah’s loved ones. It is not possible for any of us to begin to imagine what they have been going through. I am so sorry.
Read more of her statement on YorkMix here