Thread by @thetimes

Sarah Everard was less than a mile from her flat in Brixton on March 3 when she was abducted by officer Wayne Couzens

The abduction took just three minutes, but evidence now shows that Couzens had planned the kidnapping days in advance thetimes.co.uk/article/how-wa…

Three days earlier Couzens, who lived in Deal, Kent, had hired the car online and used Amazon to purchase a carpet protector to cover up any forensic evidence in the vehicle

Couzens worked a 12-hour shift in London overnight before clocking off at 9am on March 3. He drove back to Dover where he collected the rented Vauxhall Astra

In the early evening, as Everard visited a friend on Clapham Common, Couzens began his journey back to London

Couzens did not know Everard and police believe he was trawling for a victim when he spotted her a few minutes later on a busy road and popular pedestrian route between Clapham and Brixton

Only Couzens knows whether he used an excuse to get Everard into his car, or whether he forced her inside

However, police sources suspect he initially showed his warrant card to give the false impression he could be trusted

A bus camera image at 9.35pm shows the pair standing beside the Astra.

At 9.38pm, when another bus drove past, the figures had disappeared into the car, and the front and passenger doors were open

Detectives tracked the vehicle using CCTV and ANPR motorway cameras and it immediately headed out through south London towards Kent

The drive to the woodland near Ashford, where Everard’s body was eventually found a week later, takes approximately 90 minutes with no stops

By 1am the Astra was seen in Tilmanstone, a 15-minute drive from Couzens’s home, suggesting he had already killed Everard and was on his way home to his wife. He returned the hire car at 8.30am the next morning

The next day Couzens, on pre-arranged leave from the Met, attempted to dispose of the body

He repeatedly returned to the crime scene over the following days and father and son who were camping in the woods during that weekend saw Couzens with an axe

Couzens burnt Everard’s body among piles of dumped rubbish, but his efforts to get rid of his connection to the crime were thwarted when detectives, having linked Couzens to the hire car, used his phone’s cell-site analysis to trace him to the crime scene

Upon his arrest, Couzens told the arresting officers that he had abducted Everard after using sex workers in hotels in Folkestone and getting into debt with the gang of eastern Europeans who ran them

The account was quickly dismissed as false

He also awaits a Crown Prosecution Service charging decision over alleged indecent exposure three days before Everard was abducted

Officers are understood to have had enough information to uncover the perpetrator but did not make the link to Couzens until after the murder

After Couzens’s identity was uncovered the Met carried out a vast scoping inquiry to determine whether he had been responsible for any other unsolved crimes or internal misconduct

The force has not disclosed its outcomes thetimes.co.uk/article/how-wa…

Couzens has today pleaded guilty, but this case is not over