On the evening of 3 March 2021, 33-year-old Sarah Everard was kidnapped in South London, England, as she was walking home to the Brixton Hill area from a friend's house near Clapham Common. She was stopped by off-duty Metropolitan Police constable Wayne Couzens who identified himself as a police officer, handcuffed her, and placed her in his car before driving her to near Dover where he raped and strangled her, before burning her body and disposing of her remains in a nearby pond.

The journey should have taken 50 minutes. It was a straightforward walk from a friend's house in Leathwaite Road, Clapham, to Sarah's home in Brixton.

She set out about 9pm and, on the way, called her boyfriend. They spoke for about 15 minutes and the conversation ended at 9.28pm. She was last seen on Poynders Road, not far from Clapham Common, where she was captured on a doorbell camera walking in the direction of Tulse Hill. Then she was gone.

By the next morning her friends were already concerned. Sarah hadn’t texted to say she’d got home, she didn’t attend a scheduled client meeting on the morning of March 4, and her boyfriend’s texts had gone unread and unanswered. In the early evening he went to her flat but got no answer there either. It was at this point he went to the police.

Around 180,000 people go missing in the UK every year and there are very few cases that have as high a profile as Sarah Everard's. But from the very start it seemed that she had not vanished of her own free will.

As social media appeals spread and friends plastered Clapham with posters, the police hunt began. Search and rescue teams scoured nearby ponds. Specialist officers trawled Clapham Common for clues, then nearby Agnes Riley Gardens and the Poynders Gardens Estate. Police visited 750 homes and received 100 calls. The public response was huge - but at this point there seemed very little sense of what had happened to Sarah.

Her family were distraught. "Sarah's absolutely amazing, she's lovely and she's fantastic. So sensible. So well-loved by her family, by her friends, by everyone," her cousin Tom told MyLondon on March 8.

"This is so totally out of character for her... we just need to get her home."

On March 9 a serving Metropolitan police officer was arrested at his home in Deal, Kent, on suspicion of Sarah’s kidnap.

There is bodycam footage taken during the initial interview in his house. Handcuffed in an armchair he denies knowing Sarah or having any involvement in her disappearance.