Disturbing footage shows Wayne Couzens writhing around in custody whinging about his own mental health after killing Sarah Everard.
The monster cop is wearing grey custody clothing as he rocks from side to side while being quizzed by detectives about his involvement in the marketing executive’s disappearance.
A white square bandage is on Couzens’ forehead which appears to be covering a wound from a self-harming incident that took place at Wandsworth police station, in London.
Having been deemed medically fit to be interviewed, chilling custody footage shows him sitting hunched over behind a protective screen with the sleeves of his jumper rolled over his hands.
The killer cop moves his head from one side to the other and looks away as he says ‘I’m in a dark place’ after being asked how he is feeling at the moment.
The sickening clip is shown in new BBC documentary Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice.
During the interview Couzens is shown a picture of the 33-year-old he had kidnapped, raped, and murdered eight days earlier in south London.
He briefly stares at the image and leans forwards as it is held up against the screen as a female detective asks him if he recognises the person in the picture.
Couzens then shuts his eyes and rocks from side to side and replies ‘no comment’ when asked ‘who is that, Wayne?’.
The evil killer shows no emotion as it is revealed to him the picture is of Sarah Everard and answers ‘no comment’ again as he is asked if he used his warrant card to lure her into his hired car.
He rolls his head around as the detective says to him: ‘Is that how she trusted you? Because obviously as a police officer we know we are in a position… people trust us, don’t they?
‘People trust us to look after them. People trust us to help them. Protect and serve, that’s what they say. We all took that oath. You included.’
Yesterday, former detective Nick Harvey spoke of his shock at finding out Couzens was a colleague minutes before he knocked on his door.
Officers arrived at Couzens’ home at 5.45pm, but did not knock on his door until two hours later. During this time Couzens had wiped his mobile phone of all of its data.
Scotland Yard has refused to tell MailOnline what officers were doing during this time as it is an ‘operational detail’, while it is not known the exact time it was unearthed Couzens was a police officer, nor when Mr Harvey joined his colleagues.
He said ‘the pit of my stomach just fell out’ when he found out who the chief suspect in Sarah’s disappearance was as he parked up near his home in Kent.
He told BBC Woman’s Hour his team was tasked to research Couzens so they could locate him.
But as he ‘literally turned off his engine’ to his car in Deal he received a bombshell phonecall from Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin who told him Couzens was a serving Met police officer.
While CCTV showed the sex offender flashing his penis inside a McDonald’s in Clapham just hours before he kidnapped and murdered the marketing executive on March 3, 2021.
Mr Harvey, who left the force after serving for 17 years, told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour host Emma Barnett about receiving the news that was a ‘huge moment in history’.
‘[I found out Couzens was a police officer] A couple of minutes before we knocked on the door,’ he said.
‘Initially I had tasked my team with a series of research to make sure we could actually locate him. DCI Goodwin was conducting her own research separately.
‘I arrived in Deal to brief my team around what we were doing and how we were going to go about it and as I pulled up as no sooner as I had turned up and literally turned off the engine of my car did DCI Goodwin ring me and break the news to me.’
He said he felt ‘awful’ and ‘the pit of my stomach just sort of fell out’, as the gravity of the situation began to dawn on him.
‘It was immediately and abundantly clear how much this was going to change policing and what a huge moment in history it was going to be,’ Mr Harvey added.
‘It’s something that sadly… murder is too common in our society but you could see the difference of what it was going to mean for the UK.’
Couzens ‘went grey’ when Mr Harvey identified himself and at that point the ex-cop knew he ‘was directly involved’ in Sarah’s disappearance.
He then had to keep his emotions in check as he conducted an ‘urgent interview’ to try and persuade the killer to reveal where the 33-year-old was.
Mr Harvey said it had been ‘really challenging’ to process what had happened three years ago and since he left the force.
‘I’ve got a lot of pride in what I’ve achieved and the work that I’ve done I’ve always tried to do the very best I could do and to know that’s actively undermined by a section of policing is awful,’ he said.
‘It’s a fraction unfortunately of what Sarah’s family have ever had to go through as a result of it. It pales into insignificance really.’
In the documentary, Miss Goodwin revealed the police discovered Couzens was suspected of an indecent exposure offence days earlier in Kent, before they found out he was a serving Metropolitan Police officer.
Miss Goodwin said they discovered this after Sarah and Couzens were spotted on CCTV footage next to a car, which led to his identification.
She said: ‘At that time, Wayne Couzens was a name that meant nothing to any of us. So immediately we start researching the name, also the phone number and the address that had been given when he’d hired the car.
The detective added that when it was discovered he was suspected of indecent exposure, it ‘suddenly changed everything, because whilst I might have hoped that Sarah had got into the car with someone she knew, suddenly it was clear to me that she’d got into the car of an alleged sex offender’.
The officer sent a team to Couzens’ house in Kent to question him and, while officers were en route, a detective ran into Miss Goodwin’s office, shut the door, and told her ‘you need to hear this’.
A researcher on the phone then revealed that Couzens was a serving Met officer.
Miss Goodwin said: ‘I knew that I had to tell my boss and I can just remember the shock of having to just sit on the floor of the office and say to her, ‘You’re not going to believe this, that he’s a police officer’.
‘And then the same questions went through her head as went through my head, “Are you sure?”.
Officers arrived at Couzens’ home at 5.45pm, but did not knock on his door until two hours later. During this time Couzens had wiped his mobile phone of all of its data.
A recently published damning report found there were repeated missed opportunities to stop Couzens that left him able to stay in the police despite being a serial sex offender with a reputation for disturbing sexual behaviour that led to a nickname of ‘the Rapist’.
The Met police has always maintained it found no evidence of him being given the ‘repugnant nickname’ while he worked for another force.
An inquiry found Couzens’ history of alleged sexual offending dated back nearly 20 years before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah in Clapham, south London.
The married father of two was reported to police eight times for indecent exposure between 2008 and 2021 but was able to continue in the police due to ‘lethargic and inadequate’ investigations, a report found.
Inquiry chair Lady Elish Angiolini identified at least five incidents which were not reported to police and warned there could be more victims.
It emerged for the first time that Couzens, now 51, allegedly carried out a ‘very serious sexual assault of a child barely into her teens’ while he was in his twenties.
Couzens was accused of attempting to kidnap a woman at knifepoint in North London in 1995 while aged 23. He was also accused of raping two women and indecently touching a man in a bar while wearing a blonde wig.
Lady Elish found the married father of two ‘could and should’ have been stopped from getting a job as an officer, and that without a radical overhaul of British policing, there is ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’.
The inquiry team found that there were instances where he showed extreme violent pornography to friends and police colleagues, in a move to test their boundaries, and sent unsolicited images of his genitals to women.
Both Kent and the Metropolitan Police were criticised for inadequate investigations into claims of indecent exposure against Couzens.
There was a series of incidents where he was accused of flashing – three of which he was sentenced for last year, despite already having received a whole life jail term for Sarah Everard’s murder.
These were masturbating in front of a lone female cyclist in a Kent country lane in 2020, and twice exposing his genitals to staff at a fast food restaurant in February 2021 in the days before Sarah’s murder.
He drove his own car and used his own credit card at the outlet but no action was taken at the time, with investigating officer Pc Samantha Lee later sacked for failing to investigate properly.
Another two similar incidents at the fast food restaurant were ordered to lie on file, and there were two incidents in 2008 and 2021 that were reported to the Met and Kent respectively at the time when Couzens allegedly exposed himself, but there was insufficient evidence to bring charges.
In 2015, a member of the public reported having seen a man driving around in Kent with his genitalia exposed, giving the make, model, colour and registration number of the car.
Couzens was identified as the keeper of the car but Kent Police closed the investigation with no further action and without even speaking to him.
Lady Elish Angiolini said: ‘This was a grave error and a very obvious red flag.’
Today, Sadiq Khan will pledge to drive through cultural reforms in the Metropolitan Police to restore trust in the force after the damning report about missed chances to stop Sarah’s killer.
After the third anniversary of Sarah’s death, the mayor of London will open the latest London Policing Board by expressing his ‘deepest sympathies’ to her loved ones, and labelling Lady Elish’s report ‘one of the most shattering accounts of failure in British policing history’.
‘Knowing that a police officer harboured the capacity for such sadistic violence still haunts our city,’ Mr Khan will say.
‘It’s a perpetual reminder of why we’re here and the importance of this board.
‘Our task is one of the most urgent facing London today: to ensure we drive through the wide-ranging cultural and performance reforms needed within the Met, to ensure that we support and challenge the commissioner in his mission – so that we can renew trust and confidence in policing in our capital.
‘Whilst the Met is now on the path to fundamental reform, we’re clearly not there yet.
‘I see police reform as a critical part of my mayoralty, and we must not be satisfied until Londoners have the police service they deserve.’
The board will hear from Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley about progress on addressing the findings and recommendations of the Casey Review, which was commissioned by the Met after Ms Everard’s murder.
It found the force was institutionally racist, homophobic and misogynist, and that there might be more officers like Couzens in its ranks.
Couzens was given a rare whole-life sentence for the rape and murder of Sarah. It means he will die in prison.
William Turner is a seasoned U.K. correspondent with a deep understanding of domestic affairs. With a passion for British politics and culture, he provides insightful analysis and comprehensive coverage of events within the United Kingdom.
