WARNING DISTRESSING CONTENT Sarah Everard was driven away by Wayne Couzens after he made a ‘fake arrest’ as she made her way home from a friend’s in Clapham, south London
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Wayne Couzens took his wife and kids to the woods where he had hidden Sarah Everard’s body in a fridge.
Sarah was driven away by Couzens at 9.38pm – the start of a terrifying ordeal lasting an estimated five hours.
He drove through south London and then to Dover, arriving shortly before 11.30pm, where he moved her into his Seat car.
Mr Little said: “In order to have done so and without her escaping or trying to escape or make a noise it can be inferred that he, at least, must have threatened her and she must have remained handcuffed.”
Couzens then drove out of Dover to remote countryside near Deal, where detectives believe he raped her inside the Seat.
Sarah’s was kidnapped by Couzens as she walked home from a friend’s house
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Image:
METROPOLITAN POLICE/AFP via Gett)
Metropolitan Police file handout image taken from CCTV footage of Sarah Everard captured on the night she went missing
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Image:
PA)
Mr Little said “we simply can’t say” if Sarah was murdered immediately after the rape or hours later.
After the murder Couzens’s phone was recorded near Ashford at 3am, when he is believed to have hidden her body inside a fridge in woods.
Couzens later went home for the rest of day and even found time to calmly make a dental appointment.
He continued to act normally, making a vet appointment for the family’s French bulldog over concerns of “separation anxiety”.
Chillingly he returned to the woods two days later, on March 7, with his wife and two children.
Artist impression of Wayne Couzens with his head bowed during the sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey
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Image:
Julia Quenzler / SWNS)
Mr Little said: “He took his family on a trip to the very woods where days earlier he had left Sarah’s body, then returned to burn it and then returned again to move and hide it.
“He allowed his children to play in relative close proximity to where Sarah’s body had been dumped in the pond.”
An eyewitness spoke to Couzens at the woods, who told him he was there “cleaning up a plot that had broken glass on it”.
After the murder Couzens’s phone was recorded near Ashford at 3am, when he is believed to have hidden her body inside a fridge in woods
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Image:
Kent Messenger / SWNS)
Mr Little said: “The defendant was carrying a Tesco bag and seemed anxious to be getting on with what he was doing.”
The court heard the firearms-trained parliamentary and diplomatic protection officer wiped his phone just minutes before he was arrested at his home in Deal, Kent, on March 9. When he was interviewed and shown a picture of Sarah, Couzens claimed he had never met her.
Mr Little said: “Whilst it is impossible to summarise what the defendant did to Sarah Everard in just five words, if it had to be done then it would be more appropriate to do so as deception, kidnap, rape, strangulation, fire.”
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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-wayne-couzens-took-family-25098569
