The woman detective who led the hunt for Wayne Couzens has described her horror on learning the monster was in their midst.
Speaking for the first time, Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin revealed how she tracked down the killer within a week of him snatching Sarah Everard off a busy street in Clapham, south-west London, on March 3.
In an extraordinary insight into the fast-paced investigation, the experienced murder squad detective hit back at criticism over a two-hour delay to arrest Couzens which allowed him to wipe his phone records, potentially destroying evidence.
Recalling the moment she learnt of his identity from records of the hire car he used to carry out the abduction, she said: 'I'll never forget the moment one of my team came running into my office, closed the door and told me that the renter of that car was a serving police officer.
Detective Chief Inspector Katherine Goodwin (pictured) revealed how she tracked down the killer within a week of him snatching Sarah Everard off a busy street in Clapham, London
'I was in absolute shock. For a split second, I thought perhaps there was a reasonable explanation.
'However, all we knew about Sarah by this point made it clear it was very unlikely she'd voluntarily gone off with someone unknown to her, and almost immediately it felt wrong.'
Her team had to trawl through 2,000 hours of CCTV, more than 415 calls and messages from the public and 97 reports from other forces to narrow down the search area to a 300-metre stretch of road in the capital.
The hunt started the morning after Sarah's disappearance at 9.30pm on Wednesday March 3 as she was walking home from a friend's house in Clapham.
'When I read the daily briefing and saw her disappearance had been reported out of character, something immediately rang alarm bells,' the detective said.
By Saturday, the missing persons investigation had been handed to the homicide team and Miss Goodwin set up an incident room in Putney.
Miss Goodwin said she was in 'absolute shock' to then find out Couzens (pictured) was a service officer
She said: 'One of the first things we did was to build a picture of Sarah and her lifestyle. It was clear that no one could think of the reason for Sarah to disappear of her own accord.'
Teams were dispatched to track her
