The former Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens is to be sentenced for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, amid calls for a formal law to set out the rights of victims.
Couzens, 48, used his police warrant card and handcuffs to lure Everard off the street before strangling her with his police belt and burning her body, depriving her family of the chance to say a final goodbye, a court heard.
Video footage released on Wednesday showed Couzens, then a serving Metropolitan police officer, staging a false arrest of Everard as she returned from a friend’s house in south London in March during a period of coronavirus lockdown measures.
Lord Justice Fulford will decide on the minimum length of Couzens’ life sentence on Thursday at the Old Bailey in central London.
Speaking on Thursday morning, the Labour leader reiterated his calls for a victims’ law, granting rights such as allowing them to challenge decisions over criminal investigations.
Keir Starmer also called for a review of how Couzens was allowed to remain in the police force despite concerns about his conduct.
“We’ve got to get to the bottom of how that happened,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It looks as though there were some telltale signs; there was evidence, there were issues that should have been looked into properly, and they were not. And it is not vital that that review is done.
“But then there needs to be wider reform. I’ve been arguing for a victims’ law for years, since I was director of public prosecutions. One of the things I said in my speech yesterday – we have codes, we have support, but we have nothing in law that is there to support victims. I feel very, very strongly about it. And we need legislation on violence against women and girls.”
The full details of Couzens’ crimes were detailed for the first time at a hearing on Wednesday to decide whether he should be sentenced to die in jail. The prosecution said the crimes were so serious, involving the abuse of his position and trust as a police officer, they might merit him being sentenced to a whole-life tariff.
The offence of murder, which Couzens has admitted, carries a mandatory life sentence.
The defence will on Thursday morning argue against Couzens receiving a whole-life tariff for the ordeal he inflicted on Everard, a sentence reserved for the very worst offenders.
He handcuffed her in the backseat of his car and “that was the start of her lengthy ordeal, including an 80-mile journey [to Kent] while detained, which was to lead first to her rape and then her murder”, Tom Little QC told the Old Bailey.
“At some point fairly soon after driving from the pavement on to the South Circular and having not gone to a police station, Sarah Everard must have realised her fate.”
Everard’s mother, Susan, told the court she remained “tormented” at the thought of what her 33-year-old daughter endured.
Couzens kept his head bowed in court. Everard’s father, Jeremy, and other daughter, Katie, each asked that Couzens face them before they began addressing him directly. He lifted his head slightly but did not look at them.
Everard’s murder rocked Britain and led to an outcry over women’s safety on the streets. Police fear the full details of the crime will trigger growing revulsion and anger.
Couzens, 48, hired a car and bought adhesive tape before “hunting for a lone young female to kidnap and rape” as part of a premeditated mission on the night Everard was abducted, the prosecution told the court on the first day of a two-day sentencing hearing.
Little said Everard, a marketing executive, was seized on 3 March before being driven to Kent, where Couzens killed her and left her body in the countryside.
Couzens may have used the pretext that Everard had broken Covid lockdown regulations to stop her, the court heard. He had undertaken police Covid patrols and knew what language to use to those who may have breached the rules.
Couzens was off duty at the time but wore his police belt. He encountered Everard at about 9.30pm as she made what should have been a 50-minute walk home.
A woman who witnessed the start of Couzens’ kidnapping of Everard saw him handcuff her on the pavement. Little said the passerby thought she was witnessing an undercover police officer arresting a woman, whom she assumed “must have done something wrong”.
The witness then saw Couzens walking Everard, her hands cuffed behind her back, towards his car. Little said Everard may have been more vulnerable to an accusation of breaching Covid rules because she had been to a friend’s place for dinner during the lockdown.
In Kent the Met officer switched cars and raped his victim, the court heard. He then strangled Everard. “The defendant informed the psychiatrist that he strangled Sarah Everard using his belt. Given all the circumstances this would be consistent with his police belt,” Little told the court.
Couzens was caught on CCTV crisscrossing Kent after the murder, as he started hiding his crimes. He filled a can with petrol and set about burning Everard’s body in a field and “moved her body in green bags purchased specifically for that task”, Little said.
The court heard Couzens had tried to dispose of Everard’s mobile phone and that semen was found on her body. A fragment of her sim card was found in a car Couzens used.
Police released video of Couzens claiming to officers, when arrested at home, that he had kidnapped Everard because he was being threatened by a gang and was forced to hand her over to them. This was a lie, the prosecution said.
Everard’s body was recovered seven days after the abduction, from woodland near Ashford in Kent, about 20 miles west of Couzens’ home in Deal. It was hidden and wrapped in a builder’s bag Couzens had bought days earlier.
Everard was identified from her dental records. A postmortem showed she died from compression of the neck.
Source: Guardian
