The Case of Sarah Everard

Deep in the middle of the UK’s shambolic COVID lockdown, 33-year-old Sarah Everard went for a walk. That night she crossed paths with a man who would abduct, rape and kill her.

Within days detectives had a man named Wayne Couzens on their radar, but with this breakthrough came a huge reckoning for investigators – because Couzens was a serving London Metropolitan police officer.

Follow us on social media:

https://www.instagram.com/redhandedthepod/

@redhandedthepod

Visit our website:

https://redhandedpodcast.com/

Sources available on our website.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I’m serti I’m Hannah and welcome back to red-handed happy New Year happy 2024 hopefully it will be a merry one so yes by the time you’re listening to this Hannah and I will have had two glorious weeks off to just lay on our sofas and eat potatoes covered in

Custard or whatever else we want to do but in real life reality right now this very second as we hit record it’s actually still December and Hannah and I sat here staring at each other not in any way really filled with any festive Spirit putting off getting into this

Week’s case because it’s horrific mindboggling in its brutality and just plain shocking as to how it was allowed to happen in the first place the murder of Sarah everard in 2021 became one of the biggest most notorious and most publicized cases in UK criminal history it appalled a nation already reeling

From months of being on lockdown and deepened the Public’s distrust of the police to an extent that the London Metropolitan in particular may never recover if you are British you know this story everyone else prepare yourselves at 5:50 p.m. on the 3rd of March 2021 a year into the UK’s

Shambolic covid lockdowns 33-year-old Sarah everard left her house to go to her friend’s place for dinner then she left her friend’s house in Clapham Junction Southeast London at 9:00 p.m. and set off on the 2-mile walk back to her home in Brixton CCTV cameras picked up Sarah cutting through Clapham common which is

A big Urban Park and during her walk Sarah called her boyfriend Josh and spoke with him on the phone for 14 minutes they planned to meet up the next day but Sarah would never show up her friends family and Josh tried desperately to get in touch with Sarah

But all of their messages went unread and all their calls are answered so on the 4th of March 2021 Josh called the police if you don’t know this case let me tell you now throughout this entire Saga the police were largely outed for their incompetence corruption and coverups for reasons that will become

Painfully obvious very soon but we do have to give credit where credit is due the officers who investigated Sarah ard’s disappearance did an outstanding job as soon as Sarah was reported missing they were on it they took her disappearance incredibly seriously and they started investigating immediately

Detectives put out a call for CCTV and any dash cam footage from anyone who had been driving around the area of Clapham on the night that Sarah vanished they then plowed through over 1,800 hours of footage to piece together what had happened to the 33-year-old marketing executive and using the CCTV recordings

Investigators were able to almost step for step retrace Sarah’s movements 26 minutes after leaving her friend’s home she was spotted on a street called Cavendish Road 6 minutes later at 9:32 p.m. the camera on board a bus captured Sarah on the side of the road speaking

With a man the man appears to be showing her something in his hand another 6 minutes later at 9:38 p.m. Witnesses reported seeing Sarah getting into a car she was handcuffed this set alarm Bells blaring so the police checked the car’s registration only to discover that it

Was a higher car and it had been rented not in London but almost 80 miles away in the town of DOA on the far southeast coast of England and it had been rented by a 48-year-old man named Wayne cousins so just 6 days after Sarah went missing investigators had Wayne cousins on their

Radar which in a stranger homicide is very fast but they had to be sure that this was their man so investigators checked the CCTV from the car rental shop and bingo there he was cousins was a perfect physical match for the man who had put Sarah in handcuffs and then into the

Back of his car on the night that she vanished he was even wearing the same exact clothes when he was hiring the car as when he was spotted by that bus camera taking Sarah it was a huge breakthrough but it also must have no doubt brought with it a deep feeling of

Horror for the officers who tracked this man down because Wayne cousins the now prime suspect in The Disappearance of Sarah everard a story that was already dominating the headlines was a serving London metropolitan police officer in fact cousins was part of an elite team within the London met he was a member of

The Parliamentary diplomatic unit an armed Response Team charged with protecting top diplomats and politicians as well as guarding embassies and at 7 a.m. on the 3rd of March the day Sarah everard disappeared Wayne cousins had just finished a 12-hour shift at the US Embassy he called his wife in The Lovely town of

Deal Kent and told her that he had to work an extra shift so he wouldn’t be home that night but that was a lie Wayne cousins left work and drove to do parked his car on the quiet street of North Military Hill and then went to pick up

His rental car he used his real name and he didn’t even try and hide his face from the CCTV cameras in the car shop now some people wonder why he did this why didn’t he try and obscure his face why didn’t he try and hide why didn’t he

Try and hire a car in a way that he didn’t even have have to go into a shop and be caught on CCTV he was a cop surely he knew he was on camera now I don’t really have an answer for this other than he was so supremely

Confident maybe that he’d get away with it and that he didn’t care I really don’t know cuz it’s such a stupid mistake to make but another question is why get the rental car at all if he was so obviously going to link that rental car back to himself anyway I don’t know

I think the only answer I can give as to why he even bothered to get a rental car given that he hires it in his own name etc etc is because I think he knew that his own car which was a bit of a banger may have made an intended victim

Be less likely to get into his car like if you drive up in a shitty car and then tell somebody they’re under arrest and you’re an undercover plane codes officer they’re going to have a few more red flags going off if you’re driving around old Banger so I think that’s the reason

For the hire car because he absolutely makes no attempts whatsoever to delink himself from the rental car and I also just want to say what a massive massive like sliding doors moment that the police even get that break because if that bus hadn’t driven past Wayne cousins at the exact moment he’s talking

To Sarah everard and showing her something in his hand and then you can match it with the eyewitnesses that saw her getting into his car those eyewitnesses never would have remembered the registration the registration is only known because that bus happens to drive past them at that exact

Moment so after getting that upgrade cousins drove his High car almost 3 hours from Dover to London stopping on his way to fill up his vehicle with 30 L of petrol which is enough fuel for a very long journey so clearly by this stage he already had a lot of driving

Planned once in Southwest London Wayne cousins was caught on cameras at a Tesco buying hairband cousins is totally baled so why he needed these hair bands is theorized to be for a very Grim reason some have speculated including law enforcement that cousins brought these hairbands in order to prolong an

Erection that’s horrific I didn’t know that so after this anpr which is automatic number plate registration technology caught cousins driving around the Earl’s Court area in London for almost an hour he didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular he didn’t look lost he just drove around and

Around we know now the officer Wayne cousins was stalking he was out there that night looking for someone anyone who fit the bill he was on the hunt that night for a victim and that’s exactly what he’s doing in ‘s court like if you don’t know where this story ends his

Behavior looks really odd but he’s out there looking for somebody that he can take and he had already planned exactly what he was going to do he has the hairbands police also later discovered that he had had a kill kit in that rental car a kit that he had been

Putting together over months it contained The Police Issue handcuffs that he’ bought online and then used on Sarah as well as a roll of self adesive carpet protector and velcro straps by 9:30 p.m. as Sarah was walking home cousins had given up on ‘s Court and was driving over battery bridge

Heading straight in Sarah’s Direction cousins first encountered Sarah when they both ended up on Pointer’s Road in claen and this is where cousins stopped Sarah everard on the bus camera footage officers could see that he was showing Sarah something in his hand and it turned out to be his

Metropolitan Police ID and he used that ID to falsely arrest Sarah telling her that she was breach of covid lockdown rules and that she needed to go with him to the police station and by 9:38 p.m. cousins has got Sarah in his car with her hands handcuffed behind her back and he begins

Driving away but he’s not headed to the local police station he drove a no doubt terrified and trapped Sarah everard 80 miles back to do I think it’s important to say like that people were getting arrested for being outside it was it was come [ __ ] it

H it’s horrific such a violent time yeah I mean so much of this story is infuriating for multi layers of reasons but we will come back to that shortly for now I want to talk about Sarah and the intense fear that she must have been

When she was in that car 80 miles 3 hours he drove her back to over I can’t even imagine how scared she must have been it’s absolutely I don’t even know what the word is gut-wrenching to think when she must have realized that cousins wasn’t taking her to the police station

At what point did she realize and also this is something that I heard Emma Kenny who is a pretty well-known psychologist here in the UK if you’ve ever seen any UK True Crime documentary Emma Kenny is probably being interviewed you didn’t it we love Emma Kenny fabulous fabulous makeup she’s always

Got Fabulous makeup on she made this point and honestly when I heard her say it I was like oh my [ __ ] god that is horrific because how was he with her that’s 3 hours is a long time to spend in the car with somebody and she’s completely immobilized her hands a

Handcuff behind her back there is nothing she can do how was he with her did he taunt Sarah now that he had her in his car and knew that there was no way she could get out did Wayne cousins get off on scaring Sarah and watching

Her Panic like a sadist or maybe did cousins just completely ignore her freaking her out with his lack of responses I also can’t even imagine being locked in a car with this man and he just stops responding to you we don’t know or maybe he tried to keep her calm

Maybe he tried to tell her everything was going to be fine I don’t know we just don’t know what happened all we do know is that Sarah like I said had her hands cuffed behind her back it’s not like she could even have fought as Wayne

Cousins drove he by this point was in complete control so there is no doubt in my mind that Sarah spent those hours absolutely petrified and there’s no way that during that Journey she didn’t realize the immense level of danger she was in whatever Wayne cousins was saying to

Her so given all of the footage that they now had officers decided it was time to pay their colleague Wayne cousins a little visit and this police interview is one of the strangest we’ve ever come across let’s have a listen now so we’re here to talk to you about Sarah show the

Picture do you know Sarah I don’t know okay Sarah went missing um I’ll show you some pictures of of of her on the day Sarah went missing um on Wednesday and her parents s and her family really worried about now the inquiry that’s been conducted so far has

L us to come and speak to you about it and to see what you what you know about Sarah okay so would you like to do you know where Sarah is no right okay do you know anything about what happened or I know that um she went Ming up in um

London somewhere um what about a week ago or so just from what I’ve got on the news okay have you ever personally met up no no personally you had any interactions with why what why would I have personal interactions with that well it’s very difficult because I can’t

Go into a lot of the evidence because that would that’s not part what an ENT interview is okay this interview is just about trying to find her she’s been missing for a while now I’m set handcuffs and what I know her so you must have something to say that I I know

Her but I said you’ve been arrest on suspicion of kidnapped and we believe that you’ve been involved in her disappearance and taking her away from her family okay so we are trying to find her obviously everybody is very worried about her she’s got you know parents

She’s got you know she she’s got a girlfriend there a lot of people that care about her if you SE on the news people that you know reach out about her sure they’re looking for her every day and she’s missing and our job our primary job here is to find and to try

And find a safe well okay now we believe that you know something about where she is and that’s why we’re here to look for her and to try and find her and that’s why we’re talking to you now to try and get to could think about it

And anything you care about at this point cousins knows that The Jig Is up and he caves very quickly but he doesn’t exactly admit to what he’s done instead he now starts making a series of strange claims about an Eastern European people trafficking gang okay um well I am in financial

Um and I’ve been um lent on by um I don’t know who they are they’re a a group a gang whatever um and they told me what I need to go and pick up girls and get them to them so um I said happening um and it then came to

That they’re going to harm my family take them away and they’ll use them instead um at that point I had no option to try and find somebody so I don’t um there just a couple of names I was told a place to um take her that’s it

That’s all that is all I know to this group of people tell me about them I need to find them tell me everything that I you’ll help me was a white Sprinter fan um they um are was between sort of lemon made Stone area that I dropped her off

Um I still don’t know I I don’t know they they just I just um parked my car up and then the van come up behind me flashed me and they all jumped out um and and then they they took this girl um they said they said you’ve done good

And I don’t know where my family is going to be all right still they they threatened they threatened to take my family away from me so at that point I’m I’m doing what I can to protect my family that’s it so all I know is was it was a roundabout we could

Try them now I could show you but roughly I don’t know lenen mstone area did it on Google if we did it on Google Map like Google Earth if we dve it it I drove from Ashford to [Applause] Mone okay yeah is a roundabout that breaks up I

Guess so this is the first big roundabout come to and you would carry straight over to midstone but instead I went round that roundabout and back up another road um and at that point that I was flashed and pulled over um guys got out um open my door open that door um

Pushed me out against the front of the car car took the girl drove 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 for my family they come from my

Family I’ve got nothing myself I got no choice I’ll go back through the rout with you in a minute all right but how do they contact you how did you contact I tried to over one of their cool girls and rip her off so she’s told them and um they

They got me sorry how do they no but on how do they contact you how how is it they’ve been contact with you to make these threats they just they just tell me be here be here so Hotel Burston Danny Fon got be here okay so I turned

Up um but I’ve got no mobile number and they have got my mobile number they obviously outside watching following I just honestly how are they telling you to be there how is it even in those directions yeah they’ll come outside so they’ll be outside here yeah and then they’ll say right you’re going

To be in folon at this time or you’re going to be in Ashford at this time that’s it there’s no links no telephone numbers I’m completely on my own but at the same time being threatened uh um it had um Romanian plates on the on the van

Um uh White um like Mercedes SP type van okay so what we have here is a man who has a prepared narrative this whole Eastern European gang thing wasn’t just dreamt up on the spot cousins knew that they might come for him in fact just 35 minutes before the police knocked at his

Door cousins did a full factory reset on his mobile phone this has led to a lot of speculation that he was tipped off by someone inside the investigation and that may well be true does feel like quite a large coincidence and we all know that the Met

Are all out for each other but it is just speculation we have no public proof of cousins receiving any sort of heads up from another police officer but would we but getting back to the interview at his house it’s so interesting to listen to cousins he’s so obviously lying

In the video cuz obviously you guys are just listening to the audio version but we will post a link to the video so you can go watch it you can see how hard he’s breathing the whole time he’s being questioned even though he’s not speaking the officers are just questioning him

You can literally see his entire chest rising and falling with the fear and the Panic that is csing through him and in a classic move after Wayne cousins realizes that the detectives know it was him he starts to minimize with this whole Eastern European gang thing he

Turns himself into the victim he was being blackmailed by a gang they had threatened his family what could he possibly do surely they had to understand why he did what he did he’s not a bad guy he just made a bad decision it’s unbelievable the idea that cousins was being forced into kidnapping

A girl and handing her over to this Eastern European gang because he’d had a run in with one of the girls at this Eastern European gang’s brothel what it doesn’t even make any sense I mean the idea that he really thought that rather than just admitting that he’d been

Paying for sex and Reporting the gang to the police when they started to threaten him he thought that abducting a girl and handing her over to a sadistic gang was a better option like it doesn’t make any sense obviously the police aren’t buying it either and it just is further proof

That cousins is for a police officer somebody who should have been able to cover their tracks better not a very smart man in terms of how he tries to get away with this no and I genuinely think he thought he was going to oh 100% 100% but like we said the police aren’t

Buying it and cousins was arrested that night in connection with The Disappearance of Sarah everard Remember by this point Sarah is missing they do not have her body so who is Wayne cousins and what if any warning signs were missed well by the time he was arrested cousins was a

Married 48-year-old police officer with two kids living in deal in Kent he was born in Dover on the 20th of December 1972 and he spent much of his life in that area friends from when he was growing up described cousins as a weird kid he seemed to live in his own little

World and he enjoyed extremely violent films and equally violent pornography once he even shot his friends in the legs when they were just Teenagers by 1989 when he was 17 years old Wayne cousins started working at his family business a car garage and again here colleagues were put off by his love

Of porn and he seemingly very openly shared that fact in 2002 much to the relief of the other workers at the garage cousins left to join the territorial army or the Army Reserves from here cousins was able to move into the Kent special constabulary so essentially he became a part-time

Volunteer police officer with very limited powers but soon cousins got a taste for law enforcement and now that he had his foot in the door this enabled cousins to move around within different policing units and jurisdictions with shocking ease and very little oversight can you believe

That when he applied for his role with Kent Police there wasn’t even a mandatory requirement for forces to interview special officer applicants like they didn’t even have to talk to them you know just to sanity check who you’re letting wear the uniform and represent the police to members of the

Public you could just be like oh that’s a special officer to the member of the public who looks at that uniform they don’t know the difference no so the fact that you are willing to put people on the streets without vetting them thoroughly is a shocking oversight and

It is just it’s diabolical that this man was allowed to go in and then just move move around within the units so during his time with the Kim police no obvious red flags went up around cousins that we know about anyway those who worked with him described cousins as being overly deferential to

Authority they said quote he always had the shiniest boots and I think you can see here that connection that cousins is making with power and authority within the police I think there is something there with cousins about like I follow the rules outwardly at least I’m respectful of authority I have the

Shiniest boots on the force and in turn he’s going to expect that those that He administers to I.E the public listen to him unquestioningly so after a few years with Kent Police in 2011 Wayne cousins joins an armed police force the Civil nuclear constabulary it’s essentially a

Unit within law enforcement made up of 1,500 officers or thereabouts who were charged with protecting civil nuclear sites and providing security when any nuclear materials are moved around within the UK and unbelievably despite this being an armed unit and the fact that all officers who join are given firearms

Training there was barely any vetting done on Wayne cousins no clear psychological evaluation nothing yeah it’s like that the because this particular unit within policing doesn’t really interact with the public they guard like you said nuclear sites they provide protection when nuclear material has been moved around so because they

Don’t do that they’re just like oh we we want to fet them but you are giving them firearms training so for the next seven years cousins spent his life guarding power plants all over the country usually in farflung isolated locations but it was during this time that Wayne cousins gamed himself the

Cute little office nickname the rapist Y and this is where any benefit of the doubt that I’m willing to give the police goes thoroughly out of the window because look I’m not here to be some cop fetishist what I’m saying is the people that did the investigation into Sarah

Proved that good policing exists obviously it does otherwise we’d be living in [ __ ] Mad Max times but this kind of shambolic lack of vetting lack of oversight lack of any kind of alarms being raised of a man who is exhibiting clearly problematic behavior is the start of the very slippery slope that

We’re about to go down today now depending on when Wayne cousins was branded with this particular label we can take a pretty good guess as to why if the nickname came after 2015 it was because that was the year that a man was reported for exposing himself

Yes that is correct armed police officer Wayne cousins was caught driving around over naked from the waist down he was reported but nothing was done he should have been let go there and then but he continued to work at the Civil nuclear constabulary for another three years

We’re going to talk about this at length in this episode but how anybody in the police force in this armed police unit could have looked at that behavior and thought it was anything short of deranged is honestly Beyond me yeah it’s really not the type of person you should

Be giving a gun to no and in 2018 Wayne cousins joined the London Metropolitan Police the largest police force in the UK do you know what percentage of the total budget that we set aside for policing in this country the London met get what percentage

Yeah 74 no it’s 25 but it is it’s absolutely massive it needs to be I mean this is a separate conversation but the London met needs to be broken down it’s too big it’s completely unruly it needs to be broken down into like three or four different units but it it is a

Massive gargantuan Beast that is completely out control that nobody could have any oversight over certainly not the people that have tried to do so at least so yes he joins Al L Metropolitan Police and as if this isn’t horrifying enough that a man who had been caught indecently exposing himself had just

Walked into the Met Wayne cousins in fact joined an elite unit within the met the one that Hannah told you about earlier the Parliamentary armed unit and again no checks were done and this is because of the massive and successive cuts that we’ve seen in this country to

Our public services including to the police and I’ll be honest over the past few years here in the UK we’ve definitely been importing a lot of American concerns saying things like defund the police now in the US most sane people who say this I understand mean demilitarize the police and that

Would be a good thing there though it is a poorly phrased slogan but here in the UK it makes no sense and cutting funding for our Police Service when it comes to vetting training or pay helps no one the victims of underfunding the police will always disproportionately affect lower

Inome people who are living in high crime neighborhoods and need good policing not aggressive policing not over-the-top policing need good well-funded policing and you also have situations like this one with Wayne cousins because when you cut police budgets what happened in in organizations like the me

Is that they had a huge death of police officers with firearms training firearms training is expensive to give to officers so they had a real shortage of police officers who had that kind of training and after the 2017 Paris attacks the London Metropolitan Police realized that they needed more armed

Cops so this is the perfect point of weakness for somebody like cousins to exploit when cousins applied for the men and was able to say I’m already a firearm trained officer I worked at the nuclear civil constabulary they literally [ __ ] bit his hand off because he was already trained they

Didn’t have to pay for it so they took him into the met without even looking at his record and this is the kind of problem you have when you make huge public sector Cuts is you let people like this fall through the gaps at this point just can’t be

Stressed enough wherever you have vulnerable people wherever you have the power to be taken you will get Predators that’s a fact it’s a given how many times have we talked about on this show people who crave power and authority and how they’re drawn to roles like the police the Army bouncers security guards

That sort of thing that is by no means to say that everyone in those jobs is a wrong and obviously not there are people who work those fields out of a sense of Duty to serve the issue is what systems do our Societies or our institutions have to root out the Bad actors

But when cutbacks mean vetting processes are Sid stepped this is the mess that unfolds and the stakes and dangers of recruiting the wrong people into the police are massive now none of this is letting the London met or the police in general off the hook I’m not saying oh look they

Were so underfunded and that’s why they let him in that’s a reason that is absolutely a reason for why Wayne cousins was able to walk into the Metropolitan Police but even if Cuts were made there is rampant inefficiency in the met in particular it is absolutely massive like I said it needs

To be broken up into multiple different police forces if it has any hope of operating successfully but that’s a boring rant for another day the point here is that there were multiple opportunities to stop Wayne cousins before he killed Sarah everod this didn’t happen out of the blue there are

Situations where yes no one could have known no one could have stopped something happening this is not that case Sarah could have been saved and when you unpick the story as trite as it sounds honestly this entire case is like watching a car crash in slow motion and

All of the signs were ignored nobody took responsibility nobody did the right thing and the eventual response of cres a dick the then Chief commissioner of the Met to say basically that it was just One Bad Apple was a major dick move even for ch because of course it’s not all police

Officers otherwise like I said we’d be [ __ ] but that One Bad Apple as they put it was allowed by continuous institutional failings and a total lack of any kind of reporting or whistleblowing or taking anything seriously to slip through the net time and time again until he ended up killing

Somebody also it’s hardly Just One Bad Apple like we said a job in the police has the capacity to draw in a certain type of person and it’s also hardly just one instant where red flags are ignored and actually a freedom of information request to the UK police forces in 20123

Found that in the last four years 500 police officers and staff were reported for sexual assault that is staggering and 351 of those people are still serving today and I’m afraid it just gets worse the same request found that 2715 police officers and staff had been reported for some sort of sexual offense

In the last 5 years and that 1,694 officers and staff had been reported for domestic abuse 78% of whom are still serving on the force and the cherry on the cake in the last 6 years 259 officers and staff have had multiple allegations of sexual offenses made against them two of these

People have faced more than 15 allegations so just One Bad Apple I don’t think so no and as like we said this kind of role with this level of power and authority attracts people that are drawn to that and letting the wrong person in then allows those people to

Abuse their power and get away with whatever they’re doing it is a horrible cycle and again like you said it is inevitable that wherever you have power up for grab wherever you have vulnerable people there’s going to be people that want to take advantage of it it’s the

Fact that the institution of the police is so poorly equipped at rooting these people out is the problem now perhaps you’re wondering lovely listeners why if so many police officers and people who work within the police forces in this country have been reported for sexual violence why is it

Not constantly Front Page News well it’s because more often than not the victims of these perpetrators are are their spouses and let’s be honest if Sarah had been in a relationship with Wayne cousins and he’d still been a police officer and he had still raped and killed her we probably never would have

Heard about it it never would have ever even made the news because since 2009 15 serving or former UK police officers have killed women most of these women were their partners and that is why we haven’t heard about any of them and again look that is taking absolutely

Nothing away from what Sarah went through all the horrors of her murder I’m not saying oh well look everybody heard about Sarah everod and nobody cared about these I’m saying what happened to all of these people is horrific I’m just explaining why Sarah everad made front page news and none of those women

Did the murder of Sarah everod became a national Obsession of a story purely because it was so shocking so extreme and so unique stranger attacks are thankfully incredibly rare in this country particularly against women actually typically men are much more likely to be victims of violent crime in

The public think bar rules Etc women are much more likely to be killed in the home by their current or former intimate partners and it is no different when it comes to the attacker being a cop the added trauma here when the abuser is a cop is that while it is already an

Indescribably difficult task for someone in an abusive relationship to report that and then Escape imagine that your abuser is a police officer who would you go to who could you trust it’s an impossible and absolutely terrifying thought so yes this tragic story unveiled yet more issues within policing

In this country it highlighted that the met in particular is an institution seemingly incapable of and unwilling to deal with abusive officers and staff and there exists a culture more concerned with ask covering than with safety of the public and if you need more proof of this one day after Wayne

Cousins was arrested another woman reported another met officer of rape and 7 months later in October 2021 Dave Carrick was arrested GH Dave Carri is from stevenage so close to where I grew yeah and this was one of the cases where we did actually hear about a man who had

Abused his partner but it’s a very rare one but I think it’s just because of how extreme he was and David Carrick was also a met police officer he had actually worked in the armed parliamentary and diplomatic unit alongside the rapist Wayne cousins what Dave Carrick did needs a

Whole episode itself to go through but let’s have a very quick and very Grim rundown officer Dave Carrick Was a Serial abuser of women he was in a relationship with a lady who we will call CLA they met each other on a dating app in 2010 at first things were great but soon

Dave the bastard Carrick which was his nickname at work alongside the rapist told CLA I only ask one thing of you that you obey me and after that Carrick began to regularly abuse CLA physically sexually and emotionally Carrick would often lock his terrified naked partner in the cupboard under the stairs for

Days at a time he would whip her with a belt urinate on her rape her always anally until she bled reminding her every day I am the law but CLA was far from his only victim in his 17 years as a cop Carrick abused countless women he admitted to 71 incidents of sexual

Violence against 12 victims and on the 7th of February 2023 Dave Carrick was sentenced to 30 years now for the whatap groups I hate this bit so just 6 weeks after Sarah’s murder with Wayne cousins on under arrest investigators turned their attention to his colleagues Jonathan cin

35 William Neville 34 and Joel borders 45 the men were looked into with regards to a WhatsApp group called bottle and Stoppers slins puppets which I I must be an in joke because I don’t understand what the references are to anything and these men had been in this WhatsApp

Group with a strange name with none other than Wayne cousins and in this WhatsApp group these officers had been sharing what’s been described as racist homophobic and misogynistic messages and yes there’s no doubt about that they talk about their struggle snuggles after one of them pinned down a 15-year-old girl to the

Floor during an incident and another suggested that he would rape and beat a named female officer in a different conversation these men also laughed at the idea of using tasers to torture animals and shooting people with Down Syndrome all three men had also worked at the Civil nuclear constabulary just like

Wayne cousins had and all of them just like Wayne cousins had had transferred to the London Metropolitan Police in February 2019 and look I’ve read the texts you can read the text they are out there they’re gross I don’t really want to go through them in a huge amount of detail

Here but yeah like I don’t know some people say like to be a police officer so you have to have a certain level of gallows humor which like okay fine this is what the men claimed in court as well and also yeah like I’m not going to sit

Here and pretend that we all don’t say things in the safety of groups that we trust with friends that we trust make off-color jokes or jokes that would otherwise get us cancelled if they you know became public and I don’t think that people should be rounded up and

Impr prison for jokes however off color but these men have real power their actions have consequences these men were all Firearms trained police officers and they were all in roles where they could have done the things that they were saying they were going to do so of

Course that kind of thing cannot be ignored I think you know if you’re going to be a police officer the things that you’re saying and the way that you conduct yourself with that kind of power comes responsibility and therefore you need to be held to a different account

And a different standard to your average person and to be honest I’m glad that two of those three officers were eventually sentenced to 3 months in prison and when you see these chats if you do choose to go and find them you also realize that that’s why no one

Complained about cousins they just called him the rapist WhatsApp chats like that were mutually assured destruction if you start talking out of turn rocking the boat the other officers have a whole Litany of nasty [ __ ] on you and in an interview that we watched with

A junior cop he says standing up to that kind of culture is impossible you either have to take part or stay silent so the whole WhatsApp chat part of this case again really high that culture of covering up and complicity within the police yeah I mean if you’re

All in it you’re all in this chat like this even if you’re not saying anything you’re associated with that conversation you are immediately assuring yourself and everybody else that there’s no way that you can point the finger at anybody else because they’re saying look at the

[ __ ] I’ve got on you are you really going to turn me into the higher ups mate you’ve said far worse etc etc and that’s why that culture is so dangerous and so pervasive because it serves a purpose it makes did you ever watch the secret policeman no I didn’t actually no

I didn’t it’s really good documentary about I think it’s the Manchester met actually and someone goes into the police academy undercover and films everything and Ian it’s quite old now I think I watched it at school but it’s all it’s all this sort of stuff all of

It so it it just goes to prove that like this is not a new problem in fact this kind of thing like the WhatsApp groups was an Open Secret After Wayne cousins was discovered for what he was the higher-ups told everyone just to delete everything get rid of all

Of the WhatsApp groups we don’t want to see it yes they knew that all of their police officers were in groups like this saying stuff like this and I get it how many man hours can they put aside to investigate all of their officers for all of these groups so they’re just

Literally like delete everything we don’t want to [ __ ] know about it get rid of it all right now but now let’s get back to the investigation into Wayne cousins after his bizarre story about the Romanian gang the police had to follow up but guess what they found no trace of him on

CCTV at any of the places he claimed that they had forced him to meet them because you know in the interview that you heard he’s saying things like they told me where to be they were just like you need to be here you need to show up

Here or else we’ll kill your family but the police can’t find any trace of him actually being in any of those places that he said that he was what they did discover however was that using cell site data they could track cousins’ movements from DOA to London and back

Again on the day that Sarah disappeared they could play as cousins having arrived back on North Military Road where he’d parked his car with Sarah at 11:30 p.m. here he presumably forced Sarah out of the high car and into his own vehicle and we know this because

Just 12 minutes later he was caught on CCTV driving his own car he then drove Sarah out to the middle of nowhere between 11:53 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. cellsite data placed cousins in the vicinity of cetor a rural area of DOA and this is where it is believed that

Wayne cousins raped and killed Sarah everard who is now more than 70 miles away from her home having left to go and have dinner with a friend 2 miles away at 3:21 a.m. cousins’ car passed a camera near Hodes wood an 80 acre plot of Woodland in Kent it didn’t take much

Digging for the police to discover that back in 2019 cousins had actually bought a small plot of land in hodess Wood it had been advertised as the quote perfect place for day trips but in reality the area was a Dumping Ground littered with abandoned cars fridges and all sorts of

Rubbish cousins had paid five grand in cash for this odd dirty little spot of land but now it made sense and the purchase of this land back in 2019 also pointed at just how long cousins may have been planning a kill investigators also soon discovered that cousins before his arrest had been

Taking his family for picnics to his plot of land in Hodes wood this wasn’t typical for him he had also apparently stopped going into work he should have gone into work on the 6th of March 2 days after the murder but he didn’t he called his boss on the eth and claimed

That he wasn’t feeling very well saying he was stressed and he doesn’t want to carry a gun anymore so he needed some time off to the police it looked like he was cracking and the constant trips to the woods may have been cousins nervously checking in on his body

Disposal site so on the 10th of March police went to search Hodes wood by 4:20 p.m. that day they had found Sarah’s remains now we don’t know exactly what happened this case never went to trial and so a lot of information has never been made public and also Sarah remains

Were so badly burned that she could only be identified by her dental records what we do know is that Sarah was raped and strangled to death with a belt the coroner reported that it likely would have taken 2 minutes of consistent pressure to kill Sarah that way there

Was also DNA evidence that Wayne cousins had used velcro straps to restrain her and after he killed Sarah Wayne cousins left her body in her W on his own [ __ ] plot of land a few hours later at 8:15 a.m. cousins was caught on CCTV at a nearby Costa Coffee ordering a hot

Chocolate with coconut milk and a Bakewell tart he looks totally chill and calm he’s just killed a woman and left her body in the woods on land that he owns and he’s just as cool as can be there’s no hint of panic at all an hour later cousins drove to sandwich as in

The town in Kent not the snack there he removed the SIM card from Sarah’s phone and chucked it in a river cousins then drove back to hoodwood stopping only to buy a Jerry can full of petrol once back on his fly tipped land he found an old abandoned fridge cousins then put

Sarah’s body inside this fridge and set it on fire using the petrol that he’ brought with him he then made another trip to a DIY store bought some heavyduty rubbish bags filed them with Sarah’s now burned remains and then dumped them in a pond about 100 ft from

His land and then he went about his life Wayne cousins went home and tried to act normal he took the kids to dentist appointments he even called the vet to talk about some concerns he was having with the family dog the day after he killed Sarah yeah I was wondering if I

Could book my um dog in for the for the vet so I can have a discussion about uh issues please it’s cousins c u z NS is Maddie that’s the one uh no no no no no that’s fine um I I work shift work so either

Um let me think um bet would it be possible the Friday the 12th um sometime after hus 3 would be brilliant Y no that’s fine um she well we think she’s suffering from like separation anxiety and we have tried absolutely everything we’ve tried to like to give her puzzles and and bits

And pieces we treat puzzles and everything we take her for walks every single day um but we’ve been told I’ve I’ve got a camera set up as well but we’ve been told reliably by our neighbors um so we know there’s issues that and she just barks and how

Constantly all day obviously when we’re there um and then when we come home she’s like so excited and worked up that she kind of weaves and um she’s shaking um but where she jumps up and she got longer claws she like scratches the kid she scratches us um not all by accident

But we’re just wondering we have read online about if it gets to a like a quite a bad degree of separation anxiety Then potential medications like try and calmer down so that’s what we want to talk to the V about really and a way forward with it yep okay that would be

Really appreciate thank you thank you bye way so some people listen to that and they’re like oh my God he cares more about this dog than he cares about the life of another human being well firstly yes it is his dog It’s Not Unusual for people like Wayne cousins to be able to

Form bonds with animals especially dogs they’re loyal they obey and they love you no matter what even the most Psychopathic individuals can love other creatures or people it all comes down to the purpose they serve but I don’t think that’s what the interesting thing is about this call to

The vet I think it’s much more likely that cousins who was likely covered in scratches needed an excuse as to why maybe someone had asked him what happened and he lied that it was his dog and now he wants to file a report with the vet to back this up if anyone asks

Again later following cousins’ arrest visuals erupted in London with women taking to the streets to highlight how unsafe they felt and look I get it what happened here was a huge betrayal of the public a police officer a serving police officer pretending to be on duty had killed a

Woman that he had abducted off the streets using his own ID to quote unquote arrest her it’s terrifying but thankfully it is incredibly rare in this country and that’s why we were so shocked by the Sarah everard case predominantly in this country as with much of the rest of the

West like I said women typically are killed in their homes at the hands of their current or former intimate Partners in fact at the time of Sarah’s murder of the 1500 murders of women that had occurred in the previous 10 years just and I don’t mean just as in a oh

Who cares I mean 8% of those women had been killed by a stranger that means 92% were not and the overwhelming majority of those women were murdered by their partners or their exes so I just want to put that into perspective because I don’t want to perpetuate this

Feeling of women feeling like prey or constantly viewing ourselves as potential would be victims when we’re just out there living our lives at the same time though I don’t want to pretend that women aren’t at risk of male violence but we just have to put it into

Perspective we have to put it into context so yes of course anything can happen as people who consume True Crime we all know that all too well but we have to all of of us balance our fears our freedom and the reality of the situation and like I don’t know I guess

My perspective is based a lot on the fact that I’ve also lived in a country where women are absolutely controlled by fear in India particularly rural India and I understand that things are changing in the cities as women get more freedom but in India the cultural norm

Is good girls don’t go out late they don’t go out alone they don’t drink they don’t dress immodestly but saying that there is also a very real and much more prominent danger of violence from stranger attacks in a country like India and I wouldn’t behave in India how I

Behave here not just because of the cultural norms but also because of the reality now in the UK that real actual risk of something happening to you down to a stranger in public is much lower and I speaking for myself value my freedom and I value that really highly

Because I very easily could have grown up in a country where I didn’t have any of those things the question here isn’t why did Wayne cousins kill Sarah everard he’s nothing special he’s like every other killer we’ve come across pathetic deviant selfish empty and a broken loser the

Real question that we have to ask is how could this have been allowed to happen yeah I mean everybody obsesses over this things like why did he do it why did he do it why was this police officer I was like that’s not the [ __ ] question listen to any episode we’ve ever covered

He is just a guy who happened to fall through the cracks and become a police officer why he did it is [ __ ] because he’s a selfish prick like you just said the really crucial part of this is how and I think that’s the bit we should all

Be really angry about and the rage that the public felt only got worse when more of the truth came out Wayne cousins had exposed himself publicly to more people than just the little drive he took around over in 2002 with his trousers off not that that incident shouldn’t have

Been enough to get him kicked out of the police anyway a few months before he killed Sarah on the 13th of November 2020 whilst on duty Wayne cousins stepped out of a wooded area in Deal his home [ __ ] town totally naked and then he proceeded to wank himself off in

Front of a female cyclist he’s a [ __ ] met police officer at this point can you imagine he just walks out of the woods naked and starts wanking how how as oh my God it just gets so much worse this is unbelievable and then on the 14th of

February a few weeks before he killed Sarah everard Wayne cousins went to the McDonald’s drive-through in swanley with his trousers pulled down he had his penis above his waistband but he wasn’t done on the 27th of February my brother’s birthday just 4 days before he killed Sarah cousins went back to the

Very same drive-thru only this time he was completely naked from the w down and completely erected on the second occasion that Wayne cousins turns up at this McDonald’s the staff there actually called the police and they even gave them Wayne cousins’ car registration and his credit card details with his [ __ ]

Name on it but no one called the victim or asked for a statement absolutely nothing was done about it why why are they ignoring this it’s not even just some random [ __ ] pervert that’s done it he’s a police officer and they know that he is unbelievably like this Wayne

Cousins racked up six offenses for flashing that we know about but he continued to be a serving police officer an armed one no less I honestly can’t keep stressing this enough he should have been stopped after the first time because let’s be clear someone who flashes people and exposes themselves in

Public is not just some sort of harmless little you know trench coat wearing deviant that’s funny to laugh at no exposing yourself like that belies a dangerous mentality one of boundary pushing and getting a thrill out exploiting someone else’s discomfort and vulnerability it should be seen as a

Serious and very real precursor to Future violence and deviant behavior and we see it time and time again in the background of people who go on to kill did you know Hannah that until 2003 in this country Expos in yourself wasn’t even a crime I did not know that that is

Shocking that is shocking also it seems highly unlikely that Wayne cousins went from exposing himself to scared women straight to rape and murder overnight it feels like there’s a huge missing part of this story one that we sadly can’t fill today because the question that we cannot

Shake is what else has Wayne cousins done rapists don’t usually kill straight away and Killers like cousins rarely start killing in their late 40s he was 48 yeah no way there must be more in his past but we just don’t know what but I am certain that there are other women that he

Victimized who perhaps just haven’t come forward so after his arrest cousins stayed completely silent for 3 months flat out refusing to speak to anyone but eventually in June 2021 he pleaded guilty to the abduction and rape of Sarah ever and a month later at the Old Bailey he

Also pleaded guilty to her murder though he claimed that he had been depressed sleeping badly dealing with tinitus and huge amounts of stress because he was in over £29,000 worth of debt okay he also claimed that he had never planned to kill Sarah he had simply got

Confused okay yeah sure with all of the planning that he had done he had a [ __ ] kill kit in his car mhm he said at the Old Bailey that he was only ever going to rape her even though and this is the part that tells you everything you need to know about

The fact that he wasn’t just going to rape her he had murder on his mind from the minute he saw Sarah because he shows Sarah his face in that bus footage he’s not wearing a mask he even shows her his [ __ ] ID with his name on it do you

Really think he was just going to rape her and then let her go she knew who he was mhm so as frustrating as it is we’ll never really know how Wayne cousins thought he could explain everything away because there was no trial and cousins were sentenced

To a whole of Life order because the judge rightly ruled that there were serious aggravating issues in this case normally to get a whole of Life order in this country there needs to be more than two victims but due to the serious planning involved here the sexual nature

Of the crime and crucially the fact that cousins was an active police officer officer who was acting like he was on duty when he abducted Sarah the judge was able to hand down the maximum sentence the judge even placed this crime in an exceptional category saying that although there was a lone victim

Cousins’ actions were akin to committing an act for a political or religious motive I.E terrorism which feels like a strange connection but I think what the judge is saying here is that what you did cause such a level of public fear that it was akin to you acting as a terrorist

Because you should have rightly known that as a serving police officer to abduct using your ID rape and murder a 33-year-old woman would have caused such public outrage and such public fear and public mistrust in the institution of the police that it is akin to terrorism

And that is what allowed that judge to sidestep the guidelines and give Wayne cousins the whole of Life order that he so thoroughly deserves the judge also commented on the investigation saying like I said earlier that it was the best and most extensive police investigation that he had ever

Seen so we’re talking here specifically about the team of detectives who investigated The Disappearance of Sarah avod the judge also said that no officers who had worked on the murder of Sarah everard tried to cover up the facts or slow down the investigation and I have to say from our research that

Also appears to be true though of course we cannot simply forget the massive failings that led to cousins remaining in his role as an officer for years and cousins due to the seriousness of this case were sentenced to a whole of Life order meaning that he will never be

Released from prison and although it was decided not to go after cousins for the WhatsApp group chat in February 2023 cousins was charged with three counts of indecent exposure he pleaded guilty and 19 months were added to his life sentence but that’s pretty much you know

I think it’s a bit of a late gesture with all of that as of now the independent office for police conduct is conducting an independent review into this case and we’re still waiting for the results but the Met did decide to issue the public with some advice following the concerns

About safety following Sarah’s murder according to the Metropolitan Police what should you do if you encounter an officer trying to arrest you you should call 999 and ask shout to a passer by run into a house or flag down a bus I’d forgotten about that what the actual

[ __ ] [ __ ] are they talking about firstly if a police officer is trying to arrest me and I’m just like hold on there I’m going to call 999 and ask what am I even hoping to ask there and what help am I hoping to achieve and also

They [ __ ] tell you not to even call 999 call 111 for basically everything because everything is again so underfunded who’s going to be dealing with my bloody call and everyone’s call who calls to ask if they’re allowed to be arrested what an inefficient stupid system so leave that aside shout to a

Passer by what and hope that a passer by is some sort of legal expert if somebody shouted to me okay let’s just you know role play this situ you’re walking down the road minding your business somebody’s being arrested by the police and they shout to you are

You going to get a B nope no thank you please officers carry on with your day I’m not going to get involved in that situation run into a house what yeah and again if I’m living my life in my house and somebody bangs on my door saying that’re being arrested

By the police I would shut the door and then finally flag down a bus what are we giving London bus drivers or bus drivers generally I’m saying London because this was advice given by the the London Metropolitan are we giving bus drivers in this country some sort of um I don’t know negotiation

Training are we giving them some sort of legal advice trait like what what do we think a bus driver is going to be able to do in that situation it is mindboggling in its stupidity and it’s terrifying that that’s the best that they could come up with Y and again look

We can’t all live in a perfect world where we’re always safe all the time that’s impossible there will always be men like Wayne cousins and we’ve been doing the show long enough to know that he was always going to do what he did but the fact that he was a police

Officer and that he was protected and the warning signs he was giving off were just ignored and made into a joke by calling him the rapist is horrifying and the idea that police advice was to go against everything we’re ever taught we’re taught to listen to authority to comply if we’re

Approached by the police to follow orders is take lockdown itself it was the clearest example of governments all over the world ours very much included having a little taste of authoritarianism we were told to stay locked up in our houses for 2 years to be quiet come out

And clap once a week for the NHS say that we were all in it together all as we watched our economy fall off a cliff people’s mental health Go With It children sitting at home out of school for years domestic abuse and child abuse go through the roof along with

Preventable deaths from other conditions like canc answer absolutely Skyrocket all that complicity that was demanded of us absolutely enabled cousins to do what he did we are watched on the news every night as the police using those weird unke keepable appable covid laws Hammer the public arresting people for going on walks throwing

Homeless people out of parks screaming at people having coffees with a friend outside do you remember when you saw that footage of people being chased by the police around around national parks with drones what harm were they doing anybody except not to themselves because their mental health wasn’t going to fly

Into a [ __ ] wall I mean what the [ __ ] we allowed that to happen and those who protested and any dissenting voices that were out there were quickly deplatformed or quite literally punched in the face by police at rallies so when you take all of that into a account of course

Sarah wouldn’t have felt sure enough in herself to challenge her arrest by cousins the laws at the time were so bizarre mhm I remember leaving my house and being like can I go outside how long can I be outside for have I been out once already today am I going to get

Arrested if I go out again it is not hyperbolic to say that we were living in a state of fear and so on what basis would Sarah alone at night what confidence would she have had to turn to Wayne cousins and say no you can’t arrest me she would have believed it

Because it was also [ __ ] bonkers also cousins had been working on enforcing the lockdown laws for months by that point he was well versed in what he needed to say to Sarah and even if he hadn’t he had the police ID and none of us understood what the hell we could and

Couldn’t do day-to-day anyway so of course Sarah everard complied and she died for it and that should enrage each and every one of us and if that doesn’t do it Sarah’s family’s impact statements will they told the world about their beautiful kind smart and driven Sarah

She was born in Su in 1987 she grew up in New York and then she went to Durham for University Sarah had moved to London for work and got a new job as a marketing manager at a digital agency she was excited about the future her and

Her boyfriend Josh had been together for a couple of years and they were planning a holiday to I bether in the summer and they were talking about moving in together Sarah had her entire life ahead of her and it was all taken from her Sarah’s mom Susan stood in court and

Faced down her daughter’s killer and read the following oh and honestly this is just one of the worst things I’ve ever read I’m tormented at the thought of what she endured she spent her last hours on this Earth with the very worst of humanity she lost her life because

Wayne cousins wanted to satisfy his perverted desires it is a ridiculous reason it’s nonsensical how could he value a human life so cheaply I cannot comprehend it I am incandescent with rage at the thought of it he treated my daughter as if she was nothing and

Disposed of her as if she was rubbish in the morning I wake up to that awful reality that Sarah is gone in the evenings at the time she was abducted I let out a Silent Scream don’t get in the car Sarah don’t believe him run [ __ ] hell that’s Grim it’s so awful oh

Yeah so we really started the year off here with a cheery case but I think I think this was a particularly timely one because it’s not like the anniversary or anything the time you’re listening to this but I think the covid reviews are currently underway and they are as much

Of a whitewashing [ __ ] cover up as you could expect from a government that went full force down the road lock up lock up lock up they will not listen to any evidence that suggests that they made mistakes with regards to this and so while it may be I don’t know people

Might find it hyperbolic to say this I really don’t think the headlines around the Sarah everard murder that read things like while Westminster partied Sarah everard was being murdered I think that Wayne cousins is a piece of [ __ ] and he was going to hurt somebody at

Some point but we enabled this thing to happen and it is Absol absolutely devastating yeah and that is not to mention all of the other peoples whose lives were massively also destroyed by lockdown so a strong start for us at red-handed but yeah it was

Just one we were going to have to do at some point and it is now done that is the case of Sarah everard now yes don’t be angry forever we’ll be back next week with something else and um yeah happy New Year guys happy New Year look after yourself yes

And if somebody yells at you when they’re being arrested I don’t know presumably look after them but I don’t know how you do that so yeah we’ll see you guys next week bye Bye-bye