Sarah Everard: The Murder that Changed Everything in the UK

0:00Just after 9:00 PM, Sarah Everard left her friends house and began her familiar walk home in the dark. She stuck to well lit roads. She had her boyfriend on the phone. Everything about this journey actually felt safe. But just as she was starting to get close to home, someone stopped her and took her. The more details that emerged, the more unsettling this case became, because the person responsible for Sarah's murder was someone that most of us would have trusted, and her killer knew it. Outlaw.

0:37Hello and welcome to Outlaw Podcast. I'm Ellen O'Neill and in today's episode we're in South London in 2021 where the boyfriend, friends and family of Sarah Everard are starting to realize that something isn't right. It's a Thursday, a work day, and she should be in the office by now. But her Co workers are saying that she never turned up. They realise that texts are no longer delivering to her, phone calls aren't going through and the concern only grows as the hours pass and soon her boyfriend has reported her missing to the police.

1:11Within days, a full scale operation to find her is underway. Only Sarah Everard wouldn't be found alive. For international listeners, I really can't overstate just how huge this case became here in the UK. It stayed in public conversation for such a long time afterwards. Even still to this day, especially among women, everyone was genuinely shaken. It was like the rug had been pulled from beneath all of us and a false sense of security that we had was exposed and broken. Years later, it's a case that still gets brought up constantly whenever conversations around safety and trust come up, so I think it's about time we bring it into the conversation here on Outlaw.

1:57Now, before we get into the case, I do just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no harm or disrespect to anyone that we talk about in this video. Our episodes are made with the utmost care to honour those who lost their lives and respect the profound grief their loved ones and joy. By covering these cases, we aim to keep the victims names and stories in conversation and highlight the vital work that so many of their loved ones do in the wake of their deaths. Given the nature of today's episode, we'll be covering some very sensitive topics including sexual assault, rape, abduction, violence against women and murder. This episode is created with the hope to raise awareness to inspire change and further Victim Support. Viewer discretion is advised.

2:44Now it's time to introduce you to Sarah Everard, a kind, intelligent, beautiful girl who would devastatingly cross paths with evil in disguise. But before the awful thing happened, Sarah had made an incredible life for herself, filled with happiness, love and ambition. So let's begin with who she was before anything else. Sarah Everard was born in Surrey in the South of England on June 14th, 1987 to parents Jeremy and Susan. They already had two kids, James and Katie, so Sarah was the baby of the family and they all adored her so much.

3:24It was a super close from supportive family units. The Everads were very family oriented and would do anything for one another. While Sarah was still very young, her family picked up and moved to York in the north of England so that her dad could take a job opportunity at the university. So actually York probably felt more like home to Sarah than Surrey ever did. She really grew up there in York and she spent her formative years there. So York in part helped to mould Sarah into the wonderful young woman that she would someday be.

3:58Very early on in her life, one thing was very clear about her, and that was that Sarah was a very clever girl. She was naturally gifted with intelligence. But don't get me wrong, she was also a studier, a hard worker. She didn't close by on her natural abilities. She worked hard to strengthen them. Doing well in school meant a lot to Sarah. I mean, she was a good egg. She was honest, she was dependable. She was reliable and thoughtful. The kind of person that you would want to be friends with or the kind of student that you would want to teach.

4:31Her parents must have known very early on that Sarah was going to grow into a wonderful young woman. She had super strong values. She was deeply compassionate. Trust, generosity and empathy were of utmost importance to her. And just by the way, I can't not mention how stunning, cunningly beautiful she was. She had this gorgeous, warm, welcoming smile, long blonde WAVY hair. At the age of 18, when she had finished her eye levels, Sarah bagged a spot at the prestigious Durham University, which is consistently ranked in the top five universities in the whole of the UK.

5:07It's in the top 100 worldwide. If that doesn't tell you just how intelligent and promising this young woman was, then I don't know what can. The entry requirements for Durham are very, very high and there's a lot of competition, but Sarah damn well deserved that spot. She earned it. She studied a human geography course there. And honestly when I read that I was like, hold on, what is human geography? And actually it made me feel a bit silly when I looked it up.

5:34And it is quite self-explanatory. It's the study of the relationship between people, communities and cultures and their environments. Basically, how the planet that we live on is affected by the humans that inhabit it. And Sarah loved her time in uni. Between 2005 and 2008, she made a wide circle of friends, including a bunch of very dear close connections as well. One of which was a girl named Rose. She and Sarah were on different courses, but they became very close, and particularly when Rose's mother passed away during their studies, Sarah was really there for her.

6:11In fact, she told Rose whatever time it is, day or night, call me, I will be there. She was more than and selfless, it just came so naturally to her to care for those around her and those who needed it. After she finished uni, Sarah took some time out to travel the world and soak up all the culture and education that the real world had to offer. She went to Vietnam, Cambodia and India. Those are just a few of the many, many countries that she explored. And then when it was time for her to come back home, well, she decided that home was about to be somewhere different. Her mum and dad were still based up in York, but Sarah had big ambitions, the kind that required a big city with big opportunities.

6:55So London it was. She moved down to the big smoke, settling in South London. And actually, it made total sense for her because her older brother and her sister had already moved down to the capital before her, so she had family around here as well. Sarah worked her way up in a marketing career, and all of her colleagues had nothing but glowing reviews for her, both as a worker and just in general as a person, as a woman, as a friend, she was amazing to be around. By 2020, Sarah had bagged her dream job and a pretty damn good salary with it as well.

7:27One that meant she might actually be able to buy a house and support a family there in London one day. Which is difficult. That's putting it lightly. For most people, it feels quite impossible. The thought of ever being able to buy a house in the capital city. But Sarah had grafted for this. She had worked for and earned everything that she had. She was so incredibly happy and and then in walks Mr. Right, she met and fell for a man named Josh who was equally as ambitious, intelligent and accomplished as her.

8:02It was a perfect match and actually he only lived just down the road from her. It was an absolutely ideal situation, and by all accounts Sarah was loving life. But soon disaster would strike. Not to Sarah or Josh specifically, but to the whole entire world. Actually, in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread and overnight daily life changed for billions of people. I'm not entirely sure how Sarah herself spent the first lockdowns. We had at least three separate lockdown periods here in the UK over 2020 and 2021.

8:41Honestly, it all feels like just one big blur now, doesn't it? And mind you, the rules and regulations here in the UK were constantly shifting and it was so hard to keep up. One minute we were told not to leave our homes unless it was absolutely necessary, and then the next we were being encouraged to go out to restaurants for the Eat Out to Help Out scheme to keep the economy going. And then when that inevitably made the spread of the virus worse, it was back to a lockdown.

9:07It felt like no one knew how to handle this, especially our fucking government. Sorry. And then there was the concept of having a bubble, which was like one or two people that you were allowed to meet up with inside. And the rules around your bubble were even more vague. Quite frankly, everyone was doing the whole bubble thing differently, and a lot of people were doing it wrong, but actually no one really knew how to do it right. And by March 20/21, it had been just over a year of these constantly shifting rules.

9:36And to say that it had gotten messy and confusing would be the understatement of the century. At this point in time, the legal wording around it all was that you weren't allowed to leave your house without a reasonable excuse, which is obviously down to interpretation. What counted as a reasonable excuse was different for each individual. But if a police officer deemed that your excuse wasn't reasonable enough, you would technically breaking the law and there could be consequences. You could be fined or even arrested. On the evening of March 3rd, 2020, 133 year old Sarah Everard was headed to her friend's house for dinner. It was about a 45 minute walk away and it wasn't a particularly warm day, so she was bundled up in a raincoat and a beanie hat.

10:24Along the way. She popped into a Sainsbury's and picked up a bottle of red wine for the two of them to share. And before long she arrived and the two of them had a lovely evening. They caught up, they laughed, they shared stories and good food. And then just after 9:00 PM, Sarah gathered her things and set off on the rather long walk back home. Shortly after she began the journey, she called her boyfriend, Josh, and they caught up on their days for about 15 minutes.

10:51She walked and they talked. They made plans to see each other the next day. And then at exactly 9:28 PM, the phone conversation ended. And that was the last time that anyone heard from Sarah Everard. It wasn't until the next day, when she didn't show up to a work meeting and her boyfriend couldn't get a hold of her, that people began to realize that something was wrong. This was totally unlike Sarah. An ambitious woman dedicated to her career, a loving, commutative girlfriend. She wouldn't just ghost on everyone around her like this. Something immediately seemed off, and it became even more concerning when texts stopped delivering to her. Phone.

11:34Calls weren't going through. It had either run out of battery and she hadn't charged it up again, which would have been weird enough, or it had been completely switched off. It got to a point where there was really no reasonable explanation for her radio silence. And so at 8:00 PM that following night, almost 24 hours since she was last heard from, Sarah's boyfriend reported her missing to the police. Within hours, news of Sarah's disappearance was spreading like wildfire.

12:02Social media posts were going viral with her picture and her description appealing for anyone with information to come forward. And the very next day, it was all over the news, national news sending shockwaves not only across London, but the whole entire country. Rather quickly, people were starting to think the worst, that she hadn't just gotten lost or decided to go off on her own. For a while, everyone feared that something really bad had happened to Sarah. Her family shared that exact same fear and they immediately made the 220 mile journey down South to London from York to join the search multiple times.

12:43The route that Sarah would have taken home that night was retraced and retraced. Search parties walked those exact streets again and again, just praying that there was something that they had missed, a clue that might lead them to her. Within just two days, police had received over 120 phone calls, reporting tips and potential sightings. Everything was followed up on. None of them led to Sarah. Door to door inquiries had officers speaking with over 750 households in the area to see if they'd seen or heard anything from the night of the disappearance, but again, they got very little from this.

13:21Appeals went out to the public for CCTV footage, both from businesses and even from people's private security cameras like dash cams in their car or smart doorbells to see if the anyone had caught Sarah at all. And only with this could police begin to piece together what had really transpired on Sarah's walk home. CCTV footage captures Sarah during the 1st 15 minutes of her journey. She's going the exact route that would be expected and everything seems fine.

13:52There's nothing immediately suspicious or concerning. It doesn't appear as though she's being followed or that someone's watching her. But after that first 15 minutes, the footage of her journey becomes inconsistent. Not all of it is caught on camera, since some of the walk she did was on residential roads or through public parks that didn't have cameras. Police needed to figure out as accurately as they could at what point during the walk that something had gone wrong, and slowly it began to piece together. Police had asked an estate agent's office close to Sarah's home if they could send over their security footage, and they did, but Sarah didn't appear on it at all. Now, this was definite proof that Sarah hadn't made it home that night, because I guess there was always the possibility that she might have gotten home safely from that walk and then gone back out again.

14:44Or, or something could have happened to her at home, but now they knew for sure that she had disappeared in this rather small time frame and from those streets around Clapham. And if anything, this actually made it even more concerning and even more difficult for the investigation because Sarah's route home would have possibly involved her taking a shortcut through Clapham Common, which is this giant 220 acre public park with wooded areas and bodies of water and very few cameras.

15:15Within 48 hours of her being reported missing, the search had intensified to a full scale search and rescue operation focusing mainly on Clapham Common, that giant piece of land. The whole thing was meticulously combed through and the same went for the surrounding streets. You know, drain covers were lifted, bins were searched, but there was nothing, not even a slight clue as to Sarah's whereabouts. The police got in touch with her phone network provider and they found that the last time that her phone had been used was on a street called Cavendish Rd. just off of Clapham Common. CCTV from that road shows her walking with her phone to Haria, presumably speaking with her boyfriend, and that was the last thing she did on her phone.

15:57There had been no activity at all from Sarah's phone since, so it was becoming horrifyingly clear to her loved ones and to the public that Sarah had not gone willingly. She had been taken. In fact, further investigations into that specific area discovered that in the months leading up to Sarah's disappearance, several women had reported being followed along those exact same roads. With that, police released a statement urging women in the area to stay extra vigilant, saying the local community should expect to see more police officers on patrol in the area as we continue to search for Sarah.

16:36If you want to approach them about any concerns you have, please do so. We're here to support the community and we genuinely want to help in any way we can. By now. It was a few days into the investigation and police are still scouring through every security table that's been submitted for review. Most of them are turning out to be useless, but every so often they would spot Sarah. These videos and still images would be released to the public as quickly as possible in hopes that it could jog people's memories if they'd seen her that night. And then one tape comes in that changes everything. A car's dash Cam had caught Sarah standing on the side of the road, speaking to someone.

17:15White Vauxhall Astra had been parked up on the side of the road, its hazard lights flashing. The driver had seemingly pulled over and gotten out to speak to Sarah Everard. It was, it was at about 9:30 PM and it was already dark outside. So the footage of this interaction is so blurry that the person stood there with her can hardly be identified. I mean, Sarah was only really identified because she was wearing very distinctive clothing that day. She had a blue raincoat on and like diamond patterned leggings. She was quite easy to make out even in grainy dark footage. But this person with her, I mean, it was believed to be a man.

17:54And that is literally all they could really tell from this grainy image. So it was also out of the question that the vehicle's registration plate could be figured out. All in all, this footage was a major lead, yet a relatively hard one to actually follow up on. But just this in itself, that Sarah had been stopped and spoken to by an unidentified man, I mean, it practically confirmed police's worst fears. Sarah had been intercepted. An unexpected encounter took place, and then she vanished. So was this man responsible for the fate of Sarah Everard? Police did more appeals for footage taken specifically on this road now.

18:36And thank God, several of the vehicles that drove down there around that same time actually had dash Cam footage, one of which caught the white Vauxhall Astra with both of its front doors open, the driver's side and the passenger side, suggesting that Sarah had actually gotten into the car with this man that she'd been speaking to. And then the clearest shot of the interaction came from a bus driving past. And this time, it actually captured the license plate in enough detail that police could trace it. It turned out to be a hire car, which made all of this even scarier.

19:10I mean, had this man anticipated kidnapping a woman that day and hired a car in order to cover his tracks? Well, if that was the intention, it wasn't going to cover his tracks for very long. Police got in touch with the hire company, which was actually 75 miles away in Dover, and they could immediately hand over the details and the contact information of the man that had hired that vehicle. The last person known to have interacted with Sarah Everard.

19:38But the last thing police expected was for this to lead back to one of their own. The man captured on camera speaking to Sarah on the night that she disappeared was identified to be 48 year old Wayne Cousins, a husband, father of two and a serving police officer in the Greater London area. He lived about 75 miles out of London in Deal in Kent with his wife and their young son and daughter. Cousins had been in the police force in some capacity for 15 years at this point since his early to mid 30s and will dig further into his career journey throughout this section of the episode.

20:18But from what I can glean, he'd sort of had everything handed to him since he was very young. His first job was at daddy's company. His family was pretty financially well off as well. The only thing that he couldn't get handed to him were women, and that would remain A touchy thing for Wayne through his whole entire life. Women didn't want him as much as he wanted them. When he reached his mid 20s, Wayne watched his older brother go into the police force and this seemed to be a real Eureka moment for him. Wayne was a man that had always craved a little more power and authority than what's afforded to your average Joe. Imagine you could tell someone to do something and they just do it, no questions asked just because you have a badge. It's something we see time and time again with power hungry cops.

21:09There's a certain type of person that gets into law enforcement not because they give a shit about public safety and protecting people, but because they only give a shit about themselves and what it could do for them to have that much power. It likely crossed his mind many, many times. The kind of things that he could order someone to do. The kind of silent intimidation he could have when he walked into a room just by displaying his badge or having a set of handcuffs chained to his belt.

21:36So in 2004, he tried to get into the Kent Police force and failed at the interview stage. The exact reason for this? I'm not entirely sure, but this rejection didn't deter him. He was going to have authority somehow. He just had to figure out a way to get there. Now and then a loophole presented itself. Two years later, Wayne would have been in his mid 30s when he applied to be a special police constable and he finally got accepted. Now this role isn't quite as special as it sounds. Despite the name, it was a part time volunteer role and the vetting process was much different to a full time regular police officer role.

22:18I'm assuming it was much less strict. And with that, Wayne Cousins had found his way in. He got his foot in the door. He was handed a certain an amount of police authority so from there his career could continue to build and along with it his power over everyone else. Soon he tried out for the Kent Police once again for a regular full time role, but he was turned down again, this time due to concerns with his finances. See Wayne was in a lot of debt and I actually wasn't aware of this even though it makes total sense now. I am aware, but they don't let people in major debt become a cop.

22:58The reason being they'd probably be more susceptible to corruption and bribery from criminals to turn a blind eye to what's going on if they were being paid. There's not much faith that a man in majorly stressful debt wouldn't be swayed by dirty money like that. So Wayne was turned down from the full time officer position, but for some reason he was still allowed to keep his special constable role? As if the exact same concern wouldn't apply to that as well. In fact, surely it would be even more worrying since he's literally doing volunteer work.

23:32He's not getting paid for the hours that he is putting into the special constable role. If someones going to be more susceptible to financial bribery, it's going to be when they're working for free. No obviously I'm not saying they should have given him the full time role instead. More like he should have been encouraged to take another career path entirely. The police force should never have been a place for Wayne Cousins for way more reasons than just his finances. Of course you will see very soon, but he did end up getting a job in the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, which is a special police force unit specifically protecting our nuclear sites and the transportation of nuclear materials. Somehow the vetting process for this job missed the fact that Wayne was in major debt on or maybe it didn't miss that fact. Maybe they knew when they hired him anywhere. I wouldn't know.

24:21I'm not accusing them of that, but I wouldn't know. He worked there for many, many years until eventually he applied for a full time role in the Metropolitan Police Force, which serves and is supposed to protect the Greater London area. I'd say that working for the Met Police is kind of the dream for an aspiring police officer in the South to work for the main police force in the capital city of our country. And in 2018, a 45 year old Wayne applied and got the job.

24:51Not only had the vetting process missed his troubling debt once again, but in the time since the last vetting, Wayne had gotten up to some even worse shit. This time the vetting process had somehow missed the fact that this man had been reported for indecent exposure. And that's an awful enough crime in itself. But the person that Wayne was allegedly exposing his naked body to in public was a child. This had been reported in 2015, three years before he was given the Met Police job. The victim's parents had reported his vehicle and it was traced back to Wayne Cousins.

25:29They had his name, they had him. But frustratingly, he was never charged with anything, and I firmly believe that to be down to police incompetence. An appointment had been scheduled with the victim's family to get more information, but the officer assigned failed to show up and even then failed to follow up and schedule another appointment. So there was no interview, there was no arrest, nothing. Police had Wayne's name, they had his address, and they knew that he was an active Civil Nuclear Constabulary officer.

26:01And I wonder if that had anything to do with them failing to follow up. His work was never informed that this had been reported. Nothing was put on his file. And so three years later, when he applied to be a Met Police officer, they didn't seem to clock that they were inviting a sex pest into the force. And if they'd done any form of checks on his electronic devices, which should be part of the vetting process if it's not already. If they would have checked, they would have discovered that on a number of occasions he had sent unsolicited indecent images of himself to women online. He was a repeat perpetrator of sexual harassment. And on top of that, they would have found a huge collection of violent pornography on his devices. Wayne Cousins was into rape fantasies, sexual abuse, sexual violence.

26:55He had spoken to many, many people about this. He had shown other people the material that he was getting off to, including other police officers on the force. His colleagues knew that he was a twisted man that fantasized about sexual violence. The content that he was watching was intended to be viewed as a crime taking place. Now we know that there is such a thing as consensual non consent. Some people enjoy with their partner in the privacy of their home, consensually acting out a scene of non consent, but it is all consensual. Do you get what I mean?

27:33It's acting and that is supposed to be what a lot of the porn actors are engaging in. I mean, you would hope. Tragically that is not always the case. And that's a whole other awful tangent for another day. But assuming that the content that he was watching was consensually acted out, it's not an actual crime taking place. But that's not the point, is it? It's supposed to look and feel like a crime to the viewer who is getting off on it. And Wayne Cousins, his Co workers knew that he as a police officer fantasized and got off to sexual crimes taking place.

28:09But no one ever raised any alarms. There were no notes on his record. His boys had his back I guess. For three years before he ever met Sarah Everard, this man had been a problem waiting to happen and working for the Metropolitan Police. And God did he love to show off the fact that he was a cop. By the way, he would tell anyone and everyone that would listen while he was off duty. Maybe he's at the pub or whatever. He would tell strangers and acquaintances alike, despite it being wholly unnecessary and unrelated to any topic of conversation.

28:46He just loved that the phrase I'm a police officer carried a certain amount of power and intimidation. He'd even walk around while he was off duty and in normal clothes with all of his police. Geist still attached to his belt, handcuffs and what have you. Again, wholly unnecessary. Is that even allowed? Actually, I wouldn't know, but it feels like that shouldn't be allowed if he's off duty to be walking around with handcuffs attached to him and visibly displayed as well.

29:15But you see the kind of man that this is, he wanted everyone to know that he had control and power over them, especially in a physical sense. I mean, carrying restraints and displaying them openly while you're off duty, why else would you ever do that unless you wanted people to know that you're willing to use them? He didn't even need to say anything to be seen as threatening. In his first year with the Met Police, Wayne was a part of a Safer neighborhoods team in South London.

29:43And that's the kind of role that's there to give the community reassurance that they are protected, which is brutally ironic in retrospect of this case. Then in 2020 he became a part of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command. It's a high level position with a hell of a lot of responsibility. I mean he is literally guarding and protecting some of the most important people and important buildings in our country. Mother fucker was given firearms for this position and he was usually stationed at the Palace of Westminster and the embassies surrounding it. Then in 2020, when the pandemic hit, several existing officers were tasked with with COVID patrols. They would be out and about, making sure that people were sticking to the enforced curfew and the increasingly complicated rules.

30:33And even though Wayne was working his way up in the police force, a job that he had literally dreamed of, a job that granted him all the power and all the control that he could ever want, he was still willing to risk that to gratify his depraved sexual desires. In February 2021, not even a week before he came into contact with Sarah Everard, Wayne Cousins was still committing acts of indecent exposure. He drove up to a McDonald's drive through, and while he collected his order, he exposed himself to at least two of the women working there. In fact, there were multiple reports. I'm not sure if all of the women saw him, but there were more than two reports about this incident. And this kind of thing like indecent exposure, forcing someone to see you naked, that kind of thing makes me feel so physically sick.

31:26These women are just trying to do their jobs and they're being sexually harassed and traumatized while their guard is down and while they're expected to be polite and calm and normal and he is forcing them into an interaction like this. Now, these women took his license plate down. They even got his bank card information from his order that he had just made, and it was all reported to the police, but absolutely nothing was done about it. Police had his name, but when wasn't followed up on, he wasn't given a warning, nothing was put on his file for committing a crime like that. He should have lost his job, he should have been kicked off the whole police force and banned from ever being allowed to serve or protect ever again.

32:13But that didn't happen. Indecent exposure is often dismissed as a low level and maybe less concerning offence, but criminologists warn that it can be a red flag for escalation. A leading homicide specialist and professor said flashing is an act of sexual aggression. If someone has flashing in their past, I'd expect there to be problems in their future. It may lead to domestic abuse, coercive control, stalking or sexual violence. Research shows that over 4 years, more than 200 people convicted of rape actually had prior indecent exposure charges, and eight of which had even gone on to commit murder.

32:53Wayne Cousins, from what we know, had allegedly committed indecent exposure and gotten away with it on at least two separate occasions, one of which was towards a child. In fact, police now believed that he could well be responsible for at least eight separate counts of indecent exposure over the years, but it could be upwards of 17. This man was a ticking time bomb and he was about to explode in just a few days after his last alleged offence, on the night where he saw Sarah Everard walking home in Clapham, six days after Sarah had vanished from the streets.

33:31It was the evening of March 9th 2021. A full scale search and rescue operation had revealed practically nothing about her whereabouts or her current safety status. They didn't know if she was still alive and out there somewhere, or where she could be if she was. All they knew right now was that the last person she had been seen with was Wayne Cousins caught on various car cameras, and the last clip of them both even shows that the front door of his car was wide open, suggesting that Sarah had gotten into the vehicle with this man.

34:03By this point, police had actually looked into Wayne and discovered that he was one of the top suspects in that indecent exposure case from the McDonald's just three days before Sarah went missing. If everything was adding up correctly, this meant that she had gotten into a car with a sex offender. So immediately police go down to his house and they make an arrest on suspicion of kidnap and on suspicion of indecent exposure from three days prior.

34:30On the day of his arrest, Wayne had just been at home doing nothing. He'd called off from work claiming that he was ill with stress, and now he's a suspect in the country's biggest current case. The officer arresting him said that as soon as Wayne answered the door and saw that it was the police, all the colour drained from his face. He went completely grey. He knew it was over. So we're here to talk to you about Sarah. Let me show you the picture.

35:05Do you know Sarah? I don't know. OK. Sarah went missing. I'll show you some which is of of her on the day Sarah went missing on Wednesday and her parents obviously and her family are really worried about the inquiry that's been conducted so far has let us speak to you about it and to see what we what we know about Sarah. OK, So would you like to do you know where Sarah is, right? Do you know anything about what happens or not? I know that she went missing up in London somewhere about a week ago, so just from what I've got on the news. OK, have you had a person now?

35:56No, not personal man you had. Any interactions with? Her at all? Why, why, Why do I have personal interactions with her? It's very difficult because I can't go into a lot of the evidence because obviously that would require. That's not part of what an urgent interviewer is. OK? This interview is just about trying to find her because she's been missing for a while. Now I'm sat in handcuffs and I know her, so you must have something to say that I know her. Well, I said you've been arrested on suspicion of kidnap and we believe that you've been involved in her disappearance and taking her away from her family. OK.

36:37So we are trying to find her. See, everybody is very worried about that. She's got, you know, parents, she's got she's got a girlfriend. There's a lot of people that care about that. Sure. If you've seen how the news, the people that are reaching out out her, they're looking for every day and she's missing. And our job, our primary job is to find a strong finding that safely. Well, OK, we believe it. You know something about where she is and that's why we're here to look for her.

37:10Let's try and find her and that's why we're talking to you now. I'm just trying to get you to have a good think about it. After initially telling police officers that he had never met Sarah and has absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance, Wayne Cousins rather quickly changes his story. He tells police that he's in a lot of debt and has recently been in contact with a gang who I presume had promised him money in exchange for carrying out their dirty work for them. OK.

37:40Well I am in financial shift and I've been leant on by. I don't know who they are, they're a group, A gang, whatever and they told me why I need to go and pick up girls and get them to them. So it then came through that they have been harmed, my family take them away and they'll use them instead. At that point, I had no option to try and find somebody. So all right, then there's just a couple of names. I was told a place to take her. That's it. That's all.

38:32That is all I know. He threatened to take my family away from her. You. Must know more about where she is or how I can find her. I'm sure I don't know. I know you know, and you I. Don't know if that's taken in the sand then they've taken her. I don't know at. Some point you're going to end up looking to his family and wise, your family are going to be there. Oh no, you've got an opportunity here right now to help us find Zara and bring her back home to her. Final I can't.

39:04I don't know where she is. I hunt hand on heart. I don't know where she. Is you need. To help. Us. I just need to know where she is. If I could tell you why there must be something, If I honestly could tell you anything else, then you have it right now. Without explicitly saying it, Wayne Cousins just implied to the police that he had kidnapped Sarah Everard in order to appease this gang who would threaten to come back for his family if he didn't follow their orders.

39:35It was a tall tale and I'm sure police had their doubts about its validity right there in that moment. But regardless, they let him continue trying to explain himself and describe the situation that he was caught up in. He says that he was given the name of a place to take her and so he did. And then he's saying, but that's all I know. That's that's all I can tell you already. It's suspicious just how little detail he can give about the gang or about the day that he actually carried this out.

40:03If you had actually been ordered to human traffic, a poor innocent woman off the street, surely you would sound a little bit more shaken up than Wayne Cousin sounds in these clips tell. Me about it, I need to find it. Tell me everything now, OK? There was a white sprinter van. They are was between sort of Lennon Mainstone area that I've got to off. I still don't know. I, I don't know, they, they just, I just parked my car up and then the van came up behind me, flashed me and they all jumped out. And then they, they took this girl. They said, they said you've done good. And I don't know whether my family's going to be or what still, but they, they threatened, they threatened to take my family away from me.

41:07So at that point. I'm doing what I can to. My family, he recounts the. Very moment that the men came to collect Sarah from him. But weirdly, he doesn't seem to say anything about Sarah herself. There's nothing about how she reacted at all. He doesn't mention anything that she said or did not to mention. He doesn't explain how he got her in his car in the 1st place, what he said to her to make her get in, or where she thought she was going with him. So many large portions of his story and major details are missing.

41:40But then he tells police he can vaguely remember where he dropped Sarah off if they want to know. So all I know is it was a. Roundabout, we could drive there now, I could show you, but I, I roughly, I don't know Lenham Maidstone area at all. I did it on. Google, if we did it on Google map, it'd like right I drove. From Ashford to Maidstone there's a roundabout that breaks up, I guess. So this is the first big roundabout, the carriage straight over to Maidstone.

42:18But instead I went round that roundabout and back up another road and at that point that was flashed and pulled over. You guys got out, opened my door, opened that door, pushed me out against the front of the car, took the girl. Trade off, that's it, they said. We'll be in. Touch. So I'm here, I'm off work with stress because I'm here to protect my family. I want to be here 24/7 from my family. They come from my family. I've got nothing myself, if Wayne Cousins is telling. The truth about this human trafficking gang that are pulling people in to kidnap women off the streets for them. Then police need to get investigating this right away. They make it clear to him just how serious this is. They ask how the gang had even gotten in touch with him in the 1st place and Wayne says that he had been with one of their call girls.

43:16I'm assuming that he's saying that he had solicited the services of a sex worker that was connected to this gang, but he says that he tried to fuck her over and RIP her off. This fucking horrid man just keeps getting worse. Imagine trying to scam a sex worker that has already given you her services. If this story is even real, you know what I'm saying? But Wayne says that she must have told the gang that he tried to fuck her over and they then tracked him down and began threatening him to do their dirty work or they would come for his family and either kidnap or kill them. So the officers are like, OK, so how did the gang contact you? How do you communicate with each other? You know, kind of asking, do you have a phone number for these people?

43:58They just tell me being here. Being here so hotel bursts through gang pledge through could be here. OK, so I turned up. I've got I've got no mobile number and they have got my mobile number. They're obviously outside watching, following. Just honestly, how are they telling you to be there and be there? How? Is it that be in those directions? Yeah, They'll, they'll, they'll come. Outside. So they'll be outside here. And then they'll say, well, you're going to be in.

44:28At this time or you're going to be in Ashford at this time, I said there's no links, no telephone numbers. I'm completely on my own. But at the same time being threatened, he insists that he has. No way of contacting the gang and all of their communications are done in person, which is awfully convenient, isn't it? Almost as convenient as how much his story changed in the space of less than 5 minutes. That questioning that we broke down and showed clips of was no longer than 7 minutes in total.

45:02But remember, at the very beginning he was quite insistent that he didn't know Sarah. He was saying things like, why would I have personal interactions with her? He was insisting that he had only ever seen her on the news. And then all of a sudden, he admitted that he had kidnapped her and handed her off to a gang. The police weren't buying his story about this human trafficking gang, and they continued to look into Wayne Cousins as a suspect. They pulled up absolutely everything that they could about him, and they quickly learned that he owned a plot of land about an hour away in Ashford, Kent. That's never a good sign when they're investigating someone connected to a missing person.

45:43And it's not exactly clear why he owned this plot of land in a wooded area. He'd bought it two years prior in 2019. But of course, it was of immediate importance for the police to search this plot of land, especially when they checked his phone records and they found that his cell signal had pinged in that area of this random plot of land multiple times since Sarah's disappearance. So the very next day after his arrest, it was March 10th, when police search teams arrived and began combing through every nook and cranny of that plot of land.

46:17They spared no expenses, too. There were sniffer dogs. There was a police helicopter overhead. There were diving teams searching the pond close by. And it was in there, in that body of water that they recovered the dead body of Sarah Everard. Her remains had been burned beyond recognition, and so her dental records had to be used to identify her. Two days later it was confirmed and the search for Sarah Everard came to a tragic and abrupt end. In the days, weeks and even months following the announcement that the search for Sarah was over, the whole entire nation seemed to go into mourning. The City of London especially.

47:03I remember it so clearly. Clapham Common had become a place of grieving and remembering Sarah, with it being one of the last places she ever walked. It became a place for candlelit vigils and protests, for women to come and cry together, to remember Sarah and reflect on what had happened. And through it all, there was an overwhelming sense of fear and unease. One of our women had been taken from the street, driven over 80 miles away. She had been brutally murdered and burned, her body disposed of in a pond.

47:40Like she wasn't someone's child, someone's best friend, the love of someone's life. Like she wasn't a human being with the right to life. Members of the royal family even went down to Clapham Common to pay their respects, to leave bunches of flowers and speak with these protesting, mourning women. Both the Mayor of London and the UK's Prime Minister at the time released statements acknowledging the immense pain her family were in and the urgency that they're now had to solve this crime and to keep the streets safe for other women. And once the news broke that the man responsible for this horrific kidnap and murder was a police officer, well, it only made all that anger and fear even sharper. One of the very people who trained to protect us had done this to one of us.

48:33He knew that any random woman on the street would trust him and would do what he said. And he played on that trust to kidnap, rape and murder Sarah. Now, of course, trust in police has never been a universal thing, especially among marginalized communities, and especially in countries where corruption within law enforcement is even more visible than here in the UK. But the Metropolitan Police, police in London are meant to represent safety. They're meant to be the people that you would run to in a state of emergency when you need help and protection.

49:07And for so many people in the UK, especially for women, Sarah's case completely shattered that illusion. We are not safe. There was immense pressure on the police to reassure the public in the aftermath that they, as an institution, they were taking safety concerns seriously. Women were rightly saying that if they were now approached by a police officer they would be scared, they wouldn't have trust in him. And so different police officers and officials were making very ham handed statements across the media, including this one prick called Philip Allert. He was a crime commissioner in North Yorkshire at the time and got the disappointment that I felt when I heard that this was a fellow Yorkshireman.

49:50He went on the BBC News in October, so a month after Sarah's murder, and he said that women need to be more streetwise, they need to know their rights, they need to know when they can and can't be arrested. He said that Sarah never should have submitted to the fake arrest by weighing cousins. Women, first of all, just need to. Be streetwise about when they can be arrested, when they can't be arrested genuinely the most. Disgusting misogynistic victim blaming I've heard in a while.

50:20I actually can't even talk about that for much longer because I can feel myself getting like hot and angry. You guys don't need me to sit here. And we feel back every layer of how disgusting that is, especially given the fact that we are raised and taught as a society to blindly trust the police. The promise that we are supposed to have from them is that they are right and you listen to them. So to imply that Sarah did the wrong thing by going with him when he handcuffed her is just so out of the realm of understanding. It's just the worst take I've ever heard anyone have, never mind another police officer.

50:56Of course, Philip Allot resigned after the backlash over those comments. Over 100 of his colleagues actually signed an open letter getting him to resign. No one wants a man that thinks like that to be in a position of power. And then of course, there was the official advice that was given to women who were now terrified at the thought of being approached by a police officer. Police said that if you had doubts or concerns about the validity of an interaction that you had, then you could do one of the following things.

51:24Now hold on to your chairs because so much of this is so stupid. It's actually like laughable. We'll start with the milder ones. They said that you could call 999 in front of the police officer that is trying to arrest you. OK, Or you could ask the police officer to radio back to headquarters so that you could speak to someone on his walkie-talkie to verify him. Or, now this is where it gets insane. You could flag down a passerby, you know, just yell to someone, hey, I'm getting arrested, and have them to come over to witness the situation.

52:06What? Or they said that you could flag down a car or a taxi or a bus to come and witness the interaction. Or failing all of that and this is the craziest 1 yet, you could just run off into the nearest house. Genuinely that was the advice that they gave women. If you felt unsafe with a lone police officer, you should run away and close yourself in a strangers house while you call for further help. Now, surely that's actually grounds for resisting arrest?

52:36Surely that police officer would chase you down. Surely you would get into trouble for running away from an interaction. And you know, as laughable as all of this advice is, it's actually really not funny at all because the burden was put onto women to keep themselves safe through the most ridiculous means possible in order to just stay safe from male violence. It's just, it's batshit insane when you zoom out and you really take in the concept that this advice is being issued to women to protect themselves from police officers. Like what the fuck is going on?

53:09In the aftermath of Sarah's murder, everyone was terrified and enraged and they needed something. They needed a movement, and with that, Reclaim These Streets was formed. They organized vigils and protests to challenge the narrative that women should just be more careful, be more streetwise. They shouldn't submit. Instead, the movement demanded better protection and accountability. But when these women tried to meet up in Clapham Common to show just how horrified and angry they were, the Met Police made everything as difficult as they possibly could.

53:43Officers were literally seen getting physical with the women, restraining them and shoving them down to the floor, which led to even more outrage. Given the context of these protests, Sarah had been murdered by a police officer using his powerful position over her. And I think all of This is why Sarah's case became so much bigger than one horrific crime. Because for a lot of people, especially women, it tapped into years of fear, frustration and anger that had been building long before March 2021.

54:16The danger we face just as women going about our lives is always apparent to us. We know not to play music too loud in our headphones while we're walking alone so that we can stay alert to anyone approaching us. We frequently look over our shoulder to check who's around. We do an instinctual threat analysis on any man we see. It's sad, but we've been scared into living this way. And for many women that fear even once they walk through their front door, a place that should feel safe could actually hold the biggest threat to them in the form of domestic violence or domestic abuse in general. And that's why I want to take a moment to platform a crucial UK charity named Solace, who for over 50 years now have been supporting women and children in London escaping violence and abuse.

55:06And it's not only domestic abuse survivors that they help, it's those facing gender based violence, victims of human trafficking or rape exploitation. Solace helps so many people, mainly women and children, to escape and then to heal. On their website you can find so many different forms of support, from emergency accommodation to therapy to a dedicated number to call just for advice. And if you need to communicate in a different language, they can offer face to face support in that language.

55:36All you have to do is ask. If you're in London, please do take a look at their website and familiarize yourself. If not for yourself, then maybe for a friend or someone that you haven't met yet. You never know when you might need their services or when you might need to tell someone about their services. So the link to their website will be in today's description, along with our usual link tree full of even more resources if you need them. And for anyone who does need solace, you have my full support in doing that. Please do look after yourself.

56:06You deserve to live a healthy, happy, peaceful life away from whatever dangerous situation you might find yourself in. I believe in you, Outlaw believes in you. And now let's pick back up with today's case. Now that police have recovered Sarah's body and identified her killer, they need to fill in the gaps of what actually happened on that night, March 3rd, 2021. So by this point in the investigation, police had begun gathering Intel and evidence surrounding Wayne Cousins. They wanted to piece together his movements in the lead up to the murder so that they could try to figure out how he he had crossed paths with Sarah Everard and why he had done what he'd done.

56:47Well, they already knew that he had specifically hired a car to carry out this attack in, so there's an immediate level of premeditation. But they had no idea at this point just how far back that premeditation went. On February 10th, almost one whole month before Sarah's murder, Wayne Cousins had gone on Amazon and purchased a standard issue police handcuff key for £2.50, clearly intended for personal use since it didn't go through his work. Why would he need a spare handcuff key?

57:20And on top of that, in the two months before the murder, so this is as far back as January, Cousins was found to have driven the 80 mile journey from Kent to London for no real reason on at least three different occasions. The police believe that this was him scoping out the areas looking for some quiet, darker roads where he might be able to one day strike. And in the meantime, while he was driving those roads, he's probably just fantasizing and and trying to get some sort of high from driving the roads that he would one day take when he did murder someone. Clearly, he had decided on March 3rd or even sooner that the time had come he was ready to act on his urges and attack a vulnerable woman.

58:06Cousins waited until a day that he had off from work, but he told his wife that he was working that day so that she wouldn't worry or get suspicious when he didn't return home. In fact, he'd even written on their family calendar that he was going to be working overtime that day. Even more coverage buying, even more time where people won't wonder where he is. Around 4:45 PM that day, he goes to a rental car place in Dover and hires a white Vauxhall Astra, which he drove all the way up to London.

58:36Around 8:00 PM, he's already in London. He parks up in a Tesco car park in Kensington and he goes into the shop and buys just one thing, a pack of 14 elastic hair ties. Now the possible use that Wayne had for these hair bands has been debated. Clearly it was a very significant purchase, to the point where he paused his journey to go to a shop solely to buy hair bands. Some people think they could have been used to restrain Sarah, but it's also been argued that they could have had a sexual purpose as well.

59:09Hair bands are sometimes known to be used as an alternative to a cock ring, which is a tight band worn at the base of the penis to trap blood inside in order to stay erect for longer and delay ejaculation. And he had purchased these ahead of going out in his pre hired car to find an unsuspecting woman to kidnap, rape and murder. It's sickening to think that he might have made this purchase in order to prolong that sexual attack on his victim. Alongside the hair bands, Wayne had already been putting together what has been referred to as his kill kit, which included plastic stick sheeting and carpet protector film.

59:51So he's clearly not just planning to kidnap and rape a woman and then let her go, is he? Those purchases he made in advance show his intentions loud and clear. He wanted to murder a woman. He knew that there might be a mess. He wanted to cover his tracks. It's genuinely spine chilling to think how much he prepared, how much he thought about each element as a police officer as well, he probably knew ways in which he could be caught out and adapted his methods accordingly.

1:00:20It gets to a point where it's like, are we sure that the murder of Sarah Everard was the very first time that this man had ever killed anyone? I mean, there's no current evidence to say that Wayne Cousins had murdered anyone else before. But at least in my opinion, the way that he went about this seems really advanced, almost like he was practised or experienced in some way. He clearly knows a lot and I don't want to get lost in speculation though, so let's just talk about what we do know.

1:00:50Wayne was prepped. He had got all of his equipment ready and within the hours after buying those hair bands, Wayne was putting his plan into action. He was driving around South London just hunting for a woman, any woman that was alone and looked vulnerable enough for him to approach and manipulate, And it was around 9:30 PM that he spotted Sarah Everard walking down Poinders Rd. She was just halfway through her walk home. Cousins pulled his car over, turned on his hazard lights, and got out to go and speak to her. At the time, he was wearing handcuffs attached to his belt, and when he spoke with Sarah, he flashed his warrant card, immediately establishing his power over her, immediately intimidating her, manipulating her, and making it clear that he was someone that she was expected to obey. Wayne proceeded to question Sarah about where she had been that night.

1:01:44Remember, the Super confusing Covad rules at the time were that you had to have a reasonable excuse to be out and about, and he proceeded to lie to her and tell her that she was in breach of Covad regulations. He told her that she was breaking the law and that he needed to arrest her for this. The rules were truly so messy at the time that Sarah could have easily been convinced that she was in the wrong. Even if she wasn't, Cousins would have been able to play on some specific wording or a new rule that she might have only vaguely heard about in order to make her believe that she was actually committing a crime. And if a police officer who was shown you his warrant card says that you're breaking the law, I think most people would actually believe them, even if you think that you're in the right. I mean, at least prior to this case, I myself would likely have gone with him too, because we are taught to trust the police, trust that they know the rules even better than us, trust that they are acting in good faith.

1:02:45Even just walking past the police in the street can make you feel like you've done something wrong, even when you know full well that you haven't. I think it's quite a natural response to fawn when faced with that level of authority. And so it doesn't. It seemed like Sarah put up a huge fight when Wayne Cousins proceeded to take the cuffs off his belt and restrain her in them. Which realistically, if this had been a genuine arrest on the grounds of violating the COVID regulations, then handcuffs wouldn't be at all necessary. Police don't use them a lot of the time when they're making a relatively calm arrest like this. But the reason we know that Sarah was handcuffed by Wayne before he led her into the car is actually due to a witness that had driven by this interaction taking place. This woman in her car didn't think too much of it at the time.

1:03:30She just saw a woman on the side of the road being handcuffed by a plainclothes officer. And she remembered actually remarking to her partner that she thought that that was quite unusual because police don't tend to handcuff women very often. She just assumed that it was some sort of undercover operation. Little did she know she was actually witnessing the abduction of Sarah Everard. And now that Sarah was restrained, Cousins LED Sarah into his hire car and drove her away, presumably under the pretence that he was taking her to the police station. But in actuality, he began the 75 mile journey down to Dover, almost two hours away in a car.

1:04:14And we don't know at what point during that journey Sarah realized that something wasn't right. But after a certain amount of time, you'd be wondering why it's taking so long to get to the station, why he's taking motorways and not turning off. Of course, we don't know if there was any level of communication going on in the car between Wayne and Sarah. Maybe she realized very early on that this man wasn't genuine and this hadn't been a legitimate arrest. But this is one part of the case that I always think about, even now years out.

1:04:46How scared she must have been on that car journey after having worked out that they weren't going to the police station and no one knew where she was or who she was with. She had no idea where this man was taking her and why. He drove her to a secluded Rd. in Dover where he asked her to get out of the car and transferred her into his own vehicle, Now the family car that he takes his wife and kids everywhere in. He parked it on a quiet Rd. away from residential areas ahead of time.

1:05:18Another piece that he had put into place well in advance knowing that he was going to do this. By that point, Sarah must have known exactly where this was going. There would never be any legitimate reason for a police officer to make you get into a different vehicle to continue the journey, especially when that vehicle is parked in the middle of nowhere. It's not a marked car, but Cousins was covering his tracks, making sure that one vehicle couldn't be traced all the way to the end destination. And by now it was reaching midnight. Sarah had first been approached by this police officer at 9:30 PM, so now she had been with him for 2 1/2 hours, and finally he drives her to a rural area just north of Dover, where it's believed that he carried out her rape and murder in the back seat of his car.

1:06:08It's unclear just how long the attack lasted for, but it ended with him strangling her to death with his police belt. He would have had to apply pressure to her neck with that belt for at least two full minutes straight before she passed out or died. Two whole minutes where Sarah struggled and knew that she was about to die out in the middle of nowhere at the hands of this stranger. Sarah was 33 years old when her life was stolen from her in the most horrifying way imaginable. And not only did he take her life, he put her through what I can only imagine to be the worst fear and trauma imaginable for hours beforehand.

1:06:56And now her family are left to carry on life without her. So abruptly she was gone and never coming back. And the thought of her last hours on this earth replay in so many people's minds, even now, years out, including mine. Wayne Cousins is a monster of epic proportions. He had a burning desire to harm and murder a vulnerable woman that night. And what's worse, this man had been reported and identified relation to an indecent exposure case just a few days prior that the police failed to follow up on. Had they done so properly, Cousins would have probably lost his job, therefore he would have lost his warrant card, he wouldn't have had his handcuffs, and therefore he would have been unable to trick and lure Sarah Everard into his car and to her death.

1:07:47Instead, he used that exact warrant card and that exact authority that he was allowed to maintain in order to carry out the rape and murder of an innocent woman. But before I get too irate, let's round off the timeline and discuss what Wayne got up to in the hours and days after committing such a heinous crime. At 2:34 AM, he pulled into a petrol station and bought a bottle of water, a leukocyd, and an apple. And at this point we to assume that Sarah's body was in his car.

1:08:18He just parked it and left it outside while he ran into the shop. I'm not sure where else it would have been at that moment if not in his car, because following the visit to the petrol station, he was driving to that plot of land that he owned where Sarah's body was eventually recovered from. It's believed at this stage that he hid Sarah's body on that piece of land. It was actually a hotspot for people fly tipping, which is basically just dumping rubbish dish that's too big for them to dispose of. So there was a load of just shit around, and it's believed that he had found an industrial fridge to hide her in or under, at least for the next few hours while he drove back home and tried to upkeep his normal family life without suspicion. By 7:30 AM he drove back to where he had left that rental car the night before, and he switched again. Now he was going to take the car back to the shop. In total, he had racked up around 300 miles on that thing in less than 24 hours.

1:09:17And then just before he returned home to his family once again, he stopped in a Costa and bought a hot chocolate and a sweet treat for himself. The fact that he can eat at all after what he had just done is one thing, but the fact that this is a hot chocolate and a Bakewell tart, not even a coffee, you know, for the caffeine, for the energy. It's almost like he's trying to comfort himself with comfort food. A hot chocolate is that to me. And he can actually be seen on CCTV inside that Costa Coffee shop rubbing his hands anxiously and looking around.

1:09:51Seems like the guilt was already plaguing him. Mind you, he still has to fully dispose of Sarah's body later on. And I think that makes his little hot chocolate run even more horrifying because this is a man that is mid murder cover up, stopping off for a sweet treat before continuing to execute his plan and handle this dead body. The next thing he did was take care of Sarah's phone. This is around 9:30 AM. It seems he had cut up her SIM card and thrown her actual phone into a ribbon in Sandwich, Kent. Later on in the investigation, parts of her SIM card would be found in his car.

1:10:27That was crucial evidence that linked him to her in those early days of the disappearance. By 11:00 AM he had pulled into a service station and bought an empty Jerry can that he proceeded to fill at the pump with six litres of petrol, fuel that he would later use to burn Sarah's body beyond recognition. It's quite interesting to me just how brazen he is at this point in time. It's not even been 11 hours since he committed this murder, but clearly he's quite confident that the crime won't trace back to him because here he is, full face on display his in his own car and knowing that all of this will show up on this car garage's CCTV footage.

1:11:10He's not even trying to cover his tracks or obscure his identity in the process. But his plan was quite clear. He would drive back to that plot of land, pull Sarah's body out from where he had hidden her, and he would try to incinerate her body to get rid of all the evidence. But quickly, before he did so, it was time for another sweet treat. Wayne Cousins bought a salted caramel latte at the petrol station and then he stopped off at McDonald's drive through for some lunch.

1:11:38Yes, a McDonald's drive through. As if he hadn't sexually harassed the women at one. Just five days prior to this. A little over an hour later, Wayne's car was parked up by this plot of land that he owned, and a fire was spotted in the area. That evening he would return home to his family, to his wife, to his two young kids, as if nothing had happened. As if for the last two days he hadn't been committing heinous crime after crime. As if he wasn't now a murderer. And it seems that his family didn't really notice anything unusual about his behaviour.

1:12:12He was acting normal as ever, be it because he truly was completely devoid of empathy or because he was doing a good job at hiding his anxiety and his guilt from those around him. Because while I do believe that this man didn't feel any empathy towards Sarah, I think he felt a lot for himself. I think he felt sorry for himself now because he he was dealing with a lot of guilt and a lot of stress thinking about about how he was going to get away with this.

1:12:37He actually called off of work the next day saying that he wouldn't be able to make it in due to stress. And you know what? I do believe that he was stressed. I think the amount of sweet treats and warm drinks, salted caramel lattes, hot chocolates, little pastries, to me that does strike as a very pathetic man trying to comfort himself in any small way that he can. Not that he deserves to feel any level of comfort right now, but it seems to me that he's trying to self.

1:13:07He also emailed his supervisor around the same time saying that he no longer wants to carry a firearm and I don't know the exact reason that he gave. But given the fact that he has just emailed and taken time off with stress, maybe he was insinuating with this that he thought that he could be a danger to himself if he was allowed a firearm the day after the cover up. It was March 5th and Cousins is still trying to move as normally as he can, even calling up the vet to book in their family dog for an appointment to discuss her separation anxiety. Yeah, I was wondering if I could. Book my dog in for the for the vet so I can have a discussion about her issues please.

1:13:47She, well, we think she's suffering from like separation anxiety later on that same day. He went to AB and Q which is like the UK's version of Home Depot, and he bought 2 giant builders bags that are usually used for shifting like super heavy materials on a building site like rubble and rocks and bricks. It's believed that Wayne had bought these in order to drag Sarah's body between where he had been burning it and storing it into the pond where it was eventually found. Somewhere along the way he had also placed an order on Amazon for a big plastic tarp and a bungee cargo net. I now he will have been very aware of the intensifying investigation into Sarah's disappearance. I mean, it was the main news story in London already. By day two he will have been stressed, but just the concept of a murderer having a day off of work for stress afterwards, it's laughable, isn't it?

1:14:46On March 7th, 72 hours after murdering Sarah, it's the day before he was about to be arrested in his home. Wayne Cousins takes his two kids out to play for the very last time, but he doesn't take them to a park or to a soft play area. He took them to the plot of land that he owned where he was storing his murder victim's body. And it's unclear actually when he used those builders bags to transport her body into the pond. The idea that it could have actually been then while his kids were playing meters away, it just makes you feel sick. The following day was March 8th.

1:15:27Wayne was still off of work for stress, and it seemed that he spent most of his day just at home. Around 7:10 that night, he tried to wipe his phone completely. He reset the whole thing to factory settings, deleting absolutely everything he could on there. And it's not 100% clear what kind of evidence he felt like he was getting rid of, maybe like location data. But no doubt there were a lot of important things on that phone that were probably caught in the crossfire.

1:15:54We can only imagine pictures of his kids, his wife, their memories and and he's willing to delete it all forever in order to get away with the rape and murder of a young woman. A little under an hour later the police knocked on cousins door and arrested him. After that brief conversation where he was still mostly denying the accusations against him, police took him into custody at Belmarsh Prison and there he would be checked on every 15 minutes.

1:16:22After being deemed A vulnerable prisoner, police likely felt based on something that he'd said or done, that he could possibly be a danger to himself. And actually they would be right because the following day news broke that the man arrested in connection with Sarah Everard's case was now in hospital. He had been found collapsed in his cell with pretty bad head injuries. I think he was unconscious. He had been alone at the time, so officers immediately knew that whatever had happened to him was self-inflicted.

1:16:55It turned out that Wayne Cousins had smashed his head off of his cell toilet bowl and knocked himself out, but he was treated in hospital and sent back to his cell within a matter of hours. By now police had seized his car and forensic tests had been performed that not only revealed those fragments of Sarah's SIM card, but also traces of her blood and Wayne's semen in the back seat of the car. A number of other things had been seized from his family home by now, including a petrol can, boxes of latex gloves, a police badge, plastic cuffs, along with a sex aid that was not further clarified in reports.

1:17:37So we can only imagine. I know Wayne knew that the jig was up. I don't know how long exactly it took, but he very quickly came clean to the police about the fact that he had indeed murdered Sarah Everard. Couple of months later, June 2021, Wayne Cousins pled guilty to the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah, and this meant that the case wouldn't have to go to trial. Sarah's loved ones were thankfully spared the prolonged trauma of having to endure a trial where all of the evidence would have to be laid out in excruciating detail, all while her murderer would be pretending that he's not responsible.

1:18:14Luckily, he did plead guilty before he got to that point, but when the time came for Wayne Cousins sentencing, he was handed the most severe punishment possible in the Uka whole life order. He will be spending the rest of his working life in prison and he will die behind bars. He's also serving concurrent shorter terms for two cases of indecent exposure, including the McDonald's incident. And even though he did actually try to appeal against his whole life order, I don't know if he was trying to say that it's not fair to keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

1:18:50Regardless, in July 2022, his appeal was dismissed. Of course, in the aftermath of this case, the whole UK was shaken with the absolute shattering of trust in our law enforcement, not only based on the fact that a serving police officer had used his position in order to to kidnap and murder a woman, but also because there were so many chances to prevent this, so many chances that were missed. The amount of times Wayne Cousins managed to pass police vetting despite being in major debt, despite having several reports of indecent exposure against him, despite literally being identified as a suspect in one of them.

1:19:31Police had his name, they had his car registration plate, but they failed to look into that incident quick enough. So Cousins was able to keep his job, to keep his warrant card, to keep his handcuffs, and he was able to use them to murder Sarah Everard. The Met Police did try to defend themselves on all of this, saying that there was actually nothing in Wayne's background at the time that he was hired and the time that he was vetted that was cause for concern for them.

1:19:58And I actually think that just makes them look even worse. Like that's not a defence. Sure, Wayne Cousins didn't have any convictions, but as several reports and accusations, not enough to call. What was concern? We're still going to let that man become a police officer? Even in the aftermath of this case, more women came forward with allegations and reports of previous encounters with Wayne Cousins. They had seen his face on the news related to this case and they had finally recognised that he was their attacker as well. So many more indecent exposure incidents were reported and even an attempted kidnapping at knifepoint from 1995. One woman had been carrying that with her for decades and finally she had a name to pin to her traumatic memory. I do need to clarify that Wayne Cousins has never been charged or convicted of anything in relation to that allegation. An allegation is all.

1:20:52Well, it is right now at least. But what is incredibly clear is that there is a pattern of sexual deviance that was never taken seriously enough to stop Wayne Cousins in his tracks. He was allowed to simmer in his sick actions and even escalate to the point of murder, all while clocking in for his high power job. And I'm not entirely sure where to add this into the episode, so I guess I'll just say it now. One or two of his old friends came forward to say that Wayne had always been a weird and perverted person.

1:21:24Back when he was in his 20s, he was dating teenagers as young as 14. A fully grown legal adult dating a child. It's horrifying to see just how far back these patterns go. Oh, and also, he was discovered to have been in possession of indecent images of children at some point in his life. I don't know if they were in his possession at the time of his arrest, but this is what an inquiry found later on. I believe there were multiple different inquiries done internally within the police and issued by the government to dig into the workings of the Met Police and all the other institutions that Cousins had worked for in his life in order to figure out how the hell this could have happened. 12 Different gross misconduct on misconduct notices were issued to different officers as a result of these inquiries. 12 There was so much shady shit going on behind the scenes that had been flying under the radar this whole time. It soon came to light that many of Wayne Cousins colleagues were very aware of his depraved sexual predilections. As I mentioned earlier, he'd been very open with them about the fact that he liked violent

1:22:37pornography, but now it was discovered that back at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, many of his Co workers gave him the nickname The Rapist. That was because he made a lot of female members of staff uncomfortable, be it with words or actions, we don't know. But they called him The Rapist as like a friendly jokey nickname. It's unbelievable that a serving police officer had that nickname from other officers. A few of these fellow officers were investigated regarding this nickname and many of them denied it. No, I've never heard that.

1:23:17I've never heard him being called that. I've never called him that. But enough of them came out saying that it was true that it really makes you wonder, was there a level of protection between these officers? Were they covering for themselves now? Were they covering for each other? It also came to light that there were a lot of highly inappropriate messages shared in Group chats among police officers, many of them Wayne Cousins was a part of. In fact, a conversation that Wayne had with another officer went like this. PC Jonathan Cobbin had messaged into the chat saying that he had just seen a woman drunk and unconscious as he was getting off of the train.

1:23:51Wayne texted back. Did you finger her to see if she was OK? PC Cobbon texted back. I considered it, but she was a right old lump so I just raped a bystander instead. Another conversation that they had about the fear of losing their jobs went as follows, Cousins said. Mate, they aren't going to ditch you with your skill set unless you finger a DV victim, unless you sexually assault a victim of domestic violence that is coming to you for help. He quickly follows up with PC Coburn. If that's the case, you're probably fucked. And he responds, that's all right. DV victims love it.

1:24:31That's why they're repeat victims. Then another officer chimes in just to make a comment about repeat victims of domestic violence. APC Joel Borders says no, they just don't listen with a laughing face. In these chats, they would share graphics depicting violence against women and making a whole manner of inappropriate comments, be it in relation to cases that they were working on or just in general. There was misogyny, racism, violent comments, being dismissive, and joking about rape complaints.

1:25:03A number of police officers lost their jobs in the aftermath of these inquiries, which is bittersweet news because, well, good, they shouldn't be allowed to keep those jobs. But also, how the hell had all of this flown under the radar for so long? Inquiries revealed that in the five years prior to Sarah's murder, 27 different people working for the Met Police had committed offences including rape and possession of indecent images of children. 27 different police officers in London alone. These are the kind of people that are slipping through the cracks of these abysmal vetting processes and being able to have authority over the rest of us.

1:25:48And let me tell you about the worst of the worst. Right behind Wayne Cousins was a man named David Carrick. He had been brought to police attention by a woman. The very next day after Cousins sentencing, she came forward to say that she too had been raped by a serving Metropolitan Police officer, PC Carrick. As investigations into this progressed, everyone was horrified to learn that this woman was just one of many. This man was a serial rapist still actively working for the police in the same unit as Wayne Cousins. There were at least 12 different women that he had done this to her 12 and just like with cousins, there had been so many red flags.

1:26:36In fact, enquiries found that there were sixteen chances to stop David Carrick that had been missed. As if our trust hadn't been shattered enough, now there's two of the most dangerous men in London that had been employed by the Metropolitan Police. As the year went on, 2021 into 2022, more and more complaints came out about police officers in different scenarios. One of them had pretended to be a model scout and filmed women without their permission.

1:27:06There were the officers that had taken photos of the dead bodies of Bieber, Henry and Nicole Smallman and sent them into a WhatsApp chat with other police, calling them the dead birds. The amount of horrific group chats that were exposed was immense with one colleague reading I would happily rape you. These are the people that are hired and paid money to serve and protect us. Thankfully so many pieces of shit lost their job and were handed prison sentences themselves In the aftermath of this case. It was like Wayne Cousins had opened the floodgates that had been locked for far too long and finally all of this horrific activity could be exposed.

1:27:50Eventually, even the top dog herself lost her. The head of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, had said right from the start that she would not resign from her position, despite the public calling for her to do so. But eventually, as things got worse and worse, she lost the support of our mayor at the time and she handed in her resignation. Now, we've spent the latter part of this episode talking about the horrendous police officers that do need to be named and shamed.

1:28:19But now I think it's time we bring it back to the woman at the centre of this case. Sarah Everard should still be here. She should still be living the amazing life that she had built for herself. She would be turning 39 years old just next month. She might have gotten married or had kids of her own by now. And I think that's part of why this case stayed with so many people in the way that it did, because Sarah Everard felt familiar to many of us young women.

1:28:48She could have been a friend or a colleague or someone we'd gone to uni with. She was all of us and what happened to her was horrific. It was cruel, it was deeply unfair and while Wayne Cousins will spend the rest of his life behind bars, that can never undo the pain caused to Sarah's loved ones or the impact that this case had on so many people across the UK. So, as always, I want to end this episode by remembering Sarah first and foremost for the life that she lived, rather than the way that it was taken from her. Sarah's mother Susan spoke of the loss of her daughter, saying I yearn for her.

1:29:30I remember all the lovely things about her. She was caring, she was funny, she was clever, but she was good at practical things too. She was a beautiful dancer. She was a wonderful daughter. She was always there to listen, to advise or simply to share the minutiae of the day. I'm following her mum's words. As we come to the end of this episode, I want to take one last moment to remember Sarah Everard from all US here at Outlaw Podcast. We send our sincere condolences to her loved ones, and that is all we have for today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Outlaw Podcast.

1:30:07If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe, leave a like on the video and leave us a comment so that we can continue this conversation. I read through every single comment that you guys leave both on YouTube and on the podcast platforms. Trust me, I'm in the Spotify back end. I am reading absolutely everything that you guys are saying and I really appreciate, you know, I love how involved you guys get with these stories and with these cases. I think it's so important that we're all screaming about them, not just me, you know?

1:30:35So if you are listening on a podcast platform, please follow us actually and rate the podcast 5 stars. And you know, with all that being said, I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.