On March 3, 2021, Sarah Everard embarked on a walk back to her London home after visiting a friend. Tragically, she never reached her destination. Instead, she crossed paths with the individual who would tragically take her life.

A week after her disappearance, the remains of the 33-year-old marketing executive were discovered in a wooded area in Kent. The horrific details of her assault, strangulation, and subsequent burning sent shockwaves across the nation, leaving the public horrified.

The public’s dismay intensified when Wayne Couzens, the suspect in Sarah’s murder, was revealed not to be an unknown assailant, but a Metropolitan Police firearms officer, a figure of authority tasked with ensuring public safety.

By September 2021, Couzens was handed a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Lord Justice Fulford labeled his heinous deeds as ‘devastating, tragic, and wholly brutal.’

The tragedy surrounding Sarah’s death deepened with revelations of overlooked allegations against Couzens. These ignored warnings uncovered a failure by three police forces to monitor a serial sex offender who continued to serve in uniform.

Five years later, the murder of Sarah Everard remains a source of profound grief and outrage. Her death not only represents a stolen life but also highlights the grave systemic failures that allowed such a tragedy to occur.

Here, laid out in full for the first time, is the haunting timeline of missed opportunities leading to a crime that shook Britain to its core.

1995: Couzens, aged 23 and working as a mechanic at his father’s garage, is alleged to have committed a ‘very serious sexual assault against a child barely into her teens’ in his home town of Dover.

The incident was reported to police but the perpetrator was never caught. Twenty-six years later, the complainant comes forward in the wake of Couzens’ arrest for Sarah’s murder. It later emerges that, also in 1995, Couzens allegedly also tried to kidnap a woman at knifepoint in north London. Again, she identified him in the wake of news of his arrest.

2002: Still working full-time at his father’s garage, Couzens enlists as a private in the Territorial Army. Over the following four years he unsuccessfully applies three times to become a police officer, failing the vetting each time.

2003: Couzens allegedly blocks a young woman’s path in a deserted corridor at a Territorial Army event and demands her telephone number. She does not report it to the police, but following his arrest comes forward, describing the encounter as ‘intimidating’.

2004: Couzens allegedly exposes himself to a teenage girl while driving past her in south London. She does not report it, but comes forward after recognising him in the wake of Sarah’s murder.

2006: Couzens is alleged to have raped a young woman during a singles event linked to a dating website at a bar in east London. Again, the woman comes forward in the wake of Sarah’s murder. 

That same year, Couzens joins Kent Police as a special constable. He also marries Olena Obukhova, a Ukrainian national ten years his junior, whom he met online. They settle in Deal, where Olena starts work as a laboratory manager.

February 2007: Couzens’ mounting debts lead him to enter into an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) to pay back creditors.

April 2008: He is discharged from the Territorial Army for failing to meet training obligations. His failure to return equipment and kit leads to a £526 fine.

November 2008: He performs a sex act in front of a woman pushing a pram who had responded to his call of ‘hello’. She reports it to the Met Police, but no suspect is identified until Couzens’ arrest.

February 2011: Couzens joins the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), a specialist police force dedicated to protecting British civil nuclear sites and materials. He had been vetted the previous year by Thames Valley Police, which recommended against his recruitment after revealing he had tried to conceal the fact he had entered into an IVA. Its recommendation was ignored.

2am, June 2013: Couzens is reported missing by Olena after failing to return from a late-night visit to the gym. A missing person report is created, but closed around 3am when Couzens arrives home, claiming he had crashed a hire car.

June 2015: Kent Police receive a call reporting the sighting of a man naked from the waist down in the Dover area. The caller labels it ‘revolting’. The report is linked to a car registered to Couzens, who is still with the CNC, yet no action is taken by officers.

September 2018: Couzens, by now a father of two children, joins the Metropolitan Police, and is posted to a Safer Neighbourhood Team in Bromley. A check of the Police National Database prior to his move records ‘no trace’ of incidents, despite the 2013 missing person report and 2015 indecent exposure allegation.

October 2019: Couzens allegedly commits a second rape under a bridge in London. The accusation is made by a victim who comes forward in the wake of reports of Couzens’ arrest in 2021. 

Following news of Sarah’s murder, a man also comes forward to say he had been sexually assaulted by Couzens in a bar in Kent in the summer of 2019 while dressed in drag – the only allegation recorded by a male victim.

February 2020: Couzens is moved to the Met’s elite and prestigious Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command.

November 2020: A naked Couzens engages in a sex act in front of a passing female cyclist while standing on a bank overlooking a narrow country lane near his home in Deal. 

The victim reports him, describing a black car parked nearby and giving a partial description of the registration, but again nothing comes of it. She will later state she had always feared someone who could behave in such a way could go on to commit more serious acts.

December 2020: Couzens allegedly sends an unsolicited photograph of his erect penis to a woman selling clothing online. In the previous two months, he had made several sexual requests to other female online retailers.

February 2021: In the space of a fortnight – on the 14th and the 27th – Couzens twice exposes himself to female staff members at a McDonald’s drive-through in Swanley, Kent.

The branch’s manager, Sam Taylor, reports the incidents to police, but they are classed as ‘low risk’, and it is not until March 3 – the day of Sarah’s abduction – that PC Samantha Lee is dispatched to the restaurant to take statements. 

Later, Taylor will testify that he had shown PC Lee CCTV footage of Couzens’ black Seat Exeo, and provided receipts that clearly displayed his registration plate and credit card details, but no further action was taken.

In 2023, PC Lee will be found guilty of gross misconduct and fired from the force. She claims she has been ‘thrown under the bus’ to help the Met save face.

9.30pm, March 3: Nine and a half hours after PC Lee arrives at McDonald’s in Swanley, Sarah Everard is in the middle of a 50-minute walk home from a friend’s house near Clapham Common to Brixton Hill.

She calls her boyfriend Josh Lowth en route, ending the call at 9.28pm. Two minutes later she is stopped by Couzens, who identifies himself as a police officer and pretends to arrest her for breaching Covid guidelines.

Bus CCTV captures the moment Couzens stands speaking to Sarah on the side of the road.

Within four minutes she is handcuffed and placed in the rear of the white Vauxhall Crossland that Couzens had rented from a vehicle hire company in Dover three days earlier. She is then driven to Dover, where he transfers her to his own car and takes her to a remote rural area, where he rapes and strangles her.

2.31am, March 4: CCTV captures Couzens buying drinks at a service station, almost certainly in the aftermath of Sarah’s murder. 

It emerges he twice revisits the place where he has dumped Sarah’s body, before finally leaving the area. At 8.15am, he visits a Costa Coffee, where he calmly buys coffee and a bakewell slice.

8pm, March 4: Sarah is reported missing by Josh after she fails to answer her phone and cannot be raised at her flat. Her family – mum Susan, dad Jeremy and siblings Katie and Jamie – say her disappearance is ‘totally out of character’ and that she is always in regular contact. Sarah’s friends mount a passionate campaign to find her, retracing her steps and placing missing posters around Clapham.

March 5: As the search for Everard escalates, Couzens is sighted filling a jerry can at a petrol station, which he later uses to burn Sarah’s body, and buying two green rubble bags, which he uses to dump her remains in a woodland pond near Ashford. 

He then blithely returns to normal life, including taking his family on a trip to the same woods, where he allows his children to play close to where Sarah’s body has been dumped.

Olena subsequently tells the Daily Mail of her incomprehension that the husband, who had ‘never once’ shown any hint of violence, was capable of what he had unleashed. ‘I saw nothing wrong. He had a beautiful family, a good house… what else did he need? I’m constantly asking myself: where did I miss the signs?’

March 6: Couzens calls in sick and does not return to work.

March 9: He is arrested in Deal, initially on suspicion of Sarah’s kidnapping. He claims to have been threatened by an Eastern European gang into delivering ‘another girl’ after he had previously underpaid a prostitute, before subsequently changing his story, saying he had handed her – alive and uninjured – to three men in a van in a Kent layby.

Following his arrest, violent pornography is found across all his electronic devices, including a deleted file containing a film referencing a rape and murder by an impotent police officer. Forensic analysis also reveals 19 indecent images of children. Couzens denies having ever downloaded or viewed them.

March 10: Sarah’s remains are discovered. Two days later, Couzens is charged with her murder.

March 13: Across the country, a series of vigils are held for Sarah, with a large number gathering by the bandstand on Clapham Common, near where she had been kidnapped. The vigil ends in drama when a heavy police presence results in four arrests for breaches of Covid regulations.

Among them is Patsy Stevenson, then a 28-year-old physics student, whose arrest photo, showing her wrestled to the ground by police officers, causes nationwide outrage at what is seen as police heavy-handedness.

‘I went there to be part of a collective, for solidarity,’ Patsy recalls now. ‘It was a mournful event: people were really devastated, and they wanted to show it wasn’t just something to brush under the carpet. No one was shouting, no one was aggressive. It was all just very solemn, but it turned very quickly from a vigil into police manhandling women.’

The fallout from the arrest – which included death threats – led to Patsy failing her degree. She is now a full-time campaigner.

‘I’m just a person who became a picture – it is a difficult position to be thrown into overnight, but I have tried to do something positive with that because that level of public attention comes with responsibility,’ she adds.

July 9: Couzens appears by video link from Belmarsh high-security prison and pleads guilty to Sarah’s murder.

September 30: Couzens is given a whole life sentence for a crime Lord Justice Fulford stresses had been weeks in the planning.

‘What she [Sarah] had to endure for the final hours of her life were as bleak and agonising as it is possible to imagine,’ he tells him.

Couzens is currently serving his sentence at HM Prison Frankland in County Durham, nicknamed Monster Mansion due to the large number of murderers, rapists and terrorists who are imprisoned there, including Soham killer Ian Huntley – who was recently violently attacked by a fellow inmate – and the London nail bomber David Copeland.

July 2022: Couzens appeals against his whole-life sentence. His appeal is rejected.

February 2023: Couzens pleads guilty to three incidents of indecent exposure, among them the November 2020 flashing incident. A further three counts are ordered to lie on file.

February 2024: The Angiolini report is published as a result of an inquiry established to investigate how an off-duty police officer was able to abduct, rape and murder a member of the public.

Lady (Elish) Angiolini reveals that evidence of Couzens’ preference for extreme and violent pornography, and history of alleged sexual offending stretching back nearly 20 years, illuminates critical failures in vetting, and warns that ‘there may be more victims of his sexual offending who have not as yet come forward’.

She issues 16 recommendations focusing on officer recruitment, vetting and handling allegations of indecent exposure.

They all come too late for the Everard family, who are left to grieve the unfathomable loss of a precious daughter and sister who was just walking home.

‘The mornings and evenings are particularly painful,’ her mother Susan recalled in her victim impact statement.

‘At the time she was abducted, I let out a silent scream: ‘Don’t get in the car, Sarah. Don’t believe him. Run!’

‘I yearn for her. I 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.’

Five years ago today, on March 3, 2021, Sarah Everard set out to walk home to her London flat after visiting a friend. She never made it. Instead, she encountered the man who would end her life.