T
he police officer who raped and murdered Sarah Everard has been condemned to die in prison for the “wicked” crimes, as a judge imposed a whole life prison order.
PC Wayne Couzens, 48, kidnapped Ms Everard as she walked through the streets of south London, posing as an undercover police officer and carrying out a fake arrest to execute his plan.
Once she was handcuffed in the back of his car, Couzens drove the 33-year-old marketing executive to remote locations in Kent where she was raped and murdered, before burning her body and dumping her remains in a woodland pond.
Imposing the maximum possible sentence, Lord Justice Fulford said Ms Everard’s life, and the pain of her family and friends, must not be forgotten.
“Sarah Everard was a wholly blameless victim of a grotesquely executed series of offences that culminated in her death and the disposable of her body”, he said.
“She was simply walking home in the mid-evening, having visited a friend during the Covid pandemic.
She was an intelligent, resourceful, talented, and much-loved young woman, still in the early years of her life. I have not the slightest doubt the defendant used his position as a police officer to coerce her in a wholly false pretext into the car he had hired for this very purpose.”
The judge said Couzens had spent around a month visiting London while researching how to carry out the crimes he was plotting.
“(He) had planned well in advance, in all its unspeakably grim detail, what was to occur”, he added, saying Ms Everard’s final hours were “as bleak and as agonising as it is possible to imagine”.
The judge added that Couzens had “throughout sought to minimise his responsibility for what occurred”.
“I have concluded, given the planning and thought that went into the kidnap and rape of the victim, the defendant must have realised he may well need to kill the woman he intended to abduct and rape.
“But this did not become a definite outcome until the events had started to unfold, and he had got the measure of the person he had attacked.”
He said there was a “palpable need” for a whole life order in Couzens’ case.
“The police are in a unique position”, he said. “They have the powers of coercion and control that are in an exceptional category.
“In this country, it is expected the police will act in the public interest. Indeed the authority of the police is to a truly significant extent depend on public consent.
“The misuse of a police officer’s role such as occurred in this case in order to kidnap, rape and murder a lone victim is of equal seriousness as a murder for the purpose of advancing a political, religious ideological cause.”
The judge said Couzens had “eroded confidence” in police forces and “very considerably added to the sense of insecurity that many have living in our cities, perhaps particularly women, when travelling by themselves and especially at night”.
“You have utterly betrayed your family”, said the judge, saying they will now have to live with the “ignominy of your dreadful crimes”.
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