I was killer cop Wayne Couzens’ childhood pal – he tormented us with twisted mind games… but could I have stopped him? | The Sun

A FORMER childhood friend of Wayne Couzens has revealed how the evil PC played sick games with pals and got off on hurting innocent victims from an early age.

But Warwick Lewis, 50, says the killer cop was a “coward”  who enlisted the help of a school bully to do his dirty work.


The ex-Metropolitan police officer raped and murdered Sarah Everard, 33, after abducting her from a South London street in March 2021 by staging a fake Covid arrest.

Dad-of-two Warwick, who is speaking out ahead of a new Channel 5 documentary, Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight, which airs tonight, admits he feels “physically sick” that Couzens went on to kill Sarah because he feels he could have done something to stop it.

In an exclusive interview with The Sun, he says: “If I'd thought, ‘sod that’ when he turned on me and started fighting back, maybe it would have stopped that development of his character?

"We all look at our past and think, 'maybe if I'd done that differently, maybe I could have changed this or changed that or you know?'

"If he had never got the position that he did in the police force, he wouldn't have been in a position to use it as means to get somebody to surrender willingly.

"If I'd had the confidence to give him a hiding, then he maybe wouldn't have had the confidence to do that sort of stuff.

"These things go around in my head. It's almost like I felt there was something I could do to stop such an awful thing and it makes me feel physically sick.

"I will never know. I have given myself a mental slap for feeling that way."

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Violent tendencies

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Couzens lured his victim under the pretence of a Covid arrestCredit: SWNS
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CCTV showed the pair standing next to a vehicle in ClaphamCredit: PA

Adult support worker Warwick met Couzens, 50, who is currently serving a whole life sentence for his horrific crimes, on their first day at Castlemount secondary school in Dover, Kent.

Even as a youngster, his violent tendencies were plain to see. When he wasn't fighting himself, he was hoodwinking the school bully, who was a boxing champion, to do his bidding.

Warwick recalls: “I actually had a fight with [Wayne]. We were coming out of class and he said something to me. I can’t remember what it was but at school if someone says something challenging, you say something back to show you’re not going to be pushed around.

“And he just laid into me. He got me up against a door. He didn’t do any damage because he was a coward. His strength lay in manipulating people and enlisting ‘muscle’, like that lad.”

Warwick, who now lives in Middle Chinnock, Somerset, admits he was shocked with how quickly it escalated but he refused to fight back.

Despite this, the pair later became close friends as they both shared the same interests and Warwick would often go round to Couzens’ house, which was 20 yards from their school.

Warwick says Couzens was obsessed with action films and managed to get hold of a pirate copy of Rambo, starring Sylvester Stallone.

He says: “He would fast forward to the fight scenes. You could watch a movie with Wayne in ten minutes.”

His parents were well off and his dad Ray ran a successful garage. His devoted mum made him a ninja costume "out of a bed sheet and dyed it black" and Warwick recalls he would constantly be pulling “classic ninja poses” at home and outside.

Warwick says: “They were an attentive loving family. That house was always kept really lovely and clean.

“He didn’t want for anything.”

He recalls Couzens could be "quite demanding" and reminded him of Cartman from the cartoon South Park who doesn't appreciate how his mum dotes on him.

Warwick says: "She really loved him a lot. This is the thing I don't get, it wasn't like he had parents that didn't care. They were such a nice family. His mum and dad were so nice."

Fantasy world

In the documentary, bodycam footage shows how Couzens lied to detectives about a gang pressuring him to kidnap Sarah.

Warwick says his former friend has always been a compulsive liar who lived in a fantasy world.

Once, army cadet Couzens was out in Dover dressed in a full military gear with a gas mask on his hip and Warwick recalls he told an elderly lady he was in the SAS cadets.

Warwick says: “He started spinning this whole story that he made up on the spot. He came out with this load of horse s***. But he was so convincing that even I started to believe him and I knew it wasn’t true.”

He also recalls the time Couzens led him and some other classmates on a wild goose chase at the White Cliffs of Dover in search of a secret armoury.


Warwick says: “He’d always make up some mission. He said he’d been given this map by his dad and there was a secret stash, hundreds and hundreds of guns, grenades, rocket launchers left over from the war.

“He was just living out a fantasy.”

Warwick says when Couzens shot another pal in the testicles with a BB gun, it was part of a plan to "exact power" to show people shouldn't "mess with him".

Warwick says: “He couldn’t have physically gotten hold of this lad and made him squeal.

“It was another tool to get what he wanted.”

Sick trap

Even four decades on, Warwick finds it hard to talk about a horrendous incident in which Couzens set him up in a trap aged 14.

After the pair became pals, he began to enjoy evenings spent at the Couzens household, having been terrorized all day at school by the bully.

Warwick recalls: "Back then, I was tiny. This other lad was huge. He was a golden gloves boxing champ. He was an U16s heavyweight.

"This lad had made my life a misery for a long time. Wayne knew that. He enlisted that other guy.

"Wayne set me up. I imagine this other lad said to him, 'you're friends with him so get him to come round your house. Wayne and I had been friends for a while."

Warwick says Couzens shut the door when he arrived – and when he saw the muscle-bound lad, he thought "I'm going to get beaten to death".

He says: "Wayne was totally fine about it."

And he adds: "He got off on the power."

Warwick somehow managed to escape and “ran for his life.”


He says: "After I thought, ‘why would he have done this?’ We were best mates, we hung out. I couldn’t figure it out. After a while, I stopped trying to.

“My personal beliefs on the reason why he did what he did was he used me as a stepping stone in his own social ladder because he was a coward. He is one of the biggest cowards I have met in my life.

"He didn't want to do that work himself, he wanted a tool to be able to do exactly what he wanted to do because he wasn't capable of it himself so he had to use other means.

"People would not pick on him because of the repercussions of his buddy."

He ended his friendship with Couzens, who later disappeared from school after being beaten so badly by Warwick’s bully he ended up in intensive care.

Warwick says: “After a while, he must have thought he had control over the other man. He became a little bit overconfident. His whole power thing.

“He liked to manipulate, to have certain circumstances go his way.

“The guy basically just stamped on his head until he stopped moving. And he was in intensive care for some time.”

Warwick, who moved to Somerset with his mum when he was 16, never saw his former friend again.

Police job

At 17, Couzens started working for his dad at his garage and continued working there until 2002 when he joined the Territorial Army, serving for the 3rd battalion, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, for two years.

He went on to meet his Ukrainian wife Elena, a lab technician, over the internet and the couple tied the knot in 2006, later having two children.

The couple, who live in a £200,000 three-bedroom house in Deal, Kent, married in her home country in 2006 and have been on holiday there with their two children.

But Couzens's predilection for X-rated websites and violence went unnoticed by his colleagues at Kent Police when he joined as a special constable in December 2006.


Then, in 2018 Couzens joined the Metropolitan police, guarding Westminster VIPs.

On the surface, he was a devoted family man and dedicated police officer but in reality he was a depraved gun and porn obsessed pervert who abused his position of power.

Warwick admits he wasn’t shocked when his former school friend  was named as a suspect missing Sarah’s disappearance – because the signs had been there from his childhood.

He says: “I was more shocked that he had a wife and kids. He never had anything to do with girls. I never heard him mention girls.”

Warwick, who works with vulnerable adults, says he decided to speak out to help others to spot the warning signs so something like this doesn’t happen again.

He says: “When you look at those behaviours that are all sociopathic or psychopathic, they're all a telling sign.

“If you've got someone behaving in certain ways, showing sociopathic tendencies that are considered anything but normal behaviour for a child, he shouldn’t be able to join something like the police force.

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“They are serious characteristics that need to be taken into account. Maybe they will grow out of it but can we afford to take that chance? I think this kind of thing proves we can’t.”

Wayne Couzens: Killer in Plain Sight airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 5 and My5

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