Eleanor Neale

They pulled up absolutely everything that they could about him and they quickly learned that he owned a plot of land about an hour away in Ashford, Kent.

That's never a good sign when they're investigating someone connected to a missing person.

And it's not exactly clear why he owned this plot of land in a wooded area.

He'd bought it two years prior in 2019, but of course it was of immediate importance for the police to search this plot of land, especially when they checked his phone records and they found that his cell signal had pinged in that area of this random plot of land multiple times since Sarah's disappearance.

So the very next day after his arrest, it was March 10th when police search teams arrived and began combing through every nook and cranny of that plot of land.

They spared no expenses too.

There were sniffer dogs.

There was a police helicopter overhead.

There were diving teams searching the pond close by.

And it was in there, in that body of water, that they recovered the dead body of Sarah Everard.

Her remains had been burned beyond recognition, and so her dental records had to be used to identify her.

Two days later, it was confirmed, and the search for Sarah Everard came to a tragic and abrupt end.

In the days, weeks, and even months following the announcement that the search for Sarah was over, the whole entire nation seemed to go into mourning.

The city of London especially, I remember it so clearly.

Clapham Common had become a place of grieving and remembering Sarah, with it being one of the last places she ever walked.

It became a place for candlelit vigils and protests, a place for women to come and cry together, to remember Sarah and reflect on what had happened.

And through it all, there was an overwhelming sense of fear and unease.

One of our women had been taken from the street, driven over 80 miles away, she had been brutally murdered and burned, her body disposed of in a pond.

Like she wasn't someone's child, someone's best friend, the love of someone's life.

Like she wasn't a human being with the right to life.