Met police officer Wayne Couzens pleads guilty to murdering Sarah Everard

A Metropolitan Police officer has pleaded guilty to murdering Sarah Everard.

Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens has pleaded guilty to murdering Sarah Everard.

Ms Everard vanished as she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham on 3 March. Her boyfriend, Josh Lowth, reported her missing the following day and her body was found in woodland near Ashford, Kent, a week later.

Couzens previously pleaded guilty to the kidnap and rape of Ms Everard, and accepted responsibility for her death.

Clapham Nub News can now report that days before her murder Couzens, 48, hired a car and used Amazon to buy a roll of self-adhesive film to cover up forensic evidence in the vehicle.

Couzens, a married father of two who lived in Deal, Kent, used his personal details and bank card to book the car. After working a 12-hour shift overnight in London he clocked off at 9am and collected the Vauxhall Astra from Enterprise Car Hire in Dover.

Couzens began his journey back to London as Ms Everard visited a friend who lived on Clapham Common.

At around 21:00 on 3 March Ms Everard began to walk home and spoke with her boyfriend on the phone to make plans for the following evening. Their 14-minute call ended at 9.28pm and there has been no further activity on the phone since this.

Police believe Couzens was trawling for a victim when he spotted Ms Everard, less than a mile from her home, on the A205 south circular - a busy road and frequently used pedestrian route that connects Clapham and Brixton.

In an image caught by a bus camera at 9.35pm the pair can be seen standing beside the Astra. Three minutes later another bus drove past. The image it captured at 9.38pm shows the figures have disappeared into the car, with the front and passenger doors open.

The car was seen to arrive in Tilmanstone at 1am. It is unclear when Couzens raped and killed Ms Everard. The Old Bailey heard that at some point he moved her into his own vehicle, then made a 15-minute drive home to his wife. He returned the hire car at 8.30am the next morning.

At 2pm on March 5, he bought two green rubble bags at B&Q Dover and reported to work he was suffering with stress. The following day, Saturday March 6, he told his Met supervisor he no longer wished to carry a firearm and ordered a 2X2m tarpaulin and a bungee cargo net online.

On the day of his arrest (March 9), Couzens wiped the data from his mobile phone 39 minutes before police detained him.

In an elaborate story he concocted, Couzens claimed he was in trouble with a gang of Eastern Europeans who had demanded he deliver "another girl" after having underpaid a prostitute three weeks previously.

He claimed he kidnapped Ms Everard, drove her to a lay-by in Kent, and alive and unharmed, handed her over to three Eastern European men.

Judge Lord Justice Fulford will sentence Couzens at the Old Bailey on 29 September.

He said: "This has been a mammoth investigation which has produced some very significant results in terms of being able to understand what happened."

Couzens awaits a Crown Prosecution Service charging decision over alleged indecent exposure at a fast food restaurant in south London that occurred three days before Ms Everard was abducted.

Officers are understood to have had sufficient information to uncover the perpetrator but did not connect the indecent exposure to Couzens until after he murdered Ms Everard.

The Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating whether Police officers responded appropriately to the report or whether it could have resulted in his arrest and suspension from the police service before March 3.

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