True Crime Collection

Sarah Everard

Sarah Everard was born in Surrey in 1987. She grew up in York, where she attended Fulford School. She studied Human Geography at St Cuthbert's Society, Durham University, from 2005 to 2008. At the time of her death, Sarah lived in the Brixton Hill area and worked as a marketing executive for a digital media agency. 

On 28th February 2021, Wayne Couzens - a 48 year old serving Metropolitan Police constable and firearms officer - booked a white Vauxhall car from a vehicle hire company in Dover. At 07:00am on 3rd March, he completed a 12 hour shift at the US Embassy in London before travelling to Kent to collect the hire car. He then drove back to London where he was recorded as being in Earl's Court and on Battersea Bridge. After arriving in Clapham, he again drove to Earl's Court before returning to Clapham at 21:23. 

At around 21:00, Sarah had left a friend's house on Leathwaite Road near Clapham Junction, west of Clapham Common. She walked along the A205 South Circular Road across the common en route to her Brixton Hill home. She spoke to her boyfriend on her phone for about 15 minutes and agreed to meet him the next day. At 21:28, she was seen on doorbell camera footage on Poynders Road and 4 minutes later on the dash cam of a passing police car.

At 21:34, Wayne - who had parked the Vauxhall on the pavement outside Poynders Court - stopped Sarah and showed her his police warrant card before handcuffing her and falsely arresting her under the pretence of breaching COVID guidelines. Wayne and Sarah were twice captured by bus CCTV; the first instance at 21:35 showed them beside the hired Vauxhall and the second, at 21:38, showed the Vauxhall's number plate. Around this time, Wayne and Sarah entered the car and Wayne drove to Kent; the route of the car was retrospectively tracked using CCTV and ANPR. By 23:43, Wayne and Sarah were in Dover and had transferred to Wayne's personal SEAT car. Between 23:53 and 00:57 on 4th March, Wayne's mobile phone connected to cell sites in the area of Sibertswold, and it is believed that this is when he raped Sarah. At 02:34, Wayne purchased drinks from a Dover petrol station; it is believed that he had strangled Sarah using his police belt at some point before this. The post-mortem concluded she had died from compression of the neck. 

Later that day, Sarah's boyfriend contacted the police after she did not meet him. Wayne returned the hire car on the same day, and later drove to Sandwich, Kent, in his personal car, where he disposed of Sarah's mobile phone in one of the town's watercourses. Shortly after 11:00, Wayne bought approximately 5 litres of petrol from a service station in Whitfield. He then drove to Hoad's Wood near Ashford, Kent, where he burned Sarah's body inside a refrigerator. On the afternoon of 5th March, he bought 2 large builder's bags from B&Q before returning to Hoad's Wood, where he used 1 of the bags to dispose of Sarah's remains in a pond. Wayne later said that he was suffering from stress and no longer wanted to carry a gun, and on 8th March he reported himself ill from work. 

At 16:20 on 10th March, police searching Hoad's Wood found human remains in a large builder's bag, approximately 100 metres from a plot of land that Wayne owned. Police in Dover also searched the site of a former body repair garage, previously owned by Wayne's family, at the top of the White Cliffs. On 12th March, Sarah's body was identified through dental records. 2 days later, police focused a search operation around The Rope Walk in Sandwich, and cordoned off approximately 1 square mile of the town in relation to the investigation. On 16th March, police continued to comb woodland in Kent and police divers in Sandwich searched underwater for Sarah's mobile phone. 

On 9th March, Kent Police arrested Wayne at his home in Deal on suspicion of kidnapping. Police arrived at his house at 17:45 and entered it at 19:50 to make the arrest. Around 40 minutes before he was arrested, Wayne tried to wipe the data from his mobile phone. When interviewed, he initially claimed not to recognise Sarah after being shown a photograph of her. He then claimed to be having financial problems after paying for sex in Folkestone, and that a gang of Eastern Europeans had threatened him and his family, demanding he deliver "another girl" after underpaying a prostitute a few weeks before. 

Wayne joined the Metropolitan Police in September 2018. In February 2020, he was assigned to the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection branch, the division responsible for uniformed protection of government and diplomatic premises. He had not undergone enhanced vetting as part of his recruitment nor hand he gone through the mandatory 2 year probation period with the MET before joining the PaDP. A woman in her 30s was also arrested at the address on suspicion of assisting an offender and subsequently released without charge.

On 10th March, the day Sarah's remains were discovered, Wayne was re-arrested on suspicion of murder. On 11th March, Wayne was hospitalised following a head injury sustained in custody; he was again briefly hospitalised the following day after a similar injury. After the incident on 11th March, police said the injury was sustained while he was alone in his cell.

Wayne was charged with Sarah's kidnapping and murder on 12th March, following authorisation from the Crown Prosecution Service. He appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 13th March and was remanded in custody before appearing at the Old Bailey via video link from Belmarsh Prison on 16th March.

On 8th June, Wayne pleaded guilty to kidnap and rape, and admitted responsibility for Sarah's death. Pending medical reports into his mental health at the time of Sarah's death, Wayne was not asked to enter a plea to the murder charge.

At a hearing on 9th July, Wayne pleaded guilty to murder. On video link from Belmarsh Prison, he kept his head down and was shaking slightly. It was reported that he had hired a car and bought a roll of self-adhesive film, "strong enough to hold carpets down", days before the murder. He and the victim were "complete strangers" and were unknown to each other, prior to her abduction. After the plea hearing, it was reported that Kent Police had received a report in 2015 of a man in a car in Dover, naked from the waist down. It was believed there may have been enough information recorded in the Kent Police system to have identified the man as Wayne, who was a serving police officer at the time. Speaking outside the Old Bailey, Dame Cressida Dick - the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police - said she felt "sickened, angered and devastated" by Wayne's crimes, adding: "They are dreadful and everyone in policing feels betrayed. Sarah was a fantastic, talented young woman with her whole life ahead of her and that has been snatched away." The sentencing hearing, led by Lord Justice Fulford, began at the Old Bailey on 29th September following medical and psychiatric reports. Wayne's barrister, Jim Sturman QC, asked Fulford to consider imposing a determinate sentence, which would allow Wayne to become eligible for parole in his 80s. On 30th September, Wayne was sentenced to a whole life order, with Fulford justifying the severity of the punishment by saying that Wayne's use of his position as a police officer to detain Sarah was the "vital factor which in my view makes the seriousness of this case exceptionally high". 

On 11th March, Home Secretary Priti Patel released a statement saying that "every woman should feel safe to walk on our streets without fear of harassment or violence", and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan stated that London streets are not safe for women or girls. Priti announced that new laws are being considered to protect women against sexually harassment in public, including the potential of making public harassment a specifically defined crime. 

On 16th July, the Metropolitan Police held an in-camera disciplinary hearing at which Wayne was dismissed from the service with immediate effect. The MET later announced that it would stop deploying plainclothes officers on their own.