DAMNED TO DIE IN JAIL
Cowardly Couzens becomes the first British police officer to be given a whole life sentence, as judge condemns his ‘grotesquely executed’ and ‘brutal’ crime
SARAH Everard’s family said the ‘world is a safer place’ as her killer was sentenced to a rare whole-life term yesterday.
Wayne Couzens, 48, will die in prison after a judge said that his ‘grotesquely executed’ and ‘warped, selfish and brutal offending’ had ‘eroded’ confidence in the police.
The Old Bailey heard that Couzens flashed his warrant card and staged a ‘false arrest’ before handcuffing Ms Everard for breaking Covid rules in south London on March 3. The Metropolitan Police firearms officer drove 80 miles to a rural location in Kent where he raped the 33-year-old before strangling her with his police belt and burning her body.
Ms Everard’s family said: ‘We are very pleased that Wayne Couzens
‘Warped, selfish and brutal offending’
has received a full-life sentence and will spend the rest of his life in jail. Nothing can make things better, nothing can bring Sarah back, but knowing he will be imprisoned for ever brings some relief.
‘Sarah lost her life needlessly and cruelly and all the years of life she had yet to enjoy were stolen from her.
‘Wayne Couzens held a position of trust as a police officer and we are outraged and sickened that he abused this trust in order to lure Sarah to her death.
‘The world is a safer place with him imprisoned.’
In his sentencing, judge Bruce Fulford said the case in which a serving officer abused his position was so ‘serious and exceptional’ it warranted a whole-life order. It is the first time a murderer with a single victim has received such a sentence for a non-terror-related offence in the UK.
Cowardly Couzens, who is also the first police officer to be handed the unprecedented tariff, stared at the floor throughout the hearing with his eyes seemingly closed. Even when the judge asked him to stand, Couzens, who wore a navy suit and face mask, refused to face the court.
In powerful sentencing remarks, judge Fulford said Couzens spent at least a month meticulously planning his attack ‘in all its unspeakably grim detail’.
He said the killer bought a handcuff key, carpet protector and hired a car, before heading to London to ‘hunt a lone young female to kidnap and rape’. The judge added: ‘Sarah Everard was a wholly blameless victim of a grotesquely executed series of offences that culminated in her death and the disposal of her body.’
He said the marketing manager, from Brixton, south London, was ‘simply walking home’ when Couzens ‘used his position as a police officer to coerce her on a wholly false pretext into the car’.
‘Her state of mind and what she had to endure over a journey of 80 miles and during the final hours of her life, would have been as bleak and agonising as it is possible to imagine,’ he added.
In mitigation, Couzens’s defence barrister Jim Sturman QC stressed his client’s guilty plea and remorse but the judge said he had seen ‘no evidence of genuine contrition’. Instead, Couzens displayed ‘selfpity’ and tried to ‘minimise his true responsibility’ for the ‘devastating, tragic and wholly brutal’ murder.
The judge asked Couzens to stand as he sentenced him. Ms Everard’s parents, Susan and Jeremy, and her siblings, Katie and James, smiled and hugged some of the police officers in court.
The judge said: ‘Wayne Couzens, you kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, having long planned a violent sexual assault on a yet-to-be-selected victim who you intended to coerce into your custody. You have irretrievably damaged the lives of Sarah Everard’s family and friends. Mrs Everard devastatingly referred to how the wider world has now lost its appeal for her and, I would add, no doubt for many others who cared for your victim.’
The judge added: ‘You have eroded the confidence that the public are entitled to have in the police forces of England and Wales.’ Speaking from his home in Folkestone, Kent, Couzens’s father Raymond said ‘it’s a hard day’ but refused to comment further. Another close family member said of Couzens’s crime and punishment: ‘We’re struggling to come to terms with it.’