Sarah Everard: Police bodycam footage shows how Wayne Couzens spun desperate web of lies
Desperate lies of a deranged killer caught on police bodycam: Moment handcuffed Wayne Couzens pretends he gave Sarah alive to a Romanian gang to repay them for ‘ripping off’ a call girl – as he tries to deny killing her
Wayne Couzens tried to lie after police raided home over Sarah Everard murderHe concocted a ridiculous fantasy story involving an Eastern European gang Said they had pressured him after he attempted to ‘rip off’ one of their call girlsThey supposedly threatened to harm his family if he didn’t provide a victim
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Dramatic police bodycam footage has revealed how Wayne Couzens tried to spin pathetic lies after police raided his Kent home over the murder of Sarah Everard.
The 48-year-old officer could be seen in a seven-minute video clip handcuffed on his sofa being interviewed by arresting officers in his front room in Deal on March 9.
Couzens initially claimed to the detectives that he did not know Miss Everard, before backtracking moments later.
He then concocted a ridiculous fantasy story involving an Eastern European gang who had pressured him after he attempted to ‘rip off’ one of their call girls.
Couzens was later taken to Wandsworth Police Station where he repeatedly tried to self-harm by banging his head on a sink and running into a wall, and was put under constant watch before appearing in court.
The footage shows Couzens looking reasonably relaxed, telling police that he had got into ‘financial s***’ and had been ‘lent on by, I don’t know who they are, an immigrant gang, whatever, and they told me I need to go and pick up girls and give them to them’.
The fictitious traffickers supposedly threatened to harm his family if he did not provide them with a victim, and he felt he had ‘no choice’ but to snatch Miss Everard.
However, at the start of the video, Couzens suggests he has never met Miss Everard, who was the subject of a major missing persons enquiry at the time.
Couzens is shown a picture of Miss Everard on a mobile phone and is asked: ‘Do you know Sarah’, but he replies: ‘I don’t, no.’
Asked if he knew where she is, he says: ‘No’. And asked if he knows anything about what happened to her, Couzens then says: ‘I know that she went missing up in London somewhere about a week ago or so just from what I got on the news.’
While speaking, his cat is seen walking through the room and jumping onto a shelf. Asked if he had personally met her, Miss Everard says: ‘No, not personally, no.’
He is then asked if he had had any ‘personal interactions with her’, but says: ‘Why would I have personal interactions with her?’
Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens is shown a photograph of Sarah Everard on a phone by a detective while being questioned by police at his home in Deal, Kent, in March
The detective says that he can’t go into all the evidence, but Couzens replies: ‘I’m sat in handcuffs… so you must have something to say that I know her.’
Pressed by the detective, Couzens tells him: ‘I am in financial s*** and I’ve been lent on by, I don’t know who they are, an immigrant gang, whatever, and they told me I need to go and pick up girls and give them to them.
‘So I said I’ll happily… and it then came through that they are going to harm my family, take them away, use them instead. At that point I had no option to try and find somebody.’
He continues: ‘There was a couple of names, I was told a place to take her, that’s it, that is all I know.’
The detective asks him to tell him about the gang. Couzens says: ‘OK, there was a white Sprinter van. They are between sort of Lenham, Maidstone area that I dropped her off.
Wayne Couzens (left) tried to spin pathetic lies over the murder of Sarah Everard (right)
‘I still don’t know, they just, I don’t know, I just parked my car up and then the van come up behind me, flashed me, then they all jumped out and then they [inaudible] this girl.
‘They said ‘you done good’ and I don’t know whether my family’s going to be alright still. They threatened to take my family away from me, so, at that point, I’m doing what I can to protect my family – that’s it.
‘So all I know it was, roundabout, we could drive there now, I could show you, roughly, I don’t know, Lenham, Maidstone area at all.’
The detective suggests showing him the route on Google Maps, and Couzens says: ‘I drove from Ashford to Maidstone. There’s a roundabout that breaks up, the first big roundabout you come to.
‘You carry straight over to Maidstone, but instead I went round that roundabout and back up another road and at that point I was flashed and pulled over.
The 48-year-old officer could be seen in a seven-minute video clip handcuffed on his sofa being interviewed by arresting officers in his front room in Deal, Kent, on March 9
‘Three guys got out, opened my door, opened that door and pushed me out against the front of the 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 for my family… I’ve got nothing… I’ve got no choice.’
The detective says he will go back over the route with Couzens, but asks him how the supposed gang contacted him or he contacted them.
Couzens says: ‘I tried to f*** over on one of their call girls and tried to rip her off, so she’s told them and they’ve got me. They just tell me be here, be here, so Hotel Burstin in Folkestone, be here.
‘So I turned up. But I’ve got no mobile number, and they have [sic] got my mobile number – they’re obviously outside watching, following… I just, honestly.
Couzens’ car journey around London as he cruised to find a woman to abduct, rape and murder
‘They’ll come outside, so they’ll be outside here, then they’ll say right, you’ll be in Folkestone this time, or you’re going to be in Ashford this time. That’s it.
‘There’s no links, telephone numbers, I’m completely on my own, but at the same time being threatened. It had Romanian plates on the van, white Mercedes Sprinter-type van.’
When pressed as to where Sarah Everard was, he said repeatedly that he did not know where she was and that ‘if I could do something to get her back right this minute, I would’, but at the same time he said ‘I’ll do it again tomorrow if it meant saving my family… these guys meant business.’
He claimed he had evidence of that communication in his mobile phone, but when officers examined it they found it had been wiped clean by Couzens.
At the police station, Couzens declined to provide samples of his DNA, saying it was on advice from his solicitor.
And when asked how he had sustained ‘visible scratch marks to his head’ he blamed them on his dog.
Sarah Everard’s mother Susan reads a victim impact statement at the Old Bailey today
The video of his interview was released as Couzens was branded ‘a monster’ in court by Miss Everard’s family after he abused Covid-19 lockdown regulations to kidnap her in a fake arrest then rape and strangle her.
Couzens used his Metropolitan Police-issue warrant card and handcuffs to snatch Miss Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham, South London, on the evening of March 3.
The firearms officer, who had clocked off from a 12-hour shift at the American embassy that morning, drove to a secluded rural area near Dover in Kent, where he parked up and raped Miss Everard.
The marketing executive, who lived in Brixton, south London, had been strangled with Couzens’ police belt by 2.30am the following morning.
Married Couzens burned her body in a refrigerator in an area of woodland he owned in Hoads Wood, near Ashford, Kent, before dumping the remains in a nearby pond.
Just days later, amid extensive publicity about Ms Everard’s disappearance, he took his family on a day out to the woods, allowing his two children to play close by.
