Original subtitles

[clock ticks]

[dramatic music]

[phone rings]

- [Operator] Emergency ambulance,

What's the address of the emergency?

- [Caller] Cooke Street, there's a young boy.

Looks like he's collapsed outside.

- [Operator] Outside of which number?

- [Caller] 47-58.

- [Operator] Sorry?

- [Caller] 47-58 I think.

- [Operator] 47 Cooke Street?

- Yeah. - What area?

- [Caller] Barking.

[sombre music]

It looks like he's collapsed or...

had a seizure or something

or is just drunk.

- [Operator] Okay, what's the telephone number

you're calling from?

- [Caller] I'm just [mumbles] in my car, I got to get...

I've got to get my car from the parking.

- [Operator] Right, don't worry about that.

What's the telephone number you're calling from?

[phone beeps]

Hello?

[siren wails]

[phone rings]

Hi?

- [Caller] Hello?

- [Operator] Hello, it's the ambulance service.

We were cut off there.

Can you confirm the location?

[intense music]

- [Caller] Oh, I've just driven away now.

- [Operator] Where was it that they were outside of?

- [Caller] Erm, Cooke Street.

- [Operator] What door number?

- [Caller] I don't know, I just, I didn't look.

- [Operator] You said 47 before.

- [Caller] Yep. Yep, 47, yep.

[intense music]

- [Operator] Do you know if he was awake?

- [Caller] No.

- [Operator] Do you know if he was breathing?

- [Caller] No, I don't know.

[intense music]

[siren wails]

[sombre music]

- I am Anthony Neil.

I was the first clinician on scene at Cooke Street

for the London Ambulance Service.

[siren wails]

I was driving around the estate.

There was lots of parked cars,

but there was no one sort of wandering about,

it was deserted.

And I called back my control

so that they can call back the person that called this in

to get a better location.

[phone rings]

- [Caller] Hello?

- [Operator] Hello sir, it's the ambulance service.

Sorry to bother you again.

It was definitely Cooke Street that the patient was on?

- [Caller] Yes, definitely, yeah 'cause I passed him.

I passed him and it was Cooke street.

- [Operator] Okay, no worries, no worries.

Just wanted to be sure.

Thank you for your help.

Sorry to bother you again.

[intense eerie music]

- Outside of the second block of flats

appear to me what looked like some bin bags

against the entrance.

But as I approached closer,

I could see that it was in fact a person.

I noticed he was sat cross-legged

in a sat upright position leaning against the wall.

I couldn't see his face because he had a hoodie

and that was obscuring any vision.

As soon as I saw his face, I knew he was deceased.

You automatically touch them, you're looking for a pulse,

but I could feel the rigour mortis in his jaw

and then looking at his eyes, there were lifeless.

So yeah, he'd been dead for a good few hours.

Then I stepped back 'cause I thought, this is not right,

this is suspicious.

So I called it into the police

to preserve a potential crime scene.

[suspenseful music]

[intense music]

- When I finished work that morning,

one of my colleagues dropped me off

and I got outta the car, walked across the road,

there was police everywhere.

My name's Glen and I live in Barking.

For the life of me now, I'm a cheerful guy.

I said, "Who's died?"

[sad music]

And the officer asked me where I was going.

I said, "Oh, I'm staying at Cooke Street."

He took me over to another officer

and asked me if I knew a Stephen Port.

I said, "Yes, he's my flatmate."

I said, "I'm staying on his sofa."

"Do you know where he is?"

I said, "Probably in bed."

I said, "I don't know, I've just finished work."

I said, "You've just seen me get outta the car."

They said, "Okay,"

he said, "could you let us into the property?"

[dramatic music]

[intense music]

- Looking through the case notes,

Stephen Port's name came up quite quickly

because he made that initial 999 call.

My name is Parm Sandhu.

I'm a former chief superintendent

from the Metropolitan Police.

On the initial call, Stephen Port said he was in a car

and he was driving past and he saw a young man

and he believed he was having a seizure.

- [Port] Looks like he collapsed or...

had a seizure or something

or is just drunk.

- [Operator] What's the telephone number

you're calling from?

[phone clicks]

Hello?

- The call was then traced back to an address and a vehicle

in that locality

and that's why Stephen Port was identified.

[eerie music]

- Stephen was in bed, he was sound asleep.

So I've had to wake him up

and told him that the police are at the front door.

He was being interviewed.

I heard Stephen say he came home from work that night

and see the young gentleman outside.

He slapped him around the face a couple of times

to try arouse him but couldn't,

so he called 999.

[sombre music]

- I am Sarah Sak, Anthony, Walgate's mother.

Anthony was very loud, very funny,

and a very good friend.

If he was your friend, he'd be friend for life.

He studied fashion and design at college,

got himself a place at London at the college there

and moved down and he absolutely loved

every minute of being there.

The odd time he came back to Hull,

he used to say, we were Sleepy Hollow.

He said, "I don't know you can bear living here.

Everybody's so slow.

It's so quiet."

And I don't think he'd have ever left London.

[sombre music continues]

[gentle piano music]

I went to Turkey on holiday.

We were getting ready to go out on our last night

and I turned my phone back on.

There was 50 odd missed calls,

there was texts, there was hundreds and hundreds

of messages coming through that you need to ring home,

you know, something's happened.

So I called my son

and he had to tell me over the phone

that Anthony had been found dead.

[gentle piano music continues]

[siren wails]

- He was a young person and young people don't just die.

And the only sort of injuries apparent

was he had blood around his mouth,

which I felt may be consistent with a seizure,

but why would he be sat up?

If it was an assault, he wouldn't be sat up,

if they were drunk and aspirated on their vomit,

they wouldn't be sat up.

So the positioning where he was

and because he'd been there for a few hours,

yeah, it just didn't add up.

- Anthony's body had his midriff exposed,

it showed signs of being dragged,

there was bruising under the armpits from the dragging.

I'm Sebastian Murphy-Bates,

I was a reporter at the Barking and Dagenham Post.

His underwear was on inside out and back to front,

his trouser zip was open.

There's just so many things about it

that if you explain that to a normal person

who's not a police officer,

they would say, well that's a bit weird.

It's like someone's dressed him in a rush

or in a panic and then dumped the body.

- I arrived back in the UK

at about seven o'clock the next morning.

The first call I made was to DS O'Donnell

and I'd said, "What's happened?"

And he just said, "At the moment, we don't know anything.

Anthony was found dead in the street."

I said, "Well, you know, was he stabbed, shot, beaten?

What?"

"No, nothing, there was not a mark on him

and we don't know why.

Nothing's come up on the postmortem.

What we're gonna do is send off

for a further tox screen on it,

but it could take a few weeks."

So I said to him straight away then,

"Something's not right."

I said, "I'm telling ya, if he hasn't been attacked,

something's not right here."

- Any unexplained death with a young adult,

you would look at maybe being a drug overdose.

So when they did mention, do you think it's a drug overdose?

I think I initially said no

because of the way he was positioned.

If he was laying on the floor, then yes, of course.

I said, "I don't know how he's died

because it's not obvious."

I knew something wasn't right and I told the police that.

- I said to Stephen,

"It was shame about that young man outside."

It's not very often someone on your own doorstep

is found now.

Yes it is a crying shame.

He went, "I hope they find whoever's responsible

or if he's taken anything,

hope they find out what's happened to him."

[eerie music]

- I'm Ryan Edwards and I was Stephen Port's

friend and neighbour.

When I first moved into the area,

it was coming up to the summer.

So this tree that you can see

wasn't as as fully grown when I was here originally in 2005

and I could see Stephen's ground floor flat patio area.

When I was walking past one day

and Stephen was out there attending to his plants,

I took the opportunity to introduce myself

and I think very quickly,

we established that we were both gay.

I can't quite remember how that conversation went,

but I said, "Oh, it'd be nice to catch up sometime."

And it sort of, it just grew quite organically really.

- When he first came in, I see this guy there

that's quite muscley, quite tall,

and me being only five foot four,

five foot five was standing next to this

like six foot, six man.

I was like, "You alright?

How are ya?" [laughs]

But it was like standing next to a friendly giant.

- He had a very distinctive walk actually.

It was a slightly awkward gait

and I quickly kind of colloquially nicknamed him

with my other friends as almost like the BFG,

the big friendly giant,

'cause he was so large, but so softy spoken.

- You'd have to make conversation with him

to actually talk to him.

Otherwise you'd get more conversation out of a wall.

than you would actually, Stephen.

He wasn't one to socialise.

He'd keep himself to himself.

[intense music]

- I was thinking he might be a possible wing man for me

in terms of going out and chatting to guys.

And unfortunately, Stephen was very ill at ease

in that environment.

It's almost like it was the first time

he'd ever walked into a gay bar.

He would sort of clam up and it was to the point of

being sort of excruciating because he would almost turn away

or look at his phone.

It was, I felt, bordering on rude.

So I quickly realised actually this type of socialising

is not gonna work for me and Stephen.

So perhaps limiting it to a coffee at his

or a coffee at mine

is probably about as adventurous as we can be.

- [Glen] Stephen wanted always, always to look good.

- He would often change his hairstyle

and he'd be like, oh yeah neighbour, you know,

I like to look good for my boys.

- He'd pose in the mirror

and I caught him one day and I'm like, "What you doing?

He went, "I'm posing."

and he's like this and I went,

"What are you doing? No need to do that

You look fine," I went, "Leave off."

He was very vain.

- Stephen I presume had a very high sexual drive.

He was certainly meeting guys all the time

and they were definitely quite a set type.

So he would often say to me, "Hey neighbour, come round

and meet my new boy, my new guy."

He would often refer to them as boys

and they were quite young.

They were often sort of 19, 20, often like a twink.

So they were sort of quite slim in gay parlance

you know, non-hairy type of thing.

So that definitely seemed to be Stephen's type.

[eerie music]

- Anthony Walgate was skint,

like many students,

especially if you're moving from the north to London,

it is a big culture shock

and everything's a lot more expensive.

He had started working occasionally as an escort.

[eerie music]

- If he was going to meet somebody,

he would always tell his friends.

[messages ping]

[intense music]

He would tell 'em where he is going, who he's meeting,

and he was just so cautious.

- He also showed his friend a picture

of the profile from the website

that they had used to meet.

He went there expecting a lot of money,

but he felt that it was important to take precautions.

[eerie music]

[sombre music]

- I was so sure that this was a murder.

I just knew something was wrong

and so did his best friends.

We constantly were saying to the police,

I mean the police at one point told his best friend,

China, to stop asking questions

that you weren't getting answers to.

And that was a couple of days after Anthony had died.

I said, "China's told you who he was meeting.

Given the name, the address and everything."

No.

They'd found these drugs in Anthony's bag.

The bottle of liquid they just automatically assumed

it was Anthony's.

It was GHB.

So after finding this out, it was obvious

just a young gay lad into Chemsex

and that's how they saw it.

It was quite clear to us from day one

it was an open and shut case to 'em

and they would not entertain any other idea.

- As soon as you start mentioning those words, you know,

Chemsex, gay, sexual activity, there are certain labels

that are used to stereotype behaviours and people

and it does have an influence

in how police treat certain investigations.

That is the cold hard truth about it.

- There are just some really basic errors made

and it just highlights this issue

that honestly we see quite regularly

where there are inexperienced police officers going out,

making assumptions and then looking for evidence

to support those assumptions.

In this case, being that it was an overdose,

despite the fact that there was a lot of evidence

that would imply otherwise.

I am Dr. Honor Doro Townshend and I am a criminologist.

Anthony had actually showed a friend a picture

of the person he was going to meet.

This same friend goes to the police,

she's able to give a description of the person

that he's meeting

and then when shown a picture of Stephen Port,

identifies him as the person that Anthony was going to meet.

- Port used an alias when he hired Anthony.

He called himself Joe Dean.

He's asked about his involvement with Anthony

and says, "I hired him as an escort.

I panicked when I realised that he was dead."

He admits that he moved the body outside.

Now the police seem to believe pretty quickly

that he lied to them because he freaked out

'cause there was a dead body in his flat.

- Port was the last person to see Anthony

and it just seemed to be that everything Port's ever said

to any of the police that they totally and utterly believed.

[intense music]

- Within the first few interactions he's had

with the police, he's created three different narratives.

At first, he was walking past the body,

then actually no,

he'd found the body and he'd moved it

because it was blocking his entrance to the flat.

Well then his story shifts once again and he says,

"No, actually I was having sex with Anthony

and he overdosed."

- He said that he would pay Anthony £800

to stay for the night.

If you are a skint student

and you're thinking it's one night,

it's 800 quid,

the impression that would be in my mind at least

is, "I'm going meeting somebody who can afford to splash

800 quid on one night with me.

That's a successful person.

That's somebody who can afford to do that."

[intense music]

- I did have a lot of questions

and I was saying to the police,

"Right, so did he have £800?"

They said, "No.

He was overdrawn at the bank.

He didn't have any money."

So I said, "Right, so you believed him?"

"Yeah, of course. "

And then he was saying

that Port had said Anthony had taken this drug and was sick.

So he'd gone back to the bathroom and taken some more.

And I knew this was wrong.

Anthony had this phobia about being sick

from being a small child

and I said, "If Anthony's sick, he would've rung.

Something's not right."

[intense music]

- What Port is doing is he's going along with the fact

that the police are already considering this

as non-suspicious.

Now they just need Port's evidence

to match what they think probably happened.

And so they're actually giving him

these little tidbits of information,

he's matching his stories

and they're not questioning the fact

that he's changing these stories

when they absolutely should be.

It should be alarm bells ringing.

- [Reader] "I sent him photos of myself via WhatsApp

and my home address using a registered phone in my name.

If I'd really intended to harm him by drugging him,

I wouldn't have been that silly."

- He didn't send him his address.

He didn't, he did send him a false address,

he made himself younger, he changed his name

whatever reason that might have been for

and you could look at that

and think maybe he's just being cautious.

But the other thing is that you could look

at it and say was Port from that moment on,

aware that there could be a risk posed to Anthony

by him coming to Port's property?

[intense music]

- As far as Barking and Dagenham police were concerned,

there was nothing suspicious about the circumstances

of Anthony's death.

They bought the idea that he had taken drugs

of his own volition,

he'd taken too much and he had died as a result.

[intense music]

- I found it really, really frustrating

because if the police aren't helping you,

what are you supposed to do?

You know, who do you turn to?

I did actually turn to my MP at one point

and said to him, you know, "Something's wrong.

My son was murdered and they won't do anything."

- My name's Carl Turner, I'm the labour MP for East Hull.

From very early, Sarah was saying it was homophobia.

She was convinced the Met were not doing

what they ought to be doing because the lad was gay.

I thought that was just not likely,

but she thought she was right

and she constantly raised the issue.

We made representations to the Met,

but the responses were just, there's nothing to see.

Everything's fine.

- Every time, "There's nothing to investigate."

and you know, at least try and investigate.

- When the toxicology results came back,

they did show that Anthony Walgate had

a massive amount of GHB in his system

and that is what caused his death.

So that would support the original theory

that this was a gay young man engaged

in sexual activity and drug taking.

- Sarah knew that he was adverse to drug taking.

She said he wouldn't take a paracetamol and I believed her.

Did I believe that her son had been murdered?

I didn't think she was lying about that

or that she'd jumped to a conclusion

that might not be right, but I didn't have a view.

I just thought the Met Police will be doing everything

that they need to do to ensure

that the lad's not been murdered.

[siren wails]

[intense music]

- What I think is really clear

from looking at the police investigation

is a fundamental lack of understanding

of the LGBTQ+ community at the time.

- I'm Duncan and I am five years into my recovery

from a Chemsex addiction.

As soon as the hookup apps came in,

it's all GPS located.

It became my experience,

it sort of became less about dating

and a lot more about just hooking up with somebody

for some casual sex.

[intense music]

- There's clubs that you can go to,

there's saunas we can go to,

there's apps that tell you where the nearest person is.

It's very easy for us to have consensual hookups

and we can do it on demand.

- It was always a bit of a mystery to me

how Stephen was meeting so many guys

and yet the Stephen that I knew was very socially awkward.

I did notice when I was often round there for coffees,

he was always on a platform.

- Stephen Port had a way of making you feel relaxed.

He had a soothing voice, he was quiet,

he wasn't in your face.

We met through Dad's Lads, that's a website

that doesn't even exist anymore.

And the idea was we're gonna have a threesome.

I met him at his place,

he seemed really normal,

like he had his flat, he had his car,

he was just a normal guy.

And then we waited for his boyfriend to come home

and then tried to get intimate,

but it just felt all wrong.

It just felt really,

when you don't gel, you don't gel.

In the end I was like, "Look, I'm tired.

I'm gonna go home."

And that was the first encounter.

[eerie music]

- Stephen was often having other boys over

and they would call their friends,

they'd all go in the bedroom together.

I remember one night I was in the front room

and you could hear everything.

It's not something that, you know,

I wanted to hear really.

- As the friendship wore on in the years,

I noticed that he became a little bit more serious,

I guess you could say.

He started focusing more on discussions about men,

almost becoming a bit obsessed.

[intense music]

- The apps can be quite addictive,

I guess like any apps on our phones, on, you know,

social media apps, we can just keep scrolling and scrolling

and then of course, there's online,

a lot of people taking drugs

and so if there is that temptation there

as there was for myself,

then that then starts to become a bit problematic

because then the two go together, sex and drugs.

[eerie music]

- He would go out, come back about 40 minutes later,

and he'd go straight to the fridge

and put something in the fridge.

So I've looked up on the shelf like you know, as I would,

and there was two little blue bottles.

He said they was medication.

I asked him if can borrow some nail clippers one day

and he's lent over to his bedside table

and opened his drawer

and there were seven little blue bottles.

And I thought, that's a lot of medication.

- It would be very unfair to say

that the whole gay community are involved in Chemsex

because not everybody takes drugs or wants to take drugs

and some people are very clear about not wanting to.

- I don't do Chemsex.

That's a no go for me.

Usually you send a message, you ask for pictures,

you get pictures, there's kinks, there's fetishes,

you discuss all that before you go, you know,

you kind of set some boundaries

and the other person will either respect it

and still invite you or say, "Sorry, this ain't for me."

And you kind of move on to the next person

and hope to get lucky with them.

- The main drugs that are used in Chemsex are crystal meth,

which is also known as Tina and T and GHB,

also known as G.

[eerie music]

- I'm Dr. Simon Elliott, I'm a forensic toxicologist.

One of the big problems with GHB is the dose,

dose maketh the poison,

i.e. it's the dose that matters.

- I remember knocking on the door

and Stephen was normally very quick to the door.

On this occasion, he wasn't.

And eventually he opened it and he looked dreadful.

He looked like he barely slept.

He led me through into the kitchen.

I immediately noticed there was a really large container

on the coffee table

and there were lots of bags with white powder

and lots of small vials of some sort of liquid.

And the boyfriend comes through

and the boyfriend looks completely out of it.

Definitely under the influence of drugs.

It's not a situation I'm comfortable in,

so I'm thinking I want to get myself out of this situation

really quickly.

[eerie music]

- Chemsex isn't just sex and drugs together,

Chemsex is all of the other stuff that goes with it.

You know, the consequences, the come downs,

all the stuff that happens in between a binge

and in the middle of a binge and you know,

walking around streets at night

trying to find your next hookup

and sitting at bus stops

pretending that you're waiting for a bus,

but you're actually just looking and looking

to see where you can go next and get more drugs.

And you know, that's also Chemsex.

- At the hospital,

we were having patients being admitted in coma.

So very unconscious, intoxicated by GHB.

Then medical staff would do their utmost

to try and keep them breathing and keep their heart going

until the drug leaves their body

and then they subsequently wake up

and then can be discharged safely.

If people haven't got hospital care,

if the dose is too high,

then that sleep can easily turn into death.

- My name's Emily Penning,

I'm the Old Bailey correspondent

for the Press Association News Agency.

I knew nothing about the Chemsex scene,

I knew next to nothing about GHB.

So for me, it was a huge learning curve.

And also, you know, I knew nothing at that stage

about the victims.

[eerie music]

Gabriel Kovari had come over from Slovakia

and he wanted to become a English teacher

and you know, he was very artistic.

- Slovakia is a much more

socially conservative place than London.

He came to London and he was hoping to find himself,

be more out, if we can put it that way,

than in his home country.

He was so keen on living in London,

that he was prepared to sleep rough if it came to it.

- He told his friends that he'd been offered a room

and a flat in Barking as a flatmate for free.

[messages ping]

Which among his friends raised a few eyebrows

and they were slightly, they were slightly concerned.

But you know, he was determined.

[messages ping]

[eerie music]

- Around 2014, Stephen started changing

his mobile number quite frequently,

which was a a bit annoying

and I wondered why.

It was prior to one of these number changes,

he messaged me and said,

you know, "Hey neighbour"... - "Hey neighbour,

Come meet my new Slovakian twink flatmate

tonight or tomos."

- [Ryan] I say, "Okay."

He replies to say...

- [Reader] "He's 22, quite cute, tall and skinny."

- Then I message, "I will pop later."

[intense music]

Gabriel was different to the guys

that Stephen would typically meet.

He was intelligent, articulate, he was driven,

wanted to do things with his life,

really nice, very chatty.

[messages ping]

[intense music]

[intense music continues]

[messages ping]

There was a little bit of tension between him and Stephen.

I quickly picked up for example,

that Gabriel did not find Stephen attractive

and Gabriel was quite twink-like.

So I presume that Stephen did find Gabriel attractive,

but I thought to myself,

well Stephen's gonna be out of luck there.

[intense music]

At one point Stephen went out to go to the toilet.

Gabriel lent over to me

and sort of almost in a hushed tone said to me,

"Stephen is not the man you think he is, Ryan.

He's not a nice guy,

he's not a nice person."

And before I could kind of elaborate on that,

Stephen came back into the room.

I was a bit concerned for Gabriel.

I found him on Grindr and I messaged him and I said,

"Listen, if things are not working out with Stephen,

if you want to stay at mine for a couple of nights,

then you'd be more than welcome."

And he replied back to me to say,

"Oh yeah, that'd be really, really good.

Thank you very much."

[messages ping]

[intense music]

The next morning, I messaged Gabriel to say,

"What's the latest?"

And I didn't get any response

back from Gabriel at that time.

On the 26th of August, 2014,

I get a message from a number I don't recognise.

- [Reader] "My new number, delete other one.

Stephen, your neighbour."

- This is after I've just met Gabriel.

So I replied to say, "How is Gabriel?"

And then Stephen replies to say...

- [Reader] "He's gone to stay with another local guy.

He gets around a lot."

- This seemed very quick to me.

So I replied to say, "Oh blimey.

Who did he stay with? Do you know?"

And Stephen replied. - "No,

some soldier guy he fancied.

He's been chatting to him online.

Shame, I really liked him."

[sad music]

[water trickles]

- My name is Barbara Denham

and I've lived in barking for over 35 years, since 1988.

There you go puppy.

Every day since having a dog,

first job is, more or less, walk the dog,

walk the dog, come back, come in to eat breakfast.

Usually I go up the road from here through the alley

and walk the dog around Barking Abbey Grounds

and that's segregated into four separate parts.

So you've got the field this side,

then Barking Abbey Ruins,

and then you've got the church yard

and then there's another field the other side.

[eerie music]

I came in, turned left again to follow the path around

and I saw a young chap sitting,

well much as I'm sitting now,

head down, back against the wall,

and I just thought,

he's probably sleeping off from the night before.

He had dark black hair,

dark glasses on that were skew-whiff.

And I'm walking past there and I thought,

I dunno, it seemed strange.

He never moved a muscle, not a muscle.

I don't what it was,

but I decided to turn back and try and catch his attention.

So I've clapped me hands

and sort of did a yoo-hoo,

not a muscle, not a flicker of the eyes or anything.

There was no blood, no injury, no nothing,

but I really seriously thought there's something wrong.

And I never thought for a minute a medical problem.

I just, I don't know why I assumed he was dead.

- This is the body of Gabriel Kovari.

He's died from a fatal overdose of GHB.

[phone rings]

- The call came in just after nine o'clock

and just before three o'clock that same day,

the crime scene is closed down.

The case is closed down as being an unexplained death

and not a suspicious death.

So it's closed down very, very quickly.

For a young man to be found dead in the street,

you know, in the space of what, five or six hours,

it's closed down and treated as an unexplained death.

[sad music]

- I didn't have anybody around me at the time to talk with.

I had to sit down with me cup of tea and slice of toast

or whatever and let it soak in

of what I've discovered and what had happened.

But yeah, it was a bit of a shock.

- The police's interpretation of Gabriel Kovari's death,

like the interpretation of Anthony Walgate's death

was that it was not suspicious.

He had died of an overdose

and that was all they knew.

[intense music]

- [Ryan] On the 30th of August, 2014,

Stephen replies to say...

- [Reader] "Have you seen Gabe around Barking at all?

Been trying to contact him,

but his phone been off a couple days."

- And then I replied to say, "No, he hasn't got back to me."

Stephen follows up by saying...

- [Reader] "Please keep trying to contact him.

I was not sure if he's just blocking me.

Worried about him."

- It seems genuine because Stephen is showing concern

about Gabriel's whereabouts,

which naturally heightens my concern

why Gabriel has just disappeared

and I can't really let it go.

So on the 1st of September, I reply to Stephen to say,

"So it seems like Gabe just disappeared?

Strange, hey?"

And Stephen replies...

- [Reader] "Yeah, I haven't heard anything from him.

He did mention going to Spain

as that's where he's meant to be studying,

but odd, he's not messaged at all.

I would check in police station,

but to be honest, I don't even know his surname."

- "He's such a nice, beautiful boy,

I just hope he's all right."

[intense music]

- Once again, he's trying to control a narrative.

I think for the first time,

there's someone else

who's almost actively involved in questioning.

And so he is having to come up with a whole new story.

[intense music]

- [Ryan] On the 11th of September, 2014,

I get a long text message from Stephen and it says

"Hey, neighbour". - "Hey, neighbour.

I've just heard some sad news from one of Gabriel's friends,

that Gabe did return to Spain to be with his boyfriend.

I didn't know either.

And he died on arrival from an infection.

Feel so sad, he was our friend."

- I was completely taken aback by that message

and I replied to say, "Oh my God, that is shocking!

Thanks for letting me know."

- Ryan's been asking so many questions.

It's starting to annoy Port at this point.

He wants this closed,

Ryan's going to keep on asking Port

about what's been happening

and he doesn't want to do that anymore.

He's over it.

And so the only way to finally fully close that chapter

is to say that Gabriel's dead.

- [Ryan] "I loved affection with my boyfriend

and was caring and compassionate.

My downside was that I wasn't grateful for what I had

and continued to want more,

but never to the extent of hurting others.

I have a genuine sense of concern for others.

I am a good, calm, peaceful person."

[sad music]

- [Amanda] He was a Daniel, if that makes sense.

You know how some people don't suit an abbreviation

and he really didn't suit an abbreviation.

He was a shy boy.

We're Mandy and Adam Whitworth

- And we're Daniel Whitworth's parents.

I did have an inkling from when he was, I would say,

12 about 12ish possibly.

I thought, well, he is probably on the other bus

as they say, you know?

That didn't worry me at all.

No, that was just an observation.

I could think here that's probably the case.

And it was no problem, he was really good.

- He was a go getter.

Nothing lazy about him at all.

[sad music]

[intense music]

- I wasn't too worried for a day or two,

but then I think it got to three days

and it is worrying then

and there's no answer from his phone

or anything, you know?

So. - Yeah, I left so many

messages on that phone. - Yeah, yeah.

It does get worrying then, yeah.

[intense music]

- Although Daniel had been reported missing,

he was classified as a medium risk.

Now medium risk is where there's

no actual searching going on.

But to be classified as a medium risk,

it means you're non-suicidal.

[intense music]

- This particular day on a Saturday

as I've come through the entrance,

couldn't help but look in that direction.

I was gonna walk there anyway,

but once something like that happens,

having found one dead body,

you can't help but think, you know,

at least there's nobody there now every time.

And I've walked through and I thought,

"No, I don't believe it."

[eerie music]

Another young boy sitting in almost virtually the same place

in the same position.

I thought he just gotta be sleeping it off, love.

I'm walking Max along and I'm thinking,

"Well he's not moving,

there's nothing happening.

What do I do?

I can't walk away and leave him, something,

you know, must have happened because he's so, so pale,"

I'm thinking, "I think he's dead."

[intense music]

But that's when I saw it looked like he had something white

that could very well have been paper

stuck down his shirt.

And I told the police, when I phoned them up, I said,

"He looks like he's got a note stuck down his shirt."

[siren wails]

- Police were called to the scene

and they found another young man sitting upright

and no visible signs of injury, no signs of a struggle,

no signs of robbery or any sort of assault,

but exactly the same area Gabriel had been found.

[eerie music]

- I got home and yes, it did upset me.

I just felt so bad for the family,

for the parents,

this young boy.

And my mind was all over the show

because I just thought just seems strange

that another young boy's lost his life.

Why did he die when nothing obviously is staring at you?

[sad music]

- [Amanda] He was found on day three,

wasn't he? - Yeah.

- Policeman at the door.

You were in the kitchen. - Yeah, I was getting

ready for work and I just carried on getting ready,

and you said, oh no, you've gotta come in here."

And it's, and you know?

I suppose I knew what it was about really,

but didn't wanna know type of thing, really.

[sad music]

- I answered the door to them

and they immediately took their hats off

and my heart sank.

- [Adam] They said he's been found in Barking

with a suicide note.

- [Amanda] You did say, have you got the right one.

- Yeah, oh, I did, yeah.

You know, you cling on to any hope.

I said, yeah, "You could have the wrong person.

It might not be Daniel." You know?

- And it was "No, no, we found his driving licence

and what have you in his back pocket.

We're confident that it's him.

So no, you don't have to come and identify him."

[sad music]

And they said it looked like an overdose...

- When Daniel's body was found,

he was found sitting on a bedsheet.

[intense music]

He also had drugs in his pocket.

He also had the note that was supposedly written by him.

All of that presented such a huge amount of opportunities

for the investigation to progress

and a huge amount of forensic and DNA evidence

[notification dings]

- They phoned and said, they're gonna send you a email here

with a line from the note

to see if you can identify this handwriting.

This was Adeyemo-Phillips was the police officer

who was dealing with that.

[intense music]

- All they did was sent us the last line.

"I've thrown my phone in the grass somewhere.

Sorry, everyone."

Thought it was a bit odd.

[intense music]

And we wanted to see the whole note.

You know, when somebody tells you

that your boy has committed suicide,

all you can think is why, why, why?

And that note would've given us that reason.

- It is just a couple of words really.

It didn't look like his handwriting,

but he didn't really have handwriting.

People don't write, everything's on the screen.

You know, especially from that little bit,

you can't identify the handwriting.

So when she phoned back, said,

"Well, can you identify that as his handwriting, verify it?"

And I said, "No, no I can't."

But sadly, Adeyemo-Phillips on that day,

somehow has written down,

"Yes, the family has verified

this as Daniel's handwriting"

and all of the police officers from that point,

they're going with that information,

- Tragically there were young gay men being found

allegedly with drug overdoses in the same geographical area

within months of each other.

That should have set alarm bells ringing.

- On the Barking Dagenham Post, questions were being asked

whether the deaths were being treated

as linked or at least suspicious.

It was then that the police came back to 'em and said,

"Well, it's unusual, but it's not suspicious.",

which the editor couldn't believe.

But the police are telling you that,

that's all you can really run with.

And to be honest, putting in a newspaper and online,

the headline, unusual but not suspicious about three bodies

raises questions on its own

without the journalists saying anything.

[wind howls]

[intense music]

- After Anthony had died, I was constantly checking

Barking and Dagenham Post.

I read the article.

I then Googled Port's address and noticed how close it was.

I actually rang a liaison officer who was very abrupt

and said they had nothing to do with each other.

I said to him, "Don't you think it's a bit coincidental?"

I said, "They're literally next to each other."

So he said, "No".

He said that one of them was a foreigner

and the other one didn't even live in the area.

And that was it.

They had nothing to do with each other.

[intense music]

- Me and Mandy were allowed to go

and see the note.

You want to see the suicide note.

As soon as I saw it, I said, there's nothing in here

that identifies it as Daniel.

There isn't any names of anybody,

nobody's mentioned, nothing,

nothing personal in it at all.

- The note detailed that Daniel had had

a sexual relationship with Gabriel Kovari,

that Gabriel had died,

had overdosed while they were having sex.

And that Daniel felt so guilty about it,

that he was now taking an overdose of drugs.

[eerie music]

- The note said, "Don't blame the guy

I was with last night."

So the note put this person in there.

So that was what we were pushing for.

Find out who this person is.

Find out, find out, find out.

So my suspicion was that's where he got the drugs from

if indeed he'd done that

because Daniel and drugs just don't go together.

- There was all these suspicions immediately

about that note, which I put to Slaymaker.

And he just turned around and said,

"Well, you are in a terrible state of grief",

which was true.

"So you don't really know what you're thinking and that.

Daniel was in a terrible state and he wrote it,

so he, you know, it might not be as you'd expect",

and all this, he explained it away.

- The note itself did shape the investigation.

It gave an easy option,

it gave an easy hypothesis and solution.

One that closed down two cases

very, very quickly and effectively

without any more resource, without any more investigation.

And I think it became the easy option to adopt.

- You can't accept that he's killed somebody

and then killed himself three weeks later.

It just sits there like a cloud.

[eerie music]

- The police have essentially concluded

that Gabriel and Daniel was an isolated incident.

They're both connected,

they're not looking for any further leads.

Now simultaneously to this, at this time,

Port is now being charged related to the death of Anthony

because of a local MP

that Anthony's mother has been pursuing.

And there is this additional pressure placed on the police

and they have to follow through.

[intense music]

- Oh my word, I've never seen this document before.

So it's the first time I've seen it

and it is the report to the CPS

about whether or not to charge.

And the very first page

where it's supposed to be the basic evidence

or the facts of the case,

the first line is, "The deceased, a male prostitute."

So I assume this is about Anthony

and they're describing him as a male prostitute

who died in the suspect's bed from an overdose of GHB.

Anthony was not a male prostitute.

I think that the fact that there was some evidence

to say that he was working as an escort that evening

then almost devalued him and devalued the investigation.

And that is so sad because this was a young man in his prime

who was trying and working hard.

He had his whole life ahead of him.

So reading through this,

they're looking at what they can possibly charge with

and they're considering murder or manslaughter.

But what they've put in this form

is that there is no evidence of murder or manslaughter.

And that the only thing that they could possibly consider

is wasting police time.

But they're out of time because it's been too long.

So that the only offence, criminal offence,

that they can consider at this time, according to this form,

is perverting the course of justice.

Which is what they did actually end up charging him with.

I'm quite shocked at this.

[intense music]

- I thought that was a result

because we'd made representations.

They'd then done as we'd asked them to do

and investigate the matter,

they then came back with a result that he'd been charged.

Sarah didn't feel like she'd had a result.

And she was incredibly particularly unhappy

about the fact that he'd been given bail.

And she immediately said, "They've let a murderer go free.

He's killed my son and he's going to kill again."

[intense music]

- There's just so many questions about it.

It doesn't make any sense.

Oh, and we've got this guy who has lied to us.

No we'll just do him for perverting the course of justice.

[eerie music]

- After Port's had been charged, I received a phone call.

He identified himself as a senior officer

and he was very forceful, quite firm.

He made it clear to me that Sarah Sak

was causing the Met a lot of work

and that my office, my interventions

formally on their behalf was causing a lot of work for them.

And frankly, they didn't need it.

He wanted to tell me that there was more of the case

than met the eye.

I said, "How do you mean?"

And he then suggested,

and I remember the turn of phrase, he said,

"You know what type he was."

At that point, I was incredibly furious.

I began to agree with Sarah Sak

that homophobia was involved.

[intense music]

- He got eight months, four months in prison

and four months on licence.

When the police at the time was telling it,

you know, it's a very serious offence,

he could get years in prison, et cetera,

and he didn't.

- All of a sudden, Stephen stopped responding

to my text messages and I'd asked one of his friends

and I gathered from there that something had happened

and Stephen was in prison.

Given that I'd seen the drugs in his flat,

my immediate assumption was that it was drug related.

[intense music]

When eventually Stephen got out and contacted me,

I was keen to know what actually happened.

And so I texted him, I said, "So how is everything?"

And he replied, "Really good". - "Really good.

So nice being home.

Will definitely appreciate freedom more now."

- But I wanted to dig further.

I'm a bit of a nosy neighbour I have to say.

So I replied, "What actually happened?"

And he replied...

- [Reader] "Minor offence, just was really silly.

60 second mistake cost me 10 weeks of my life inside."

- [Ryan] "Blimey."

- [Reader] "Anyway, at least didn't lose

my job or boyfriend."

- Port is probably realising

that he's getting away with this.

He's actively seeing now

that the police investigations are inadequate.

So still Port is not under question

for actually murdering Anthony,

nor is he even being considered in connection to the deaths

of Daniel and Gabriel.

The police have decided this narrative

of Daniel and Gabriel being linked together,

Daniel having committed suicide,

but this still needs to be referred to

for coroner's court an inquest.

And so this is done essentially to determine

officially what that cause of death is.

- Our family liaison said to us,

and I remember the words as clear as day,

"You're not gonna learn anything new here today.

This is just basically

going over what we already know

and they've gotta define whether it was suicide or not."

And I'm sad to say that I learned a lot in there.

[sad music]

- What stood out to me at the time

was a police officer getting up on the stand

and explaining that no DNA testing had taken place.

Daniel Whitworth, for example, was found with a suicide note

inside a plastic wallet,

which looks suspicious in the first place.

Who's going to the trouble

to place that inside a plastic wallet?

But the note wasn't tested.

- I thought the plastic it was in

was what the police put it in.

It was found in that plastic sleeve.

So all this argument of,

oh, you can tell he was going dizzy,

you know, it said, "I'm going dizzy now",

he's writing slips off the page.

Well, his writing couldn't have slipped off the page.

Where did he suddenly find the dexterity

to put it into a plastic sleeve?

- He had to admit that they hadn't done any forensic tests

because the coroner was asking these questions

to say, well, didn't you do this?

Didn't you do that?

- Yeah, she was very curious. - How was your forensics?

And he said, "Well, we didn't do that.

We didn't do this."

There was quite a little list of things

that he weren't interested in doing

and the coroner wasn't happy with it.

- Yeah, she was like, you know, "Well why didn't you?

Why haven't you done a forensic on this?

Why haven't you done it?"

And he was adamant,

it's because we'd said that the handwriting was Daniel's.

That was what he was going with.

He said, "Yeah, they did verify.

The family has verified."

[intense music]

- It just seemed weird

that two bodies could turn up dead

within weeks of each other in the same graveyard

and no tests were taking place and that could be admitted

that there were no visible repercussions.

Do you know what I mean?

It's just, it's quite odd to witness that.

- Then the coroner said, "I can't determine

whether this was suicide or not,

so I'm gonna leave it open."

- I went in expecting a straightforward inquest

and I was just astounded because I came out confused.

- I just wanted them to reinvestigate,

go into that case further

because I thought an open verdict meant we could,

and apparently no.

The case is closed, it's just an open verdict

because the coroner can't decide for sure

that Daniel took his own life.

And that's what that meant.

- I knew when I wrote it, even as you know,

a young journalist, I was like, this doesn't hang together.

It doesn't make sense.

I had one editor coming up to me saying,

"This doesn't make sense."

And I was like, "This is literally

what happened at the inquest."

[sad music]

It was the best we could do essentially

with the information we were given.

I feel pretty embarrassed about that

and pretty devastated to be honest

that we essentially repeated a serial killer's lies

without realising it.

[sad music]

[sombre music]

- I knew his photo and I knew it was him

and I couldn't remember his name

'cause it was years later

and he told me his name was Lance,

and I knew that weren't true, but this is Grindr.

I wanted one thing, I wanted to have sex.

It didn't really matter what his name was.

He asked me directly if I liked Chemsex

and I categorically said, "No."

And he was like, "That's fine, we won't do that."

So I agreed to meet him.

We were having sex, he couldn't get an erection

and it kind of was like a flashback to the first time.

I was like, I've put myself in this same situation

I put myself in all those years ago where I've come round

and I'm not enjoying myself.

He then went to go to the toilet and he came back

and he injected the liquid into my anus.

[intense music]

I shot up in pain and it was painful

and I asked him what he'd done

and he told me he'd put lube in so that it was easier

for him to penetrate.

I'd never done that before.

So I was a bit like, "No, I don't want that."

And he was like, "Okay, okay, but it's in now.

So let's just have sex."

And we did, we continued to have sex.

He obviously got bored within five minutes

and he went to the toilet again.

And then he came back and he did it again.

And I jumped up and I was like, "What the fuck?

What have you just done?

I've just told you no."

And he was like, "Sorry, sorry.

It's just that I'm finding it hard to get in."

And I was like, "I don't give a fuck."

But for some reason, I agreed to carry on.

I think at the time, I was thinking,

let's get this over and done with so I can go home.

[intense music]

I started to get dizzy and I felt drunk

and that was the moment that I was like,

hang on, this ain't right.

He's done something.

He's trying to drug me.

- [Reader] "If I intended to take drugs with a guy,

I always discussed it first.

No guy came to mine without knowing what was planned."

- He then gets up again and goes to the bathroom again.

And at this point I was like, absolutely not.

This is the moment now I'm going to do

what my parents taught me

and take myself out of a dangerous situation.

So I got dressed and he came back

and he was like, "Oh, where you going?"

And this time I could even see the syringe in his hand

and I'm like, "I'm going home."

But he gave me a glass of water before I left,

which I sipped because I felt drunk.

Looking back, maybe not the right decision,

but I did sip it and I asked him,

"Have you given me drugs?"

And he said, "No."

I lied and said, "I am allergic to a lot of drugs.

So you need to tell me if you have

because it could affect well my life."

And he still said, "No."

- [Reader] "I never pressured them to try it,

nor did I drug any guy's drink.

They left happy and healthy.

- But he seemed a bit panicked

and he walked me back to Barking Station

to make sure I got on a bus.

And I think he was scared that I was going to pass out.

[siren wails]

- A body turned up in a dark corner of the green

that is next to St. Margaret's Church in Barking.

The curious thing is that it is yards away.

It's on the other side of the wall too,

the spot on which Daniel Whitworth was found dead

and before him, Gabriel Kovari.

- Identification found on the body

showed that this was Jack Taylor.

He's only 25 years old and he was from Dagenham.

[calm intense music]

- Jack was like many young men,

coming to terms with better understanding his sexuality.

And he was, I suppose you could say curious

about a side of his personality that may be attracted to men

and perhaps considering figuring that out for himself.

- My name's Neil Hudgell.

I am the family solicitor for the victims of Stephen Port.

Jack's found propped up against the cemetery wall,

police attend and in similar way,

nothing untoward about this,

even though by this time there's at least

a small number of police officers who've had contact

in relation to each of the investigations.

So it's alarming that there's still perceived view

of nothing to see here.

- Very, very quickly again,

a decision is made that this is a non-suspicious death

and in the actual report here, they says,

and this is from the detective sergeant,

"My suspicions are an overdose

or a severe reaction to some form of medication

mixed with controlled drugs."

And it actually says here,

"I make this assessment based on the syringe,

white powder and clear liquid."

So just the fact that those are in somebody's pockets

shouldn't really determine the cause of death

or how somebody died

and whether or not it's suspicious or non-suspicious,

no further investigation appears to have been done.

- Jack worked at a warehouse

storing expensive champagne bottles.

The staff at the warehouse were regularly given drugs tests.

So he wouldn't have risked his livelihood.

And he was also had an eye on hoping

to join the police force.

So if he'd have got a conviction for drugs,

that would've been the end of it.

So his family knew full well

he would've never have taken drugs willingly.

- Jen and Donna Taylor, his sisters,

were completely baffled as well as being devastated.

And they say, "None of this makes sense.

We think this might be suspicious."

The police don't think it's suspicious.

[sad music]

- The Metropolitan Police came into contact with two forces

of nature in Donna and Jenny Taylor,

who were not accepting anything.

Just were not accepting it.

So the sister spent hours and hours and hours

pouring over the detail,

found out about the other deaths,

established similarities between them,

the use of Chemsex, where they were found,

their personal history

and badgered the police, badgered them and badged them,

and one of the lines of inquiry was,

"Have you got any CCTV?"

- The CCTV, which had been taken from just outside

Barking Railway Station was a last known sighting of Jack

before he was found dead.

And you see him, such a slight figure

walking next to this very, very tall man,

- The police, they don't seem concerned with who the man is.

Jen and Donna obviously are asking,

"Do you not think that man needs identifying?

He might at the very least be able to help with this."

- Jack Taylor's death was considered by police

to be non-suspicious

because it had been closed down as a non-suspicious death,

as an overdose.

There was no need to investigate any further,

there was no need to share those images

and there was no need to put in any extra resources.

- Eventually the sisters,

and I don't know how they're doing this

while they're in the throes of grief,

but they somehow wear the police down

and convince them to go to the effort

of releasing the CCTV footage.

And just as an aside, it's not an effort.

They do it all the time.

- I saw the CCTV pictures on a Facebook post being like,

"Do you know this guy last seen with Jack Taylor?".

It was definitely him.

I mean, even the side photo, the blonde, I just knew.

And I did ring anonymously and said,

"This is the phone number I've got,

this is the name I've got, but I know it's fake".

- Within hours, he's identified by another police officer.

So he recognised him, he says, "That's Stephen Port".

[intense music]

- Port's brought in and then the dots start to be joined up

because of course Port is the one

that relatively recently come out of prison

for a term that he's done following the finding of Anthony.

And hey presto, you know,

we've got something on our hands here

that we didn't think we had

and we better get the experts

and the murder investigation team to do a proper job.

- [Detective] This is Jack Taylor.

Do you recognise that male?

- No.

I Don't recognise his face.

- [Detective] So you don't recognise his face?

- [Stephen] I do not, no, no.

- [Detective] Stephen, did you have any involvement

in his death?

- I did not, no, no.

- [Detective] Did you kill Jack Taylor?

- I did not, no.

- From there, everything started

to sort of start being joined up,

the link with Anthony, first of all,

and then finally the link with Gabriel and Daniel as well.

- [Detective] And Stephen, did you write this letter?

Here, CRT11?

- [Stephen] No, I did not.

- [Detective] The photos of it as found with Daniel.

[eerie music]

- No.

Definitely not.

- [Detective] Are you telling us the truth, Stephen?

- I'm telling you the truth, yes.

- About the letter? - Yes.

[sad music]

- We had a whole year

of trying to come to terms with suicide.

Adam was at work, I got a phone call from Slaymaker

and his first words were, "Don't build your hopes up,

but we think we found this third person,

this person that Daniel was with.

And we think Daniel was murdered

just matter of factly."

And I was like, "Oh, crikey."

- A man has appeared in court accused of drugging

and killing four men in a string of attacks in East London

over the last 14 months.

Stephen Port has been charged

with murdering the four young men

who he met through gay dating websites.

[sad music]

- Felt like I'd been shot,

straight pain to me chest and I just burst into tears.

It was awful, it was awful being after all that time,

proved right and the fact of if they'd listened to me

in the first place,

them other three lads wouldn't have died.

- I think she's the most determined person I've ever met.

It makes me emotional to think.

[sad music]

She did everything.

Couldn't have done anymore.

Three men are dead who didn't need to be dead.

It's probably as bad as it could ever get.

- [Detective] 'Cause three of the four people

that have been found dead were found

slumped up against the wall here of the abbey.

[eerie music]

Pardon?

- Yeah, I didn't know that.

- [Detective] You didn't know that?

So that's news to you, is it?

- Yeah.

[eerie music]

Did you put them there?

- No, gosh no.

- [Detective] So obviously Anthony was found slumped

outside your address with

a large amount of GHB in his system.

The other three men we've been discussing

were all found over by the wall area of the abbey.

You can see on the map.

Again, all of them were slumped against the wall

with a large amount of GHB in their body.

Can you account for that at all?

- No, I can't.

[eerie music]

- I was looking at the dates

and I realised it was one day between me meeting him

and Jack meeting him.

And I felt a lot of guilt

and I still feel a lot of guilt

because I believe in my own head

that had I had the common sense then to actually report,

maybe Jack wouldn't have died.

I could have done more and I didn't

because gay people don't trust the police

to take them seriously

and that's what it comes down to.

But also, how do you tell a police officer

that a guy that you met on a hookup app

that you went to have consensual sex with

sexually assaulted you?

Even on paper, that sounds ridiculous.

I think I would've been laughed out of the room.

- Port's laptop was forensically examined

and that forensic examination revealed

for the first time the extent of Stephen Port's

obsession with young gay men,

his obsession with drug-rape videos online,

it looked like he was literally on his computer

all the time, all day, all night when he wasn't working

and this was his life.

- [Detective] So did you have any involvement

in the death of the male that we just spoke about

a short while ago, it was Gabriel Kovari

or Gabriel Klein?

- No, I did not, no.

- I immediately knew he was the killer,

he was guilty and my mind went into overload

because I had these messages on my phone

that were incriminating

because they were basically Stephen

doing a web of lies about Gabriel

- [Detective] Stephen, this is serious.

- Yeah, I know. - Okay.

It's really important that you tell us the absolute truth.

[eerie music]

- Everything I've told you so far is true.

[intense music]

- Once the case had been opened by the prosecutor,

the penny started to drop

that this wasn't an ordinary kind of murder trial,

this was something else,

the evidence was gonna be quite harrowing.

It is actually the worst I've ever seen in court.

- Never heard his voice and I don't want to hear his voice.

I wasn't in court when he was giving evidence.

I just can't bear to hear his voice.

- He was very, like it was nothing.

Laughy, jokey.

He was even laughing and joking with the police

he was strapped to.

I didn't see any regret in his face.

- The prosecution painted a picture

of a man who was obsessed

with drug-rape sex

and he wasn't interested in who they were,

it was all about the sex.

And if they happened to die, so be it.

He would deal with that.

- [Reader] I've been taking GHB hundreds of times

with the last three of my boyfriends

and many other random guys,

and no one ever died before."

[intense music]

- My role really was to explain to the jury

more about the nature of GHB,

how it could be used, how it could be taken,

what the effects are,

and then how it could contribute to death.

Each person has their own dose level

that they would be comfortable with.

So essentially a dose that causes euphoria in one person

could actually be sedating in another person

and potentially even fatal.

[eerie music]

- When we talk about people being drugged,

it doesn't sound like a violent crime,

but one of the key pieces of evidence

which really showed in incredibly graphic detail

what Stephen Port was doing

after he had drugged these young men

was a piece of video that he'd taken himself,

showing him having sex

with a man who was completely comatose.

[sad music]

When you see what he was doing, you realise,

no, this was an extremely violent crime.

[sad music]

Looking at the reaction of the jurors,

I could see a lot of them looked very, very upset.

And I think at least one or two of them were crying

as they were watching it.

But it was important for them to understand

this is what he was into,

not just on that occasion, but over and over and over again.

- A number of surviving victims went to court

and very bravely testified against Stephen Port.

- Going to court was probably

the most traumatic of everything.

You had to relive every moment of it

and it never went away the entire time.

I think I cried a lot.

- The survivors described

Port administered the GHB drugs in two ways,

first way was giving the victim a drink,

and the second way was pretending

that he was administering lubricant.

These people, they weren't willing participants.

They didn't go along with being drugged.

They were deliberately drugged

without even knowing what was happening.

[intense music]

- My biggest what if was what if I stayed?

What if he injected me one last time?

You know, I felt dizzy at that point, I felt drunk,

I can't even comprehend what the last shot

would've actually done.

I probably would've gone unconscious.

- You could have one dose that could cause euphoria.

The second dose could actually make you fall asleep.

Third dose could even be fatal.

- I can't say that I would've survived a final shot or not.

I don't know.

[sad music]

- I can only imagine what they put themselves through

to be there.

We've never had the opportunity really to thank them,

however many there were, whoever they were,

we can't thank you enough.

[sad music]

- Having the living victims saying, this is his MO,

this is how he acted with me,

this is what he was into,

it enables the jurors to then go,

well, what do we think he was doing

in the hours leading up to the deaths

of Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel, and Jack?

- [Reader] "I value all life.

I am not a killer.

It's just a tragic accident."

- A serial killer who used gay dating websites

to find his victims has been found guilty

of murdering four men.

Chef Stephen Port gave lethal doses of a date rape drug

to his victims, to endulge his fetish for sex

with unconscious men.

- We have just come out of court

and finally we have got justice for our Jack

and now we can let our jack rest rest in peace.

[sad music]

- There were seven survivors of Port as well

who all testified against him

and Port was convicted of crimes

against all of these seven individuals.

And it's really important

that we remember their stories too.

- I'm relieved that our case was taken into consideration

because while the murders were terrible,

there were still other victims that came forward

and that's just the ones that came forward.

I can't even imagine how many more didn't.

- Thank you.

- A mixture of emotions here today,

joy and celebration that justice has finally been done,

but also deep pain and anguish

that it took the Metropolitan police so long

to catch this serial killer.

[sad music]

- Strangely,

it is still not enough.

You're glad it's come back guilty,

but it wasn't enough.

- Stephen Port was convicted of terrible crimes

and today he was handed a jail sentence

befitting the nature of what he did.

The judge told him he would spend

the rest of his life in jail.

[intense music]

- The family learned things at trial

that they didn't know about.

Some of the pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place

around the police ineptitude

and around police attitude.

And so they couldn't start that grieving process

because there were still so many unanswered questions.

- The Barking and Dagenham police refer themselves

to the IPCC

and they do this for an investigation

to be conducted into their conduct.

But ultimately that investigation finds that apparently

amongst all of the police officers involved,

there was no misconduct or gross misconduct to answer to.

A lot more information came out in the trial,

which ultimately led to a huge inquest.

[sad music]

- We know how these four young men died,

we know who killed them.

What these inquests will also examine

is whether there were missed opportunities

during the police investigation

to stop Stephen Port

and whether some of those deaths could have been prevented.

- The inquest was the first opportunity

to listen to what the police officers had to say.

They were compelled to give evidence.

So there were lots of stuff

that the families found very difficult to digest.

- We heard the victims being described

as homeless, drug users,

sex workers,

you know, the kinds of descriptions

that the police had used at the time

to form their opinions of the victims,

I think was quite telling.

- Each of the families in their own way

had to present evidence to the inquest.

And in some respect, it was quite cathartic for them

because they were able to describe their loved ones

in a way that properly depicted them.

So nothing like the stereotypes that had been presented

as part of the original narrative.

- There were a lot of mistakes that emerged

during the course of the inquest.

You know, one of the worst initial mistakes

was that the police did not even find

their own intelligence on Stephen Port.

- When Anthony Walgate was murdered,

Stephen Port was already a sexual assault suspect.

- They should have done a basic police check

to find out what was known about him.

And I'm aware that there was an allegation made

in 2012 and also in 2014

that involved Stephen Port drugging and raping young men.

Now that isn't shown on this paperwork anywhere.

- It was layer upon layer upon layer of incompetence

based on an initial narrative

that all the focus from day one was on validating.

- The other major, major mistake that was made

right from the word go,

they seized Stephen Port's laptop computer,

but it wasn't examined.

And that laptop computer contained everything they needed

to know about Stephen Port.

- So there's a catalogue of reasons here

as to why at the time that Gabrielle was found dead,

that Port shouldn't have been on the street.

- Today, an inquest jury has determined

that Anthony Walgate's, Gabriel Kovari,

Daniel Whitworth, and Jack Taylor were unlawfully killed.

They have also found that the deaths

of three of those young men,

Gabrielle, Daniel, and Jack,

could probably have been prevented

had the initial police responses

and investigations been better.

It is a devastating finding.

- The inadequate investigation by the Metropolitan Police

into the deaths of Anthony, Gabriel,

Daniel and Jack should be on public record

as one of the most widespread institutional failings

in modern history.

[sad music]

- I've said all along and I will still,

I will always say it, it was homophobia.

If that had had been a young girl who was 23

dumped outside near the bins,

there would've been a lot more investigated.

[sad music]

- Looking at Stephen now,

he is perhaps more intelligent than I gave him credit for.

They say the quiet one's are the worst, don't they?

And what was going on, you know,

in those kind of monosyllabic answers he would give me

while I was chatting about everything and anything to him,

if it was deception on that scale it was very adept

because to keep that pretence up for 10 years,

that's remarkable.

- I hate that photo.

That photo haunts me

because that is not the person I met.

He was very good at deceiving people

'cause that's not the person I saw

and that's not the person I had sex with.

It was all kind of a facade.

- I have a huge amount of respect

for the survivors of Stephen Port.

I would also encourage other people to come forward

so that this can be prevented from happening again.

Because we cannot have suspects, perpetrators, predators,

hiding in plain sight because people who are gay

or who are different are not encouraged to come forward.

- Persistence is what got this case solved.

The families all in their own way contributed to that.

They all shouted out that this is foul play.

- If it weren't for the families,

but especially for Jen and Donna,

I suspect that we might still not know

what happened in Barking.

You know, it doesn't bear thinking about

how many more men would've been raped

and drugged and murdered in East London

- At the moment, there is a new IOPC investigation.

The family's hopes are for some answers

and some accountability.

Their concern is to make sure that other families

don't suffer some of the outrage and injustices

that they did.

- We believe that a thorough,

yet proportionate new investigation is appropriate.

- The facts are there.

It is plain to see.

There's a great catalogue of the list of things they've done

badly that they should answer for.

They've gotta be answerable for what they've done, you know?

- Yeah because Daniel would still be here.

- Yeah.

- It's okay to have hookups.

Just make sure you are safe when you are doing it.

It's always okay to say no

and it's always okay to change your mind,

but you don't have to have sex with someone

just because you said you would two hours ago.

You're allowed to leave and you are allowed to panic.

You are absolutely allowed to panic.

- You've really got to be 100% selfish

and if it means you make a twat of yourself

or you look stupid,

well better that than your parents having to bury you.

That's the way to look at this now.

[sad music]

- Oh, you know, I've got fantastic memories of him.

Yeah, and that's all I remember.

I don't remember Daniel as some victim.

We had a whole lifetime together, me and him.

You know, it was a lifetime and a great one.

I have got fantastic memories of him, yeah.

[sad music]

- Anthony always used to say,

"You're wait Sezza,

One day I'll be famous,

everybody will be talking about me."

Which they are, but obviously for the wrong reasons.

But he always said he'd be famous.

- Over the many years that I've been covering this case,

one of the things that, you know,

I really think came across,

it wasn't really how they died

that brought them together as a group.

The thing that they actually had in common

was that they were young men

really on the verge of making it in life.

They had aspirations, they had dreams, they had talents

and in their own different ways,

they were really, you know, extraordinary human beings.

[sad music]

[wind howls]

[sad music]

[sad music continues]