Babak Belurs

Rabu, 29 September 2021

Sarah Everard: Wayne Couzens took family on trip to woods where he burnt marketing executive's body, court told - Sky News

A former police officer who kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard took his wife and two children on a family trip to the woods where only days earlier he had burned Ms Everard's body, the Old Bailey has heard.

Wayne Couzens, 48, was a serving PC with the Metropolitan Police when he used his position to arrest and abduct Ms Everard as she walked home in Clapham, south London, on the evening of 3 March, possibly by falsely invoking COVID lockdown rules.

Couzens, who had finished a 12-hour shift that morning, raped and killed the 33-year-old marketing executive before burning her body in a fridge in an area of woodland in Kent and dumping her remains in a pond.

Wayne Couzens sentencing - follow live updates

Speaking during the first day of a two-day sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey, Prosecutor Tom Little QC said Couzens took his wife and two children on a family trip to Hoads Wood on 7 March, where only days earlier he had set fire to Ms Everard's body.

En route, he withdrew cash from the same service station he had been to shortly after raping and murdering his victim, the court heard.

Mr Little said: "It follows that the defendant took his family on a family trip to the very woods where days earlier he had left Sarah Everard's body, then returned to burn it and then returned again to move it and hide it."

Couzens allowed his children to play in "relatively close proximity to where Ms Everard's body had been dumped in the pond", he added.

Couzens was arrested on 9 March and Ms Everard's body was found the following a day - a week after she went missing.

Opening the hearing, Mr Little said Couzens' crimes could be summarised in five words: "Deception, kidnap, rape, strangulation, fire."

Ms Everard had had dinner with a friend in Clapham Junction and was on her way home to Brixton when she was "arrested" by Couzens during the third coronavirus lockdown.

Couzens, then a serving diplomatic protection officer with the Metropolitan Police, handcuffed her at about 9.34pm after showing her his warrant card, the court heard.

Mr Little said Couzens was familiar with coronavirus regulations and may have used lockdown rules to falsely detain Ms Everard.

She was described by a former long-term boyfriend as "extremely intelligent, savvy and streetwise" and "not a gullible person" who he could envisage getting into a car with a stranger "unless by force or manipulation".

Couzens was said to be wearing his police belt with handcuffs and a rectangular black pouch, similar to a pepper spray holder, when he confronted Ms Everard.

He put her in the back of a Vauxhall Astra - hired using his own personal details and bank card - at around 9.37pm.

The married father-of-two set off for Kent, 80 miles away, a minute later. At around 11.30pm, Ms Everard was transferred from the hire car to Couzens' own Seat car, which was left in a non-residential area of Dover.

Couzens then drove to a remote rural area northwest of Dover where he parked up and raped Ms Everard, the court was told.

The Seat was picked up on an ANPR camera on a road in the town at 2.31am. "It is by this point that Sarah Everard is most likely to have been murdered," Mr Little said.

The moment Couzens confronted Ms Everard in south London was caught on security footage and witnessed by a couple travelling in a car.

Ms Everard was a mile from home when cameras from two buses, a refuse lorry and a marked police car caught footage of Couzens talking to her by the car, which was parked on the pavement with its hazard lights on and doors open.

The female passenger in the other vehicle said she saw Couzens and Ms Everard standing on the pavement. She watched as Ms Everard was handcuffed, Mr Little told the court.

"Sarah Everard was compliant, with her head down and did not appear to be arguing," he said.

Mr Little added that the female passenger believed she was witnessing an undercover police officer arresting a woman whom she assumed "must have done something wrong".

She remarked to her husband that she had seen "a woman being handcuffed" when "they were in fact witnessing the kidnapping of Sarah Everard", Mr Little said.

The next day, 4 March, Couzens took Ms Everard's mobile phone and threw it into a river in Sandwich, Kent. A broken fragment of an EE sim card from the phone was later found in his Seat, the court heard.

Couzens, who the court heard was thousands of pounds in debt, wiped his phone just minutes before he was arrested at his home in Deal on 9 March.

In a video shown at the Old Bailey, Couzens was seen sitting on his sofa, with his hands in cuffs, being quizzed by police.

An officer repeatedly asked if Couzens knew where Ms Everard was, saying her "family and friends are worried about her".

Couzens, who offered no resistance, initially denied knowing her, claiming he only knew of her disappearance from watching the news.

He then told detectives he was "in financial s***" and that he had been "leant on" by a gang to pick up girls after he tried to "rip off" a sex worker he had booked online.

The following day, a week after Ms Everard disappeared, her body was found in a stream in Ashford, Kent, just metres from land owned by Couzens.

Fragments of her clothing were found in nearby woodland, where her body had previously been burnt.

Mr Little said that while Couzens was in the wood he must have "moved Sarah Everard's heavily burnt body from where he had set fire to it, to the pond where she was subsequently found" using bags he bought from B&Q on 5 March.

In July, Couzens pleaded guilty to Ms Everard's murder, kidnap and rape by video link from jail.

Couzens told a psychiatrist he strangled Ms Everard with his police belt, which tallied with the conclusions of a post-mortem examination which found she died from compression of the neck.

The court heard how Couzens would wear his police belt and handcuffs while off duty and had a profile on dating site Match.com in which he gave various false details about himself. He was also in contact with an escort through an escort service.

The police watchdog has received a string of referrals relating to the Couzens case, with 12 police officers being investigated.

A senior investigator on the Sarah Everard case, former DCI Simon Harding, told Sky News that police "do not view" Couzens as a fellow officer and that he "should never have been near a uniform".

Speaking outside the Old Bailey in July, Met Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said she was "very sorry" for the loss, pain and suffering of the Everard family.

She said: "All of us in the Met are sickened, angered and devastated by this man's truly dreadful crimes. Everyone in policing feels betrayed."

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it was looking at whether the Met failed to investigate two allegations of indecent exposure relating to Couzens in February, just days before the killing.

Kent Police are also being investigated over their response to a third allegation of indecent exposure dating back to 2015.

Ahead of Wednesday's hearing, a spokesperson from the Metropolitan Police said: "We are sickened, angered and devastated by this man's crimes which betray everything we stand for.

"Our thoughts are with Sarah's family and her many friends. It is not possible for us to imagine what they are going through.

"We recognise his actions raise many questions and concerns but we will not be commenting further until the hearing is complete."

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2021-09-29 14:21:18Z
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Labour conference: Keir Starmer bats away hecklers as he gets personal during speech - Sky News

Sir Keir Starmer batted away hecklers during a mammoth speech in which he used his personal experiences to show off his human side as he announced a key climate change policy.

Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, introduced Sir Keir before his conference speech by thanking the Labour leader for helping prosecute his murderers when he was a barrister.

During the 90-minute speech, which was his first in-person conference address since he became leader, he hit out at the government, referenced his parents throughout and announced a plan to retrofit millions of homes.

Following five days of ups and downs in Brighton, including successfully getting a new way of voting for a leader through, he put Labour forward as the next party to lead the country.

But he was also heckled by those who may be bigger fans of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who has criticised Sir Keir at fringe events this week.

However, he brushed them away by saying, "shouting slogans or changing lives, conference?" - to which he got cheers from the audience.

Among those who heckled Sir Keir during his speech was former Big Brother contestant Carole Vincent from east London, who told Sky News she had not planned to interrupt the Labour leader's keynote address but she was prompted about he delivered "a speech which is full of nothing really."

"I saw it as standing up in a principled manner against what he was saying, because he wasn't saying 'we are going to give a £15 minimum wage'," Ms Vincent added, noting that she suspects she might no longer be a Labour member after Wednesday.

Speaking after the party leader's speech, a Labour spokesperson said "only a small number of people" were heckling and that this "did not knock [Sir Keir] off his stride".

"They didn't distract from the message," the spokesperson added.

Sir Keir spoke of not being from a privileged background, of his father being a tool maker in a factory and his mum being a nurse in the NHS and her getting a rare arthritic disease for which he could "hardly convey to you the emotion of seeing your mum in that condition".

For a leader who has often been accused of failing to show off his personality and any emotion, it appeared important for Sir Keir to connect on an emotional level with Labour members, who listened intently.

He also spoke of being a lawyer and chief prosecutor and how that has helped his approach to politics.

John and Penny Clough, the parents of murdered nurse Jane Clough, were in the front row of the audience and Sir Keir told of them coming to him to get justice for her and how they changed the law - and how crime "will always be a Labour issue".

Sir Keir said Labour would fast-track rape and serious sexual assault cases and toughen sentences for rapists, stalkers and domestic abusers.

Recognising he came into politics "late in life", the Labour leader said he was not a career politician and said he was nothing like Boris Johnson, who he said was waging war on traffic cones while he was prosecuting Stephen Lawrence's murderers.

He also said in 2010 he was helping put terrorists behind bars while Mr Johnson was defending the right not to wear a cycle helmet.

"It's easy to comfort yourself that your opponents are bad people, but I don't think Boris Johnson is a bad man, I think he is a trivial man," he said.

"I think he's a showman with nothing left to show, I think he's a trickster who has performed his one trick."

During his speech, Sir Keir recognised Labour's failure under Mr Corbyn to defeat the Conservatives, despite not referencing the former party leader by name, and praised the party activists who had saved it from "obliteration" in the landslide 2019 election defeat.

"I can see the ways in which we can remake this nation and that's what we get to do when we win," Sir Keir told the conference hall.

The question for many now will be whether Sir Keir's speech can translate into improved perceptions of his leadership.

He promised Labour will "always fund the NHS properly" and would shift the priority of the health service away from emergency care to prevention, including funding mental health as much as physical health.

"Labour will guarantee that support will be available in less than a month," he said.

That would include recruiting 8,500 more mental health professionals and ensuring every school has specialist support and communities have mental health hubs.

Another of the Labour leader's key promises is on education and Sir Keir referenced a famous Tony Blair slogan ("education, education, education") as he said: "Education is so important I am tempted to say it three times."

He said Labour will launch the most ambitious school improvement plan, including ensuring children leave school with good qualifications and who are ready to work.

Theatre, drama and music will not be allowed to collapse, he said, as he mentioned he had music lessons with Fatboy Slim at school.

On the economy, Sir Keir said Labour would support small businesses and invest a minimum of 3% of GDP in science and research and development.

He said the finances inherited from the Conservatives "will need serious repair work" but the approach to taxation will be governed by taxpayers getting the best value for money.

Sir Keir's shadow cabinet ministers have announced a raft of new policies this week and he added to that by saying climate change - which got a big clap - would be tackled by retrofitting 19 million homes over a decade to save families more than £400 a year on energy bills, with a £6bn a year investment.

And he hit out at Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, saying the SNP and the Tories "exploit the constitutional divide".

After his speech, the Labour leader was joined by his wife, Victoria, on stage and they left the conference hall to the Fatboy Slim song "Right here, right now" - plus a standing ovation.

As a child, the Labour leader had music classes at school with the future DJ.

Members of Sir Keir's shadow cabinet have reacted positively to the Labour leader's speech.

"I thought it was the finest speech from a Labour leader, I think, in 10 years," Labour's shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told Sky News.

And shadow environment secretary Luke Pollard described Sir Keir Starmer's speech as a "real turning point for the party".

Following his keynote address, Sir Keir was visiting party staff who had worked at the conference in Brighton to thank them for their efforts, a Labour spokesperson said.

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2021-09-29 14:25:48Z
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Labour conference: Keir Starmer bats away hecklers as he gets personal during speech - Sky News

Sir Keir Starmer batted away hecklers during a mammoth speech in which he used his personal experiences to show off his human side as he announced a key climate change policy.

Doreen Lawrence, mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, introduced Sir Keir before his conference speech by thanking the Labour leader for helping prosecute his murderers when he was a barrister.

Following five days of ups and downs in Brighton, including successfully getting a new way of voting for a leader through, he put Labour forward as the next party to lead the country.

But he was also heckled by those who may be bigger fans of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who has criticised Sir Keir at fringe events this week.

However, he brushed them away by saying, "shouting slogans or changing lives, conference?" - to which he got cheers from the audience.

Among those who heckled Sir Keir during his speech was former Big Brother contestant Carole Vincent.

Speaking after the party leader's speech, a Labour spokesperson said "only a small number of people" were heckling and that this "did not knock [Sir Keir] off his stride".

"They didn't distract from the message," the spokesperson added.

He also spoke of being a lawyer and chief prosecutor and how that has helped his approach to politics.

Sir Keir said Labour would fast-track rape and serious sexual assault cases and toughen sentences for rapists, stalkers and domestic abusers.

He also said in 2010 he was helping put terrorists behind bars while Mr Johnson was defending the right not to wear a cycle helmet.

"It's easy to comfort yourself that your opponents are bad people, but I don't think Boris Johnson is a bad man, I think he is a trivial man," he said.

"I think he's a showman with nothing left to show, I think he's a trickster who has performed his one trick."

During his speech, Sir Keir recognised Labour's failure under Mr Corbyn to defeat the Conservatives, despite not referencing the former party leader by name, and praised the party activists who had saved it from "obliteration" in the landslide 2019 election defeat.