BBC's Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice - How Wayne Couzens was caught and his sentence

The murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a serving Metropolitan Police officer three years ago caused national outrage. The 33-year-old marketing executive had been walking home from a friend's house in London on March 3 2021 when she was stopped and put under false arrest by Wayne Couzens.

She was then driven more than 75 miles away to Dover, Kent where she was raped and murdered. An inquiry has since found that Couzens, now 51, should never have been a police officer - due to allegations of sexual offending and him being almost £30,000 in debt. He was later sentenced to prison for life and will die behind bars.

A documentary examining the investigation into Everard’s murder will broadcast on BBC One tonight (Tuesday March 5). Sarah Everard: The Search For Justice has been two and a half years in the making and airs days after the third anniversary of her death. It will hear from those closely involved in the case while examining its aftermath and impact.

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After visiting a friend in Clapham Common, Everard had been walking home alone to her property on Brixton Hill on the evening of March 3. On the way she was stopped and arrested by Couzens. He showed her his police ID card and was believed to have told her he was detaining her for breaching coronavirus rules.

He abducted Everard in a hire car and drove her for more than two hours to Dover, Kent. There, he raped and murdered her before hiding her body in Hoad's Wood near Ashford, just meters away from a plot of land he owned.

Married Couzens then returned to the woods and burned her body in a refrigerator, before dumping the remains in a nearby pond. Days later, he took his family