Sarah Everard’s murderer kidnapped her using police warrant and handcuffs

Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, went missing on the evening of March 3 after leaving a friend’s house in Clapham, south London. Her remains were found days later — more than 50 miles from where she was last seen — inside a builder’s bag in woodland near Ashford, Kent.

Couzens was later arrested at his home in Kent, close to where Everard’s body had been found. Prosecutors said in July that Everard and Couzens “were total strangers to each other” before he abducted her from the roadside.

On Wednesday, prosecutor Tom Little told the Old Bailey that Couzens lured Everard into the car by “handcuffing her as well as showing her his warrant card.”

Little also detailed what eyewitnesses to the kidnapping saw, saying they observed Couzens handcuff Everard, who appeared compliant and had her head down. They thought he was an undercover police officer arresting a woman.

Couzens burned the body once he had killed Everard, the court heard. “He was to burn Sarah Everard’s body after he murdered her. He then moved her body in green bags that he had purchased specifically for that task,” Little said.

Little also said Couzens told his family that he was working on the night of March 3, when he kidnapped and subsequently murdered Everard.

Couzens, who spent the hearing with his eyes closed and head bowed, is due to be sentenced on Thursday. He is expected to receive a mandatory life sentence.

Everard’s disappearance prompted an outpouring of grief and rage across social media from women sharing their own experiences of sexual assault, while also shining a light on the epidemic of violence against women and girls in the UK.

Murder of young teacher makes women in London worry it could have been them

One woman is killed by a man on average every three days in the UK, according to data from the Femicide Census, an organization that tracks violence against women and girls. The group argues that the government’s new strategy to curb such violence “shamefully ignores” victims of femicide.

London’s Metropolitan Police force has also faced a barrage of criticism for their actions in the days after Everard’s disappearance. Women were reportedly warned by police officers not to venture out alone as they made door-to-door inquiries on the case, prompting some to comment that this approach only fueled the culture of victim blaming.

A March vigil for Everard dissolved into violence when a predominately-male cluster of officers attempted to disperse the crowd, who police say were in breach of Covid-19 regulations.

Meanwhile, the police regulator, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, is investigating whether the police responded appropriately to a report that Couzens indecently exposed himself at a South London fast food restaurant in February.

Couzens joined the Met in September 2018 and was posted to a response team covering the Bromley area in southeast London. He then moved to the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command in February 2020, where his “primary role was on uniformed patrol duties of diplomatic premises, mainly a range of Embassies,” a Met statement said.

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