With the blessing of her parents, my husband and I placed stones on the North Yorkshire headstone of Sarah Everard and sang “Adonai Ro’i,” a haunting version of Psalm 23. We hoped to bring a small amount of solace to Jeremy and Sue Everard, whose unbearable loss has reverberated across the U.K. over the past four years.
Sarah was abducted, raped and murdered in early March 2021 by a Metropolitan Police officer in south London. She was 33. The British press covered the tragedy extensively. Vigils took place throughout the U.K. Kate Middleton, now Princess of Wales, attended one such vigil unannounced and sent a personal note to the family. The crime also led British women to band together to raise awareness of violence against women and girls and to bring attention to crimes committed by police officers.
The Everards will always be grateful for those efforts and for the support of friends, neighbors and people they had never met. That said, the tragic death of the youngest of their three children is a pain without end. They live with her loss every single day, visiting her grave in the churchyard not far from the University of York.
Ten years ago, we first met the Everards through the professional contacts of my husband, Allen Podell. An engineer-physicist-inventor, Allen was invited to speak at the university, where Jeremy is now a professor emeritus of electronics. At the time, Jeremy and Sue, a physiotherapist, invited us to dinner at their home.
Because we enjoyed their company, we decided to get in touch with the Everards before returning to York in July. Since a lot can happen in 10 years, I did a quick search to update our information about the couple. The shocking events of 2021 leapt off my iPad. Wordlessly, I flashed the screen to my husband. He, too, was speechless.
“We were so devastated by the news that only now am I able to write,” Allen emailed Jeremy the following day. “If it were possible to share the pain, we would gladly grab a big bunch and carry it away.”
Jeremy wrote back, thanking Allen for his “lovely message” and extending an invitation to their home.
We arrived with a bouquet of orange roses and a measure of trepidation. At first, as we shared tea, Allen and Jeremy discussed scientific concerns. Jeremy said that work was his therapy.
Later over dinner at a pub near their home, the Everards opened up about the grueling events of 2021. Sarah was abducted on the evening of March 3 and reported missing the next day. Just over a week later, her burned remains were found.
We asked if it would be OK to visit Sarah’s grave, which is just a short walk from the pub. They nodded. As we walked to the churchyard, I picked up a couple of stones, which we placed on her headstone. Jeremy and Sue seemed pleased that we were honoring Sarah through our traditions. As we stood at the grave, Allen, who has a strong, rich voice, began to sing “Adonai Ro’i” because “it seemed like the right thing to do, as it was the only gift I had,” he said. I joined in, and when the text failed me, I sang wordlessly, sharing our prayer and our hope of offering comfort.
Cantor Gerald Cohen of New York originally wrote “Adonai Ro’i,” or “The Lord Is My Shepherd,” in 1989 as an a cappella solo for the funeral of a friend. Since then, it has become a four-part standard of Jewish community choirs. Over the years, Allen and I have sung the piece with HaShirim, our Peninsula Jewish community chorale, and at High Holiday Yizkor services at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. But perhaps our most moving moment was singing it a cappella in a quiet country churchyard.