The senior Met detective who snared Wayne Couzens also caught serial rapist Joseph McCann and has been drafted in to help search for the body of Muriel McKay after her murder 50 years ago.
Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin led a team that tracked down the killer policeman within a week of him snatching 33-year-old Sarah Everard off the streets of south London.
The self-described ‘Met lifer’ starred in a BBC documentary about the case yesterday, during which she spoke of her fears about the culture in the force and whether it would be possible to win back the public’s trust.
Known among colleagues for her calm, unflappable nature, she gained a 2:1 in Law at the University of Essex before completing an MSc in Police Leadership and Management at Warwick Business School.
DCI Goodwin joined the Met as a police officer in November 2004 and was made Detective Chief Inspector in March 2018. She now works in the specialist crime division, which deals with complex and serious investigations and is based in a scruffy 1960s office block in Putney, south-west London.
Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin led a team that tracked down Wayne Couzens
The serving firearms policeman was sentenced to a whole life term for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard
DCI Goodwin also helped catch serial rapist Joseph McCann, who abducted, raped and assaulted 11 strangers in April and May 2019
This includes the hunt for Joseph McCann, 39, a convicted burglar who went on a cocaine and vodka fuelled rampage that saw him abduct, rape and assault 11 strangers in April and May 2019, ranging from an 11-year-old boy to a 71-year-old woman.
The twisted sex attacker, who had wrongly been released on probation, was spotted by police in Congleton, Cheshire but fled and – following a huge manhunt – was eventually found hiding up a tree.
DCI Goodwin led the subsequent investigation that led to him being given 33 life terms and jailed for at least 30 years in December 2020 for kidnap, rape and sexual assault.
Speaking afterwards, she described McCann as ‘evil’ ‘manipulative’ and ‘cunning’, adding: ‘He clearly is a horrendously dangerous individual. Each person feared for their lives while they were held against their will.’
DCI Goodwin appeared regularly on Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice, which aired yesterday on BBC One, at one point describing her horror when she discovered Couzens was a serving police officer.
The detective explained how her team discovered Couzens was suspected of an indecent exposure offence days earlier in Kent, before they found out he was a firearms officer.
She said: ‘At that time, Wayne Couzens was a name that meant nothing to any of us. So immediately we start researching the name, also the phone number and the address that had been given when he’d hired the car.’
A researcher on the phone then revealed that Couzens was a serving Met officer.
DCI Goodwin appeared regularly on Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice, which aired yesterday on BBC One, at one point describing her horror when she discovered Couzens was a serving police officer
More recently, DCI Goodwin was drafted in to help find the body of Muriel McKay who was murdered more than 50 years ago.
Describing what happened next, DCI Goodwin said: ‘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?’.’
Later in the documentary, DCI Goodwin revealed she was grappling with how the Met would be able to ‘win back trust’ following Couzens’ horrific crimes, which saw him handed a whole life order.
‘I think what most troubles me is, now I’ve had the chance to sort of think, is how we can possibly win back trust from the public, and I begin to wonder then how endemic it is,’ said told the documentary.
Her investigation was praised by the judge in the case, who called it the ‘most impressive’ he had seen in 30 years.
More recently, she was drafted in to help find the body of Muriel McKay who was murdered more than 50 years ago.
Ms McKay, 55, was the victim of a bungled abduction by Nizamodeen Hosein and his older brother Arthur Hosein in 1969 after they mistook her for Anna Murdoch – the then wife of media baron Rupert Murdoch.
The Trinidadian brothers forced their way into the McKay home in Wimbledon, south London, on December 29 and bundled her into a car before taking her to Rooks Farm in Hertfordshire where they lived.
Posing as mafia, they then demanded £1million for the return of Ms McKay, who was married to Mr Murdoch’s deputy Alick McKay. She was never seen alive again and her body has never been found to this day.
DCI Goodwin addressing the media outside the Old Bailey following the 2019 conviction of murderer Kasim Lewis
Ms McKay, 55, was the victim of a bungled abduction by Nizamodeen Hosein and his older brother Arthur Hosein in 1969 after they mistook her for Anna Murdoch – the then wife of media baron Rupert Murdoch
Ms McKay’s family wrote to Sir Mark Rowley when he became Met Police commissioner and asked him to review the attempts made to uncover her body last April, according to The Times.
Murder detectives were seen searching the Hertfordshire farm after Nizamodeen Hosein confessed for the first time that her body had been buried on the 11-acre farm where she was held.
DCI Goodwin joined efforts to find and dig up Ms McKay’s body on the farm.
At the time of the trial in 1970, the brothers, then 22 and 34, were found guilty of Ms McKay’s murder in one of Britain’s first convictions without a body being found.
For five decades, they had refused to say where her body was until Nizamodeen finally came clean in 2021.
Despite efforts to excavate the area, Ms McKay’s body was not found. Her family now want a warrant to search another part of the farm as they believe police were searching the wrong area.
Mark Dyer, Ms McKay’s grandson, said: ‘We are in a unique position. How often do you have a murderer telling the victim’s family where they buried the body?
‘I told DCI Goodwin that this is a fresh slate and I believe she is the right person to move things forward.’
Nizmodeen (above) revealed the site where Ms McKay was buried for the first time in 2021
