Hollyoaks actor Will Mellor admitted he put a tracker on his teenage daughter's phone as he looked into the death of Sarah Everard at the hands of a police officer.
Sarah was kidnapped and murdered in 2021 by then-serving Met officer Wayne Couzens, who put Sarah in handcuffs and asked her to get into the back of his car before he killed her.
Mellor, who is a dad of two, looks more closely at Couzens' crimes in upcoming documentary Cops Who Kill with Will Mellor, which is set to air next week.
The actor stresses in the doc that Sarah 'did everything right' the night she was killed, saying: “She’d been to get a bottle of wine, she’d been to her friend’s house, she let her boyfriend know how long she was going to be, it was a busy road.
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"Then a policeman asked her to get in the back of his car.
“There’s no way she could have protected herself once she was in that car, in handcuffs.
"That’s what made me feel sick about that case more than anything else, was her sat in the back of that car, realising, ‘This is wrong.’”
Couzens is now serving a whole-life sentence for the murder of Sarah.
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On 6 March, the same day the documentary airs, he is set to be sentenced for three counts of indecent exposure committed in the months before Sarah's death.
Mellor has commended police for the 'work that went into catching' Couzens, but noted: "On the flip side, he should never have been in the police.”
His documentary questions who we can trust if we can't trust those who are sworn to protect us, with the dad explaining that he put a tracker app on his 14-year-old daughter Renee's phone to help ensure her safety.
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“It’s so important,” he says in the documentary. “I said to her, ‘I’m not spying on you but if anything happens, I know where you are.’
"I am protective of people but my kids are my world and you just want to protect innocence.”
Couzens initially claimed not to know Sarah when he was interrogated by police at his home, but after watching the scene unfold, Mellor said the police officer started to 'squirm' because he knew he'd been caught.
"You see his chest pounding. And I’m thinking, ‘Now you imagine what Sarah felt like sat in the back of your car.
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"'Now you’re on the seat, handcuffed.
"'How does it feel?’"
Cops Who Kill With Will Mellor airs on Crime + Investigation on 6 March at 10pm.
Topics: Celebrity, TV And Film
Emily Brown