Police Officer Wayne Couzens To Die In Prison After Being Sentenced To A Whole Life Order For Sarah Everard Murder

Disgraced Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens has been sentenced to a whole life order.

The former police officer used his warrant card and handcuffs to abduct Everard, 33, as she walked home in south London in March.

Lord Justice Fulford who sentenced Couzens at the Old Bailey today (September 30) told the ex-cop his crimes had damaged the victim’s loved ones and wider society.

“You have 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.”

“I have not the slightest doubt that the defendant used his position as a police officer to coerce her on a wholly false pretext into the car he had hired for this purpose. It is most likely that he suggested to Sarah Everard that she had breached the restrictions on movement that were being enforced during that stage of the pandemic.”

Fulford 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.”

Couzens drove Everard to Kent before strangling her with his police belt and burning her body which was discovered in a woodland area in Ashford, two days later after she was reported missing.

Lord Justice Fulford explained his reasoning for dishing out the whole life tariff saying the police are in “a unique position” and “they have powers of coercion and control that are in an exceptional category”.

He added that the “misuse of a police officer’s role” which Couzens weaponised to “kidnap, rape and murder a lone victim is of equal seriousness as a murder carried out for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.

The 48-year-old joins a list of 60 prisoners in England and Wales who are serving whole-life sentences, meaning he will remain incarcerated till the day he dies.