London police officer falsely detained Sarah Everard before murdering her, say prosecutors

Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, disappeared on the night of March 3, after leaving a friend’s house in Battersea, south London. Her body was found a week later in a wooded area about 50 miles away, near land owned by Couzens. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be “compression of the neck.”

Couzens, 48, was fired from the police force’s elite Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection squad after his guilty pleas, but there was a heated public debate about how someone who had been granted high security clearances and entrusted with a gun could have committed such a crime.

Prosecutors said that Couzens used his police identification and knowledge about covid rules to deceive Everard. They showed CCTV footage of Couzens holding out his hand towards Everard. They said an eyewitness saw Couzens, who had a car nearby, handcuffing Everard. “She was detained by fraud,” Little said. “The defendant using his warrant card and handcuffs as well as his other police issue equipment to effect a false arrest.”

Prosecutor Tom Little told the court that Couzens burned Everard’s body after he murdered her. “He then moved her body in green bags that he had purchased specifically for that task to a pond deeper into the woods but which was only about 130 metres from his plot.”

On Wednesday, Couzens was in court, as were Everard’s family members.

Little noted that “she was just walking home” became the hashtag that flooded social media after her death. He said that it was impossible to summarize what happened to her in five words, but if he had to, “then it would be more appropriate to do so as deception, kidnap, rape, strangulation, fire."

Murder in Britain carries a mandatory life sentence, but that doesn’t mean life behind bars. Judge Adrian Fulford will decide the minimum time Couzens must serve before being eligible for parole. The judge could also sentence Couzens to a “whole life order,” making him ineligible for release.

Though Everard’s murder was extraordinary, many people in Britain were struck by the fact that she had been just walking home and ended up dead.

Thousands of women turned to social media to share experiences of feeling unsafe as they went about their days. They swapped stories of how they modified their behavior when heading home at night: walking with keys facing out, changing into athletic shoes in case running became necessary; taking the long way back because it was well-lit; crossing the road when heavy footsteps approached from behind.

Alongside a shared understanding came outrage that such detailed calculations were necessary.

Experts working in the area of violence against women said they hadn’t seen such an outpouring in decades. Betsy Stanko, a criminologist and visiting professor at University College London, described the moment as “an explosion of anger” across the country that became “indicative of the whole way women felt devalued.”

In the wake of Everard’s murder, the British government decided to reopen a consultation on violence against women that had initially received 15,000 responses. Another 180,000 people quickly weighed in.

A London vigil for Everard also attracted international attention, with police criticized for their handling of the event. England was in a strict coronavirus lockdown at the time, and officials had urged people not to attend. Thousands showed up anyway, and as officers sought to disperse the crowd, an image of a woman being pinned to the ground went viral. A watchdog later concluded that the police did not act in a heavy-handed manner, but the watchdog acknowledged it was a public relations disaster.

During tense scenes at the vigil, mourners could be heard shouting at the police: “arrest your own.”