Sarah Everard's killer rented a car and bought a roll of self-adhesive film before cruising London's streets, where he spotted the 33-year-old walking home from a friend's house late on March 3. A camera on a police car observed Everard walking alone just after 11:30pm. Three minutes later, a bus camera captured two figures outside a vehicle rented by 48-year-old Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, which was pulled over with its hazard lights on, reports the BBC. Authorities traced the Vauxhall Astra to a village in Kent, near where Everard's body was found a week later on a woodland lot owned by Couzens. She'd been raped and strangled, then placed in a large green builders' bag in a stream just outside the property boundary. The BBC notes surveillance cameras had spotted Couzens buying two such bags two days after Everard disappeared.
The parliamentary and diplomatic protection officer also ordered a tarpaulin and bungee cargo net to be delivered March 7. He called in sick to work the following day and wiped his cellphone 39 minutes before police, having contacted the rental company, arrested him on March 9. Couzens initially claimed to have kidnapped Everard and delivered her to a gang of Eastern Europeans, who'd demanded he produce "another girl" after he underpaid a prostitute a few weeks earlier, per ITV. He pleaded guilty to murder in a virtual court appearance at London's Old Bailey Court on Friday, however, in what lawyer James Sturman said was a sign of remorse. "As he put it to us this morning, he will bear this burden for the rest of his life, and he deserves to—his words 'and I deserve to,'" Sturman said, per Reuters. A two-day sentencing hearing begins Sept. 29. (More London stories.)
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