A new BBC documentary today paints a positive picture of the Met Police’s investigation into Sarah Everard’s disappearance – but hiding behind the force’s latest publicity push is a story of missed opportunities and unanswered questions.
Serving firearms officer Wayne Couzens kidnapped the 33-year-old marketing executive in March 2021 before driving her from London to woods near his home in Deal, Kent, where he raped and murdered her before dumping her body.
Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice covers the ensuing police investigation and hears from officers including Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin, who led the investigation.
Describing her reaction to Couzens’ finally being brought to justice, she says: ‘To hear him sentenced to a whole life order made me realise there was nothing else in our investigation that we could have done for Sarah’s family.’
But serious questions remain about the Met’s pursuit of Couzens, including the length of time it took to identify him as a serving officer, a two-hour delay before his arrest and the fact that he had been reported to police for flashing three days before he murdered Miss Everard.
Wayne Couzens looks at a picture of Sarah Everard as it is held up to a protective screen while he is being quizzed by detectives at Wandsworth police station in London
Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice covers the investigation into her disappearance
The warrant card that Couzens used to trick Miss Everard into getting into his car
The marketing executive was reported as missing to the Met on March 4 and the day later her case was escalated to its Serious Crime Unit. Missing posters were plastered around her neighbourhood in Clapham, south London, which was gripped by fear.
Public concern was exacerbated by a lack of information from police, with detectives left grasping for potential leads until March 9, when CCTV emerged from a bus showing Miss Everard getting into a white hire car that was later found to have been used by Couzens.
In the BBC documentary, DCI Goodwin says that searches ‘quite quickly’ uncovered that Couzens had been linked to a report of indecent exposure at a McDonald’s in Swanley, Kent, on February 27 – three days before Miss Everard disappeared.
She sent her detective colleague, Nick Harvey, to Couzens’ Kent home to speak to him, but it was only while he was still in the car that a ‘researcher’ revealed he was a serving officer in the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Unit.
MailOnline has asked the Met to reveal the length of time between Couzens’ name being revealed from the check on the hire car and him being identified as a serving officer, but the force declined to comment.
A similar delay characterised the force’s separate investigation into the indecent exposure incident at McDonald’s.
As MailOnline revealed at the time, the Met knew they were investigating a man called ‘Wayne Couzens’ after being handed his credit card details by staff, but failed to realise he was a Met officer.
PC Samantha Lee, who arrived at the restaurant on March 3 to investigate the crime report, was later sacked for lying about her failure to secure CCTV footage of Couzens’ car.
The documentary covers the ensuing police investigation and hears from officers including Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin, who led the investigation
Couzens (pictured) was a serving officer in the Met’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Unit
Both cases have sparked bafflement about why the force was unable to identify the killer was ‘one of their own’ sooner, with there only being one person named Wayne Couzens on the electoral roll.
Women’s rights campaigner Jamie Klinger said: ‘The most shocking part of the documentary to me is that the police had identified Wayne Couzens, knew he was a suspected sex offender and were en route to Kent to his home, before anyone realised/discovered he was serving.’
Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice shows footage of Mr Harvey, 40, arriving at Couzens’ home and arresting him before conducting an ‘urgent interview’.
Officers arrived at Couzens’ home at 5.45pm, but did not knock on his door until two hours later at 7.47pm.
The subsequent trial heard he had carried out a factory reset on his phone 40 minutes before being arrested. This wiped it of text messages, WhatsApps, photographs, videos and Internet history.
This destruction of evidence makes officers’ decision to wait before entering his home significant – but the Met refused to reveal the reasons behind it, citing the risk it could ‘jeopardise future investigations’.
The delay was not noted by the BBC documentary.
As well as covering the police investigation, Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice also examined the aftermath of Couzens’ arrest, including criticisms of the Met’s handling of a vigil held in her memory on Clapham Common.
It also revealed disturbing new footage of Couzens being interviewed at Wandsworth police station, with the murderer seen moaning about his mental health while rocking from side to side.
He had been declared medically fit to be interviewed moments before, and is seen wearing a white plaster on his head following an incident of self-harm.
In the video, the killer policeman moves his head from one side to the other and looks away as he says ‘I’m in a dark place’ after being asked how he is feeling.
New images of Miss Everard were released for the documentary. The BBC said it liaised with her family
The Durham University graduate’s horrific murder renewed a debate around male violence against women and a toxic culture in the police
Her family have previously said she would not have got into Couzens’ car had he not been a policeman
During the interview, Couzens is shown a picture of Miss Everard and asked if he recognises her.
After leaning forward to look at the image, he then shuts his eyes and rocks from side to side and replies ‘no comment’.
He shows no emotion as it is revealed to him the picture is of Miss Everard and answers ‘no comment’ again as he is asked if he used his warrant card to lure her into his hired car.
He rolls his head around as the detective says to him: ‘Is that how she trusted you? Because obviously as a police officer we know we are in a position… people trust us, don’t they?
‘People trust us to look after them. People trust us to help them. Protect and serve, that’s what they say. We all took that oath. You included.’
Earlier in the documentary, DCI Goodwin revealed how a colleague came into her office and said ‘you need to shut the door’ before revealing Couzens was a police officer.
She continued: ‘I knew that I had to tell my boss and I can just remember the shock of having to just sit on the floor of the office and say to her, ‘You’re not going to believe this, that he’s a police officer’.
‘And then the same questions went through her head as went through my head, ”Are you sure?”.’
Meanwhile, Mr Harvey recalled the moment he discovered the suspect was a serving officer while driving to his house.
He told the documentary: ‘The gravity of the whole situation then became incredibly clear. You know, the moment I told the team, it just went silent.’
Couzens was giving a rare whole-life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder
Mr Harvey said Couzens’ face ‘went grey’ after he saw his warrant card.
Police footage in the documentary showed Couzens during interrogation.
An officer said to him: ‘People trust us to look after them. People trust us to help them. You know, protect and serve, that’s what they say, isn’t it? That’s what we’re here to do. We all took that oath, you included.’
Couzens did not respond and kept his head bowed throughout the exchange.
Last week saw the publication of the first stage of The Angiolini Inquiry, which looked at how Couzens was able to carry out his horrific crime.
It found his history of alleged sexual offending dated back nearly 20 years before he murdered Miss Everard, with the married father of two was reported to police eight times for indecent exposure between 2008 and 2021, including the McDonald’s incident on February 27.
Inquiry chair Lady Elish Angiolini identified at least five incidents which were not reported to police and warned there could be more victims.
She also revealed for the first time that Couzens allegedly carried out a ‘very serious sexual assault of a child barely into her teens’ while he was in his twenties.
Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice will be shown today on BBC One. It is also available on iPlayer
Couzens was accused of attempting to kidnap a woman at knifepoint in North London in 1995 while aged 23. He was also accused of raping two women and indecently touching a man in a bar while wearing a blonde wig.
Lady Elish found the married father of two ‘could and should’ have stopped from getting a job as an officer, and that without a radical overhaul of British policing, there is ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’.
The inquiry team found that there were instances where he showed extreme violent pornography to friends and police colleagues, in a move to test their boundaries, and sent unsolicited images of his genitals to women.
MailOnline contacted the BBC for comment.
