interesting nuggets, Saturday Times
Wayne Couzens: what ‘Mr Nice Guy’ did was not human, says wife
Wayne Couzens spent days planning to kidnap a woman off the street
Fiona Hamilton, David Brown, Ali Mitib
Saturday July 10 2021, 12.01am,
Wayne Couzens helped his brother and fellow police officer move house a week before he abducted Sarah Everard.
He was his normal self and chatted about his children, according to his father Ray, before “boom, out of nowhere, it happened”.
The Metropolitan Police has been examining whether he was linked to any other missing persons and unsolved sex crimes, but has not released its findings.
An investigative psychologist said he was likely to have offended before.
David Canter, who is best known for helping catch the serial killer John Duffy in the 1990s, said: “It is possible this is the first major thing [Couzens] has been involved in but it is very unusual for somebody to plan and think through something as extreme as this as the first serious crime they have committed.
“The fact that these indecent exposures were not followed up properly is an indication that having got away with that he would have felt more ready to go on to other sorts of activities.”
Before he pleaded guilty, Couzens told his defence barrister he felt genuine remorse, would bear the burden for the rest of his life and “I deserve to”.
The shock, horror and revulsion that Couzens’s family felt at his crimes was also experienced by friends and colleagues who thought they knew an average, nice guy.
It was part of Couzens’s carefully constructed image of a family man and dedicated officer, but beneath the surface there were indications of depravity.
Couzens used prostitutes at a downtrodden B&B in Dover, downloaded extreme *advertiser censored* and
eluded capture by his policing colleagues despite allegedly indecently exposing himself in 2015 and again three days before he raped and murdered Everard.
Yet he has not given a full account of what happened with Everard, while his family have been told that he claims to have a split personality disorder.
Vitali Obukhov, his brother-in-law in Ukraine, told
The Times: “A designated psychologist works with him. They are talking about a multiple personality disorder. He doesn’t remember what he was doing. And then, in some situations, he remembers and realises that he did it.”
Couzens’s Ukrainian wife Olena, 38, a laboratory manager who met him online in 2006, had to break the news to their children, aged ten and eight. She told Mail Online that her life had been shattered.
She said: “What Wayne did wasn’t human behaviour. He didn’t appear to be acting strangely. I can’t comprehend it because he never once previously showed any glimpse of violence, he was never that way. I’m just as puzzled as everyone else. I’m constantly asking myself, ‘where did I miss the signs?’ ”
Couzens’s father, who ran a garage in Dover where his son worked for 17 years before joining the police, said: “Nobody knows why he’s done it. If there was stress at work, he did not tell us. He was just an everyday guy.”
Couzens, who was interested in firearms and became an army reservist for two years, wanted to join the police because he was envious of his older brother. It took him years to pass the exams and he was first a special constable in Kent between 2006 and 2010. He joined the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, which guards nuclear sites, in 2011. He had to be developed vetted, the highest level of security clearance, for an initial posting at Sellafield in Cumbria before moving to Dungeness in Kent.
He transferred to the Met in September 2018 and in February 2020 moved to the diplomatic protection group on armed patrols of diplomatic premises, mainly embassies. He had moved to Deal, to be close to his mother who helped with childcare, and his family urged him not to join the Met because of the two-and-a-half-hour commute.
Obukhov said: “He is a normal, calm person. A good dad, a conversationalist. Polite, tactful, well-mannered. He is a good family man. He always played with children.”
But one person who went drinking with Couzens said: “He was a bit of an oddball. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but he was strange.”
All topics concerning this case have been discussed in hundreds posts over and over again. We will get sth new during sentencing I guess. But people want to talk and exchange views so bear with us
