Stephen Port Victims

Case background and investigation

Stephen Port, a chef from Barking in east London, killed four young men between June 2014 and September 2015 by giving them overdoses of the drug GHB. According to the sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Openshaw, Port's pattern was to drug young men without their knowledge so that he could sexually assault them while they were unconscious, and he met most of his victims through gay dating websites and apps.

Anthony Walgate, 23, a fashion student from Hull, went to Port's flat on the evening of June 17, 2014. According to the judge, Port left his body outside the building, called an ambulance claiming he had found a stranger collapsed, and planted a bottle of GHB on him. Port was later convicted of perverting the course of justice over his lies about this death and served a short prison sentence. Gabriel Kovari, 22, from Slovakia, moved into Port's flat in August 2014; his body was found on August 28, 2014, against the churchyard wall near the ruins of Barking Abbey.

Daniel Whitworth, a chef, visited Port on September 18, 2014, and his body was left in almost the same spot in the churchyard, with a forged suicide note that falsely blamed him for Kovari's death, according to the sentencing remarks. Jack Taylor, 25, a forklift driver from Dagenham, met Port at Barking station early on September 13, 2015, and his body was also left in the churchyard. Each death was initially treated as a self-administered overdose.

Port was arrested in October 2015 and charged with the four murders. On November 23, 2016, a jury at the Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey) convicted him of murdering all four men and of rapes, sexual assaults and drugging offences against other men. On November 25, 2016, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order, meaning he will never be released.

Inquests into the four deaths concluded on December 10, 2021. The jury found that all four men had been unlawfully killed and that failings by the Metropolitan Police probably contributed to the deaths of Kovari, Whitworth and Taylor, according to Attitude and RTE. The jury pointed to basic checks not carried out, evidence not sent for forensic testing and a lack of professional curiosity. The coroner did not allow the jury to consider allegations that homophobia played a part. The police watchdog, the IOPC, which had found no misconduct case in its first investigation, reopened its inquiry in June 2022.