How Sarah Everard killer Wayne Couzens lived warped double life for 20 years
Sick Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens went undetected for nearly 20 years before he raped and killed Sarah Everard, an inquiry has found.
The long-awaited independent review into his policing career by Dame Elish Angiolini has been published today and concluded that Couzens should never have been given a job in the force. The 51-year-old killer will die in prison for the abduction, rape and murder of Ms Everard, 33, as she walked home in South London on March 3, 2021.
Multiple chances to stop the sexual predator were repeatedly ignored and missed, despite concerns about his behaviour, the report found. His crimes included indecent exposure, sexual assault on a child, sexual touching, and sharing unsolicited photos of his genitals. It said that there were also allegations of possessing indecent images of children.
Couzens joined the force in 2002 and moved over to the Metropolitan Police in 2018
He indecently exposed himself three times and shared unsolicited photos of his genitals (PA)The report found Couzens' history of alleged sexual offending and preference for extreme violent pornography dated back nearly 20 years before Ms Everard's murder. The twisted cop indecently exposed himself three times, including twice at a drive-through fast food restaurant in Kent in the days before the killing.
It was also later revealed that he was part of a WhatsApp group with fellow officers who shared disturbing racist, homophobic and misogynist remarks. Ms Everard's family welcomed the inquiry's findings and said that they believed she died because Couzens was a police officer, adding: "She would never have got into a stranger's car."
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Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley apologised to her family. He said: "There is nothing we can say to the family of Sarah Everard and all those who loved her that will convey how very sorry we are. Wayne Couzens' crimes were horrific. The fact that he abused his position as a Metropolitan Police officer to carry them out represents the most appalling betrayal of trust." He described the report as an "urgent call to action" for everyone in policing.
Almost three years ago to the exact date, Couzens used his status as a police officer to trick Ms Everard into thinking he could arrest her for breaking lockdown rules that were in place at the time. He handcuffed her, bundled her into a car, and travelled to a remote rural area nearby where he raped and strangled her with his police belt.
Sarah Everard's family said today that they believed she died because Couzens was a police officer (PA)The evil killer had crafted a veneer of respectability in both his personal and professional life, with some colleagues even believing he was a family man. But in private, Couzens led a warped life and was attracted to hardcore porn. The former office admitted to using prostitutes, was suspected of taking body-building steroids, and joked about being into "kinky stuff". After Ms Everard's harrowing death, reports even emerged that Couzens was nicknamed "the rapist".
He was born in Dover in 1972 and joined his younger brother in the family business - a car body shop and repair garage - after leaving school. But it has been said that he always had a hankering to join the police and, from the mid to late 2000s, volunteered as a special sergeant in Kent.
He was then accepted into the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, where he spent seven years with an unblemished record before moving to the Metropolitan Police. After winning a role in London, he was first posted to Bromley police station, in the south-east of the capital, where he was part of a response team.
Then, in February 2020, he joined the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command as a firearms officer in West Brompton, to the west of the city. But, while his career was taking off, in his personal life, he was beginning to show behaviours consistent with the vile criminal lurking beneath.
Couzens tried to convince detectives that Ms Everard had been taken by a gang after his arrest (PA)Couzens was married to a Ukrainian wife, whom he was said to have met online, and appeared to be part of a "loving family" with two children, it was said. But this was a facade, with it revealed after his sick crimes that he paid prostitutes for sex and had set up a fake account on a dating site.
Couzens was also debt-ridden, owing just under £29,000 over a number of payment plans and holding cards that were regularly overdrawn. And he had a lust for "brutal, sexual pornography", the court was told - and would happily make jokes about being into "kinky stuff" when asked about his police belt.
His links to prostitution would later serve as a flimsy explanation when he was detained over the death of Ms Everard, when he claimed he had been coerced by a gang. Couzens initially told the arresting officers that a group of Eastern European men had demanded he deliver them "another girl" after he underpaid a sex worker.
In his bizarre tale, he said that he picked up Ms Everard and delivered her to the traffickers - who did not exist - unharmed to save his family. He invented a description of the men and showed detectives a rough location of where he met them on a map, the court was told - but it was all a lie. CCTV and forensic evidence later linked Couzens to the devastating fate of Ms Everard.
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