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Britain's Most Evil Killers S02E03 Stephen Port
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00:00On September the 14th, 2015, 25-year-old Jack Taylor
00:07was found dead in the graveyard of St. Margaret's Church
00:12in East London.
00:14Jack's devastated family immediately suspected
00:18he had been murdered.
00:20Both said to each other that if that's where Jack's been found,
00:23someone's put him there, because Jack would never go
00:26and sit anywhere like that.
00:28He's not like that.
00:29And their suspicions were right.
00:31An active serial killer was on the loose in London.
00:35Young men in their 20s had been murdered in East London,
00:40and their bodies had been found in unexplained circumstances
00:44all within a few hundred yards of each other.
00:47The killer was a 40-year-old loner named Stephen Porte.
00:51He lured four young men to their deaths using online dating sites
00:55and went to great lengths to cover up his crimes.
00:58I suspect he would have gone on killing without any hesitation
01:04for as long as he could have got away with it.
01:06Stephen Porte had been unmasked as one of Britain's most evil killers.
01:12It was a crime that shocked the nation and left Britain's LGBT community devastated.
01:27In 2014, 40-year-old Stephen Porte killed three young men in Barking, East London.
01:46All the bodies had been found within yards of one another,
01:50and it was initially thought that no foul play was involved.
01:54But the discovery of a fourth victim in September 2015, 25-year-old Jack Taylor,
02:00led the police to the killer who had poisoned his trusting victims.
02:05On the 13th of September 2015, Jack had arranged to meet a man he'd been chatting to
02:13on the gay-dating mobile phone app Grindr.
02:17He was never seen alive again.
02:19It was a day that his family would never forget.
02:23We knew that Jack hadn't come home, so we was all worried.
02:28And we was all trying to get hold of him, wasn't we,
02:30and chasing up his friends and stuff.
02:32We'd always hear from Jack.
02:33He'd always let my mom and dad know if he wasn't coming home or...
02:36And he hadn't.
02:38Two days after reporting Jack missing,
02:41the family received the news they'd been dreading.
02:44Mum had called me to say that Jack still wasn't home.
02:49And then, all of a sudden, a police car pulled up outside.
02:53And then, the next thing, she said that the officers were coming towards our door.
02:58And all I've heard is, are you Jack's mum and dad?
03:02And, obviously, they said, yeah.
03:05And, obviously, Jack's dead.
03:08And you just heard mum scream.
03:12Well, obviously, you know what that scream is.
03:15Jack's body had been discovered propped up against the outside wall
03:19of the graveyard of St Margaret's Church in Barking, East London.
03:24Police found drug paraphernalia,
03:26including a small bottle containing the party drug GHB.
03:31He had died from an overdose.
03:33However, Jack's family were certain that his death wasn't self-inflicted.
03:38Jack was very anti-drugs.
03:41So, that didn't make sense.
03:43You just get this gut feeling that something's not right.
03:46The family were determined to find out the truth.
03:49And, a fortnight after Jack's death,
03:51the police showed them some revealing footage.
03:54We found out two weeks later that they'd seen CCTV footage of Jack
03:58meeting a man at Barking Station,
04:01which we thought was very bizarre, very strange.
04:04Um, at that time in the morning as well.
04:07We just thought, well, who's this man?
04:09The man in question was a local chef named Stephen Porte.
04:14The story of this elusive killer begins over 40 years ago.
04:19Porte was born in Southend-on-Sea in February 1975,
04:23left Southend at the age of about one,
04:26and his parents moved to Dagenham in Essex.
04:29He seems to have come from quite an average working-class background,
04:33which was, to all intents and purposes,
04:35relatively normal from the outside.
04:37He seems to be a boy who was quite quiet.
04:40He was quite awkward.
04:41Um, he wasn't somebody who was a great conversationalist.
04:45And it's been said that when he was at school,
04:47some people thought that he was deaf because he was that detached
04:50and-and that disengaged from other people.
04:52So he's always been very insular and very introverted.
04:57After taking his GCSEs, Porte enrolled into Art College,
05:01but had to drop out because his family couldn't afford the fees.
05:05He had to basically choose something else,
05:07so he went on and-and trained to be a chef.
05:10So I think he's always got that sense of frustration
05:13and that sense of entitlement.
05:15Um, I think he-he has this idea that I have this talent,
05:18I have this skill, I should be able to develop that,
05:21and I'm not able to because of other people.
05:23So I think that stays with him for quite a long time.
05:26Aged 30, Porte moved out of his family home
05:30and into a flat on Cook Street in nearby Barking, East London.
05:34One of his new neighbors was Ryan Edwards.
05:38I first met Stephen when I moved to Barking, um, in April 2005.
05:42Um, and, uh, I lived in a, you know, first floor flat,
05:46and, uh, overlooked where I would discover Stephen lived.
05:49Uh, and as a young gay man myself,
05:52I didn't know anyone gay in-in the local area.
05:55So it didn't take me long, really, to introduce myself to him.
05:58He-he was a very tall man, sort of a towering physical presence.
06:02Um, and he actually walked with a-almost like a bit of a lumbar stroke lurch.
06:07He was very much a man of few words.
06:09So when he used to talk to me, he often didn't give eye contact.
06:13He would bow his head,
06:15and he would often give one or two-word answers.
06:17And it wasn't long before Ryan started to notice
06:21some strange behavior from his new neighbor.
06:24I think there was something stunted
06:26about Stephen's mental development.
06:28I remember something a bit peculiar.
06:30I was, um, going to host a party.
06:32I was just putting some rubbish out, and there was a toy truck there,
06:34and I thought, Stephen will love that.
06:37Um, and I was with a friend at the time,
06:38and I said, you can't give a grown man a toy truck.
06:41And I was like, yeah, but I, you know, from what I knew of Stephen,
06:43I think he'd really like it.
06:45Um, so at the party, I gave him the toy truck,
06:48and lo and behold, he was absolutely overjoyed with it.
06:51He then sat cross-legged on the floor
06:53and started pushing the toy truck up and down.
06:56He was obviously in his complete own world
06:58while the party was going on around him.
06:59He retains quite a childlike quality to him, even as an adult.
07:03So he collects children's toys,
07:05and he plays with those toys almost like he's a child.
07:08So that the idea of the judgment of other people
07:11and what others would think of his behavior
07:14really doesn't impact upon him
07:16in the same way that it does the rest of us.
07:18Port's awkward demeanor made it difficult for him
07:21to meet men in person.
07:23He was far more comfortable with online dating.
07:26I think Stephen Port was somebody who did lack
07:28those basic social skills.
07:30So I think he'd find social media incredibly attractive.
07:34He's able to spend time thinking about the types of things
07:37to say on his profile,
07:39and he'd have real trouble meeting people
07:42in a face-to-face situation,
07:43but the Internet removes a lot of that.
07:46This was his form of communication.
07:48He wasn't a man, for example,
07:50to go out to the pub or to the bar at night.
07:53This was a man who lived in his own fantasy,
07:55created with the help of his Internet connection.
08:00Port created several profiles across many different sites.
08:05He claimed to have been in the military.
08:08He claimed to have graduated from Oxford University.
08:11Other times, he'd claimed that he was a special needs teacher,
08:14and that's the thing about social media.
08:17It enables us to present a whole range
08:19of different identities to people.
08:22And I think what he was essentially doing here
08:24was trying on different identities,
08:27because the self that you create on social media,
08:30you can be whatever you want to be.
08:32Stephen's rate of going through and meeting new guys was prolific.
08:36So it was quite, you know, not unusual
08:40that it would be a new guy every day.
08:43Even on the first time he'd met them,
08:45he would then announce to me via text message normally,
08:48that, you know, I've got a new boyfriend,
08:49come around and meet my new boyfriend.
08:51The Stephen Port that he presented to the world
08:54was somebody who looked younger than he was.
08:56He would often use pictures that were taken many years ago.
09:00He doesn't feel that the real Stephen Port
09:02is actually enough to actually get the attention of others
09:06and to have others interested in him.
09:09It was clear that Port was attracted to younger men.
09:13There's a really clear reason for that,
09:15because here we've got somebody who really has a lot of problems
09:18relating to people of his own age.
09:20So I think he's always going to be attracted
09:23towards people who look younger,
09:25because he feels like he's more in control.
09:28He was a kind of praying mantis figure,
09:33quite thin, pale-faced,
09:36uncomfortable in lots of company,
09:40much happier when he was alone with young men.
09:44He had an appetite for vulnerable young men,
09:51certainly younger than 25,
09:55and he was interested in control.
10:01It was about the power,
10:03and for Port it was all about power.
10:07Stephen would quite often deposit the boyfriend in my company,
10:11and so I would end up getting to know these guys.
10:14And they really had a good word to say about Stephen.
10:17They would often say that he was mentally abusing them.
10:22He was very argumentative, very manipulative, very controlling.
10:26But what was strange, really, is that if Stephen was such an awful person,
10:31they were still sticking around.
10:33So, again, was there some sort of control that Stephen was exhibiting
10:37to make these guys, you know, not run for the hills?
10:41As well as the volatile relationships,
10:44Port had become immersed in a world of drug-fueled sex parties,
10:48but his wild behavior was beginning to spill over into his everyday life.
10:53He led me through to the kitchen and the living room,
10:57and I was absolutely taken aback when I looked at the coffee table,
11:01and the whole circumference was filled up with a clear plastic box.
11:05And in that container were lots and lots and lots of vials of clear liquid
11:10and bags of white powder.
11:12I obviously quickly realized that this was a huge amount of drugs,
11:15so then that's when I pretty much took a step back,
11:18and that was one of the last times I actually went round Stephen's flat.
11:21There was nobody there putting the brakes on his behavior.
11:24There was nobody holding him accountable for what he was doing.
11:27So when one relationship ended, another one would begin,
11:31and it would be a little bit more aggressive,
11:33a little bit more violent than the one before.
11:35Stephen Port's violent behavior would only intensify
11:39as his appetite for young men and drug abuse would spiral out of control.
11:44His depraved sexual fantasies would soon become a reality
11:48and lead to the death of an innocent young man.
11:51By June 2014, 39-year-old Stephen Port had become involved in a toxic world
12:09of online dating, sex parties and drug abuse.
12:13He was living alone in a flat in Barking, East London,
12:17and his internet search history was becoming more and more perverse.
12:22He was trying to satisfy his desire by searching the internet,
12:27which a lot of people do.
12:28The difference is that some of them get satisfied
12:31only by looking at pictures and watching films on the internet,
12:34and some of them, that will not be enough.
12:36They will want to move on, which, unfortunately, was his case.
12:40And it wasn't long before he would act upon these depraved urges.
12:45On the 15th of June 2014, Port contacted 23-year-old fashion student
12:51Anthony Walgate through a mail escorting site.
12:54He offered to pay Anthony £800 to spend the night,
12:58and they agreed to meet two days later on the 17th of June.
13:03As a precaution, Anthony texted friends about the arrangement,
13:07but just two days later,
13:09he was found dead outside Port's flat.
13:12The police received an anonymous 999 call from Stephen Port himself.
13:18Emergency ambulance. What's the address of the emergency?
13:21Cook Street. There was a young boy who had his capsule outside.
13:25Outside of which number?
13:2647 58, I think.
13:28What area?
13:29Parking.
13:3147, Cook Street.
13:33Yeah.
13:34It looks like he collapsed or had a seizure or something.
13:40He was always just drunk.
13:43When the paramedics arrived, Anthony was found slumped against a wall
13:50with his bag beside him.
13:52Inside was a bottle of the date-rape drug GHB.
13:56He had died of an overdose.
13:59Walgate had turned up at his flat,
14:01and there is no doubt that he was rapidly subdued with the use of GHB and other drugs.
14:09Now, there is an argument which suggests that perhaps something went just a bit too far
14:15as far as Walgate was concerned, and that the drugs had too great an effect.
14:21It could be that he got the dose wrong.
14:23It could be that this was something new that he was trying out.
14:28We don't know.
14:29But what we do know is that Anthony Walgate died at Port's hands.
14:36Port told the police that he found Anthony outside his flat on his way home from work.
14:43His death wasn't treated as suspicious.
14:47It was devastating news for his mother, Sarah Sack.
14:51When I had this maid, it says on it, Anthony, it's all about me.
14:56Because to me, that was, that summed up Anthony, it was always all about him.
15:02I've always said to friends and family now, you need to get pictures.
15:05You never know what's going to happen.
15:07The last time I had any contact with Anthony was the 15th of June,
15:12because it was my birthday on the 17th of June.
15:14And I said to him, I'm going on holiday, I'll see you when I get back, that sort of thing.
15:18And, of course, I never did get to see him again.
15:21It was the Sunday before I were due to come home, and I turned my phone back on.
15:26There was 50-odd missed calls, there was texts,
15:30there was hundreds and hundreds of messages coming through
15:33that you need to ring home, you know, something's happened.
15:36So I called my son, and he had to tell me off the phone
15:40that Anthony had been found dead.
15:44To be honest, it was just a bit of a blare.
15:46It was so fast, and I don't even really remember much about it.
15:51It was just, I was just in shock that it could happen.
15:54You know, you really don't expect this to happen.
15:56You go on holiday for your birthday, et cetera,
15:59and then find out one of your children are dead.
16:03Sarah approached the police for some more information
16:06about her son's death.
16:08Anthony was found dead in the streets.
16:10I said, well, you know, was he stabbed, shot, beaten?
16:13What? No, nothing. There was not a mark on him.
16:16And we don't know why.
16:18They'd done a post-mortem the Friday before,
16:20and nothing had come up and shown.
16:23So I said to him straight away then,
16:25something's not right.
16:27Anthony's friends told detectives
16:29that he'd arranged to meet up with the man
16:31on the night he disappeared.
16:33The police soon realized it was the same person
16:36who dialed 999, Stephen Port.
16:39On the 26th of June, he was arrested,
16:42his laptop was seized, and his DNA taken.
16:46It starts to unravel, and the police do start to put
16:50the pieces together and figure out that he is connected
16:53to this in some way.
16:54So Port's story changes.
16:57He continues to lie, and I think he's sailing quite close
17:01to the wind with this particular case.
17:04Port told detectives that Anthony had taken drugs
17:07and fallen asleep after they'd had sex.
17:10He said he then left the 23-year-old in the flat,
17:14and when he got back from work later that day,
17:17Anthony was dead.
17:18Port said he panicked and carried the body outside
17:21before calling the police.
17:23The investigators believed him.
17:26And I think he's quite relieved when he gets away with it,
17:29because I think that once he was in the police station,
17:32once he was being questioned,
17:33he probably did think the game was up,
17:35and I don't think he could quite believe his luck
17:37when he walked away from it.
17:39The police had missed an opportunity to capture Port.
17:42He would go on to kill three more young men.
17:46Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell believes all the deaths
17:51could have been avoided if communication between the authorities
17:55and the public were improved.
17:57One of the problems the gay community and the police face
18:00is that many crimes linked to dating apps are not reported.
18:06There is, in general, a very significant under-reporting
18:11of homophobic hate crime,
18:13but there appears to be a particular under-reporting
18:16of crimes linked to Grindr and other social dating apps.
18:20On June the 26th, the police charged Port with perverting
18:24the course of justice and set a trial date for March 2015.
18:29He was immediately released on bail.
18:32Astonishingly, they did no further serious probing of Stephen Port,
18:38including his searches on his laptop
18:43and including his phone records.
18:45Those searches might have, much earlier on,
18:50shone a spotlight on Stephen Port as a potential killer.
18:56In fact, Port was ready to strike again.
19:00Just two months after Anthony Walgate's death,
19:03he was back on the dating mobile phone app, Grindr,
19:07and began messaging 22-year-old Slovakian Gabriel Kavari.
19:11On the 23rd of August, Gabriel moved into Port's flat.
19:16He seemed like a very nice guy, very, um, articulate.
19:19Intelligent, well-spoken, um, who had, um, a passion for art,
19:26and-and he was an aspiring-very much an aspiring artist.
19:30Ryan invited the couple into his flat for a coffee.
19:33So, um, Stephen brings him over,
19:36and then, um, when Stephen goes to the toilet,
19:38um, Gabriel then says to me, um, in sort of hushed tones,
19:43Ryan, Stephen is not the man you think he is.
19:46He is a bad man, and it didn't take me long to realize
19:49that Gabriel was not happy living with Stephen.
19:53I think Stephen Port would have really had a bit of a shock
19:55with Gabriel Kavari.
19:57I think he would have felt incredibly threatened by him,
19:59because here is a young man who is everything that Stephen Port isn't.
20:03He's somebody who's ambitious, he's somebody who's going somewhere in his life,
20:07and I think Port will feel incredibly resentful towards him.
20:10He was strikingly different to the guys that, um,
20:14Stephen would normally hang around with.
20:16And so, for that reason, I was-he piqued my interest, really,
20:20and so I thought, oh, well, actually, I'm going to keep in touch with Gabriel.
20:23Um, and so we then started to swap some messages on social media.
20:27But all of a sudden, the messages stopped.
20:30And so I raised this with Stephen about, you know,
20:33why has Gabriel stopped, you know, communicating?
20:36Where is he?
20:37Um, and then Stephen told me that I'm not sure where Gabriel's gone.
20:41He's just disappeared.
20:42Um, and then it was-it changed after a few days to, uh,
20:47Gabriel's, um, met up and-and gone out with an army guy,
20:51and then changed again to, um, actually, uh,
20:55I'm worried about Gabriel's safety.
20:58And then it was about a week after that that I-I got this really,
21:02um, eerie message from Stephen, a long, long message saying,
21:06I've got some really sad news,
21:08but I've heard from Gabriel's, um, friend that he's gone back home
21:12and he picked up a mysterious illness and has died.
21:16On the 28th of August 2014,
21:19just five days after he moved into Port's flat on Cook Street,
21:23Gabriel Kavari was found dead.
21:26A woman walking her dog in the graveyard of St. Margaret's Church
21:30found his lifeless body propped up against a wall.
21:34It was, uh, an awful, awful realization.
21:37Um, you know, he-he was, you know, he seemed like such a nice,
21:41pure person, um, and, you know, coming to this country,
21:45and, you know, what-what a way to be welcomed.
21:48By this country to-to end in such a, you know, awful circumstances.
21:53It appeared that he, Gabriel Kavari, had died of a drugs overdose.
21:58But the shocking reality was that Stephen Port had drugged and killed him,
22:03just as he did with Anthony Walgate two months previously.
22:07Port had now killed two men.
22:09His urges were only intensifying, and in less than a month another man would be dead.
22:16Between June and August 2014, 40-year-old chef Stephen Port had murdered two young men
22:32by administering them with a lethal overdose of drugs.
22:35The police had arrested and charged him on perverting the course of justice
22:40after he failed to correctly report the death of his first victim, Anthony Walgate.
22:46But they had no idea that Port was actually a killer.
22:51I think the key thing about Stephen Port getting away with murder is there's-there's not that connection
22:56between actions and consequences.
22:58He can take somebody's life and nothing happens,
23:01and-and he continues to-to get what he wants.
23:04He continues to-to be able to assault his victims
23:07and to dispose of-of their bodies in-in the most obvious way.
23:11And I think he does feel incredibly untouchable at this point in time.
23:14While still out on bail, Port killed for a third time.
23:20On the 18th of September, he contacted 21-year-old chef Daniel Whitworth
23:25through an online gay dating site, and the two decided to meet.
23:30Two days later, Daniel was found dead.
23:33His body was discovered in the graveyard at St. Margaret's Church
23:37in the same spot as Port's second victim, Gabriel Kavari.
23:41Extraordinarily by the exact same dog walker.
23:45I've come through and I've seen somebody else, a-a different boy,
23:49sitting in exactly the same position, leaning up against the exact same wall,
23:54and I'm thinking to myself, please, God, no, please, not another one.
23:59On the news of his death, Daniel's stepmother, Mandy Pearson,
24:04was completely heartbroken.
24:06Well, this is my memory box for Daniel.
24:09It's got a lot of things in there, just things that I'm still finding.
24:15Anything that I'd come across, um, that reminds me of him even,
24:21I'll just put it in there.
24:23Adam, um, Daniel's father, really did adore his boy.
24:29You know, he was going places.
24:31And, um, Daniel's dad was very proud of that, extremely proud of that.
24:39But on the 20th of September, 2014, the family's lives changed forever.
24:45I opened the door to the police, who immediately removed their hats.
24:53And that was when time stood still for me, really.
24:59I thought, they're not here with good news.
25:03They just are not here with good news.
25:05I really don't recall what I actually said next.
25:10I cried.
25:13And so then, one of us asked, how?
25:18And they did lower their heads and say,
25:23well, it looks like he took his own life.
25:26Just like his other two victims,
25:30Paul had poisoned Daniel with a toxic amount of GHB.
25:34He then placed his body in the same place as Gabriel Kavari's.
25:39In a bizarre move to try and evade capture,
25:42Paul then wrote and planted a fake suicide note,
25:46which claimed that Daniel had killed Gabriel
25:49just three weeks earlier.
25:51Adam and I actually managed to see the letter in its entirety.
25:57There wasn't a thing in that letter that spoke to us about Daniel.
26:03There were no names.
26:11He was talking in the wrong kind of context.
26:17It was like, I didn't tell my family where I was going.
26:24Well, you wouldn't say that to your family.
26:29And at that point, I said, who is this addressed to?
26:34Because it's not addressed to us, is it?
26:38Something else in the letter aroused Mandy's suspicions.
26:42There was, don't blame the guy I was with last night.
26:45It was only sex.
26:47And, obviously, the first question then was, who?
26:50Who is this man?
26:51The fact that Stephen Paul wrote the fake suicide note,
26:55it does seem completely incredible, doesn't it?
26:58But by this point, he thinks he's invincible
27:00because he's gotten away with murder before.
27:03And he sailed quite close to the wind that time,
27:05so he wants to be careful that he doesn't get caught again.
27:09And I think because he is quite childlike,
27:11because he is quite immature, he doesn't see how absolutely incredulous
27:15this should appear to be.
27:18News of the death of the three young gay men
27:20began to spread through the LGBT community.
27:24A friend of Gabriel Kavari, John Pape,
27:27approached human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.
27:30I was immediately shocked that the police
27:33had issued no public appeal,
27:35and there seemed to be no ongoing investigation.
27:38That prompted me to ask John Pape to contact Gallup,
27:44the police monitoring group,
27:47and Pink News, the main gay website.
27:51I asked him to try and get them to press the police for answers.
27:57Both Gallup and Pink News did go to the police,
28:02but were reassured that there was nothing suspicious
28:05or unusual about the deaths.
28:08Port had managed to evade capture for a third time.
28:12However, his killing spree was about to be temporarily halted.
28:17On the 23rd of March 2015, Port pleaded guilty
28:22to perverting the course of justice
28:24during the investigation into Anthony Walgate's death.
28:28He was sentenced to eight months in prison,
28:31but only served two of them.
28:33On the 4th of June, he was released.
28:36Port was free to kill again.
28:39I never really understood the circumstances at the time
28:42of why he was in prison,
28:44but I did ask him, obviously, when he got out via text message,
28:47what was that all about, you know?
28:48Why were you in prison for, you know, for a couple of months?
28:50And, um, eerily, he said to me on text message,
28:53it was a 90-second mistake, Ryan,
28:55that cost me several months of my life in prison.
28:58And I never really understood what he meant by that.
29:02But looking back, it's kind of a bit chilling.
29:08Just three months after being released from prison,
29:11Port struck again.
29:13On the 14th of September 2015,
29:16almost exactly a year since the last murder,
29:19the body of 25-year-old forklift driver Jack Taylor
29:23was found in the same churchyard
29:25as Gabriel Kavari and Daniel Whitworth.
29:29I think the graveyard became a kind of favorite disposal site
29:32for him because it served two purposes.
29:35It got the bodies out of the way,
29:37but it also created a bit of a narrative, um,
29:40for anybody coming across these individuals.
29:43This graveyard was a place where often homeless people,
29:46people who were down on their luck, would hang out,
29:48and that creates a little bit of a story
29:50in the beginning when the bodies are discovered.
29:53Jack's family were devastated
29:55but began to question the circumstances surrounding his death.
29:59We know Jack, obviously, and Jack's very particular.
30:02He didn't like dark, didn't like it at all, first off.
30:05Um, second of all, Jack wouldn't just walk in a park area,
30:09let alone a cemetery or anything like that, you know?
30:12He wouldn't.
30:13It doesn't make sense to leave the house at, like,
30:15half 2 in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning
30:17to go and sit over a park. That doesn't even make sense.
30:20Yeah.
30:21It was just an absolute joy to be around.
30:24Loving, caring, always there for other people.
30:28Determined to find out more, the Taylor family asked
30:32to see the CCTV footage of Jack's last known movements.
30:36It showed him walking with a tall, blonde stranger.
30:40In October 2015, the police put an appeal to the public,
30:44and it was soon confirmed that the mysterious man
30:47in the footage was Stephen Port.
30:50In the end, it was the determination of Jack Taylor's family
30:56to pursue the police that eventually led them
31:00to take Port seriously.
31:02I believe, had that not happened, Port might well have got away,
31:06or got away with it.
31:08On the 15th of October 2015, Port was arrested on suspicion
31:13of causing the deaths of all four young men.
31:17The police had a serial killer in custody,
31:20one that had previously slipped through their fingers.
31:23They had to ensure that justice would be served
31:26for all the families of the victims.
31:38In October 2015, 40-year-old chef Stephen Port
31:43was in custody on suspicion of the murder of four young men.
31:47The police had originally believed
31:49that the deaths were all self-administered drug overdoses.
31:53They were determined to find out the truth.
31:56Detectives searching Port's flat
31:59had seized his laptop and mobile phone.
32:02They interrogated him about his search history,
32:06which included boy drug raped.
32:09His hard drive also contained videos of him
32:12having sex with unconscious men.
32:14Under questioning, Port admitted
32:17that he'd met his third victim, Daniel Whitworth,
32:20at a sex party, but he knew nothing about his death.
32:24He also claimed that he hadn't administered drugs to anyone
32:28and denied killing the four young men.
32:32He's quite well-spoken. He appears to be quite reserved.
32:35I think what we're seeing here is a bit of a veneer
32:38that he's crafted to present to the rest of the world.
32:41You wouldn't think that this is the type of person
32:43who could do this kind of thing.
32:45But the police weren't falling for it.
32:47They could link Port to all four of his victims.
32:51On the 18th of October 2015, he was arrested and charged
32:55with the murders of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kavari,
32:59Jack Taylor and Daniel Whitworth.
33:05I was told via the phone, the liaison officer
33:08that we had previously, um, he phoned with the opening line
33:13of, don't build your hopes up, but we've arrested someone.
33:17And I said, right, this is just too huge for me to deal with,
33:22and I need to speak to Adam, so I'm going to let you go.
33:27To try and explain to you how that was,
33:33the surreal situation that we were in,
33:41also included the emotion of comfort,
33:44because we thought he wasn't in that dark place,
33:47he didn't take his own life, he wasn't angry with any of us,
33:51he wasn't upset, he wasn't in this awful place
33:56where we couldn't reach him, where he didn't come to us, where he...
34:00And for that split second, you're comforted
34:05by the fact that your son has been murdered,
34:09which is bizarre, it's bizarre.
34:13We had a sigh of relief, and that was,
34:16that was quickly followed by anger.
34:18It was just incredible, we didn't know where to go from there.
34:25The day I actually got the phone call to say that
34:28they'd arrested him for the four murders,
34:32I actually, I didn't even feel glad.
34:36I felt like I'd been shot, to be quite honest,
34:39straight pain to my chest, and I just burst into tears,
34:41it was awful.
34:42Yeah, couldn't believe it.
34:44It's like, there's one thing,
34:48putting everything together, what me and Jen did,
34:52and believing that we are right,
34:55that somebody has done something to Jack,
34:57but when you're told it, and it becomes official,
35:03it's awful, it is awful.
35:06And it wasn't long before the story
35:08of the shocking murders hit the headlines.
35:11A friend of mine had sent me a link
35:13to a news article online, and I clicked on it,
35:17and kind of like an icy dread sort of went over my body,
35:22and I sat up right in bed where it was like,
35:25local man, Stephen Porte, arrested on suspicion
35:29of four murders, and then I looked through the names,
35:31and I saw Gabriel being one of them.
35:33As the story broke, more men came forward claiming
35:37that they, too, had been drugged and sexually assaulted
35:40at Porte's flat after meeting him online.
35:44I think there was a very clear reason
35:46why Porte chose to use GHB.
35:48I think that he was tapping into the stigma
35:51and the lifestyle or the perceived lifestyle
35:55of young gay men.
35:57I think he realized that, you know,
35:59if this does go too far,
36:01if somebody does have too much
36:03and they don't survive, then I'm going to be able
36:05to present it in a particular way
36:07that people aren't going to ask questions.
36:09I was very surprised what an ugly person he is,
36:13and I think the only way he could get these young,
36:17attractive boys was to drug them
36:20because nobody would have looked at him twice.
36:23He was a very ugly person, inside and out,
36:26a sad, lonely, bold old man,
36:30and I don't think he's very bright,
36:34and he literally thought he was God,
36:37that he could just get away with it.
36:41In July 2016, Porte was charged with the rape
36:45of eight more victims between 2012 and October 2015,
36:50the month he was finally captured.
36:53The single most shocking thing about Stephen Porte
36:56is that a monster can prey on innocent young men
37:02in absolutely plain sight in the east end of London in 2015,
37:09and no-one seems to pay any attention at all.
37:13When his trial began at the Old Bailey
37:15on the 5th of October 2016,
37:18Porte was faced with 29 separate charges
37:21of rape, sexual assault, administering a substance
37:24with intent, and with murder.
37:27The 41-year-old pleaded not guilty.
37:29This meant the family of the victims
37:31would have to face the man responsible
37:33for killing their loved ones.
37:35And we walked in.
37:38I knew I was going to look at him.
37:40He was up there behind glass,
37:42and he was looking down when we came in.
37:46I wanted Stephen Porte to give me some eye contact.
37:51That was a need in me.
37:54I was just looking for any, any small sign
37:59of human emotion from this thing.
38:04This thing with two arms and two legs
38:07that was apparently human.
38:10I wanted something from his eyes.
38:15And I never got that.
38:18I didn't, I didn't get that.
38:23For four weeks, the jury were presented with evidence
38:26to prove that Porte was a killer.
38:28Investigators had found his DNA on Gabriel Kavari's sunglasses
38:33and Daniel Whitworth's clothes.
38:35Handwriting experts also confirmed that Daniel didn't write
38:39the suicide note found alongside him.
38:42Ryan Edwards testified against his former neighbor
38:46during the trial.
38:48So I did my evidence, and as I was leaving,
38:51I couldn't help but kind of quickly glance at Stephen
38:53because I had to walk quite near past him as I was leaving.
38:57And chillingly, he kind of gave me a crooked half-smile,
39:02almost like a mischievous grin that a child would give
39:06when they'd been caught out doing something they know is wrong.
39:10And it, that was eerie.
39:13On the 25th of November 2016, the jury convicted Porte
39:18of a total of 22 offenses against 11 men,
39:22including the four murders, four rapes, four sexual assaults,
39:27and ten counts of administering a substance with intent.
39:31Mr. Justice Openshaw sentenced Stephen Porte
39:34to a whole-life tariff.
39:36He was immediately sent to Belmarsh Prison.
39:39He will never be released.
39:41Justice had finally been served.
39:43That sick, twisted scumbag will never be able to hurt
39:47or destroy anyone else's family or life.
39:50Jack can finally rest in peace.
39:53We will always be completely heartbroken as a family.
39:56Since Porte's incarceration, police are reexamining
40:00as many as 58 unexplained deaths involving the drug GHB.
40:06There are almost certainly many, many more young men
40:11who were assaulted one way or another by Stephen Porte.
40:15The only thing we can be grateful for
40:17is that Porte was eventually stopped.
40:19He was, in every respect, a most terrifying figure.
40:25In October 2016, the Metropolitan Police referred themselves
40:30to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
40:33The IPCC launched an independent investigation
40:37into 17 officers who handled the response to the four deaths.
40:42The investigation continues.
40:44Despite the internal police review and Porte's incarceration,
40:49nothing can bring back the four young men that lost their lives.
40:53We've got to make room for this to run parallel with a life that...
41:02I'm not going to use the word destroyed
41:06because he's taken our boy and he's not taken any more.
41:09We do reminisce.
41:11We do reminisce about Daniel and, you know,
41:13some of the things we did when we were out about
41:16and, you know, that's becoming easier to do.
41:20No, it still isn't getting easier over time.
41:25He used to say, from being early teens, he called me Cesar.
41:29He never called me mum.
41:30And he always used to say,
41:31you wait, Cesar, one day I'll be famous.
41:34Everybody will be talking about me.
41:36Which they are, but obviously for the wrong reasons.
41:39We haven't had time to grow, have we?
41:41No. We still have days now where we'll just get up out of what we call
41:50a normal day and we don't feel like anything's normal anymore, do we?
41:53But a normal day and all of a sudden you sit there and you feel,
41:56oh, my God, like...
41:57He's not here.
41:58Jack's not here.
41:59Jack's not here.
42:00And then you have another day where you actually think,
42:03Jack was murdered.
42:06Watching your mum and dad every day, every single day,
42:11fall apart.
42:13Put it down and there's nothing you can do about it.
42:16Because, you know, like everybody in the world,
42:19if your mum and dad are upset or, you know, something's wrong,
42:26you try and fix it.
42:28And there's nothing we can do.
42:32And that is hard. Very hard.
42:35You know, watching the fact that they've fell apart, they've aged,
42:39and people we've always known are not the same people anymore.
42:45That is hard.
42:50It's hard for all of us, ain't it?
42:52Yeah.
42:54Stephen Port affected the lives of so many people,
42:58not just those he killed and those he raped,
43:01but also all of their friends, family,
43:03and the entire LGBT community as a whole.
43:07He murdered his victims for his own sexual gratification,
43:11and it's a tragedy that he was able to get away with it for so long.
43:14When he was finally captured, his horrific crimes were brought to light.
43:19But now we should forget the name Stephen Porte
43:22and celebrate the memory of Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel, and Jack instead.
43:29The End
43:30The End
43:31The End
43:32The End
43:34The End
43:35The End
43:37The End
43:39The End
43:40The End
43:42The End
43:43The End
43:44The End
43:45The End
43:46The End
43:47The End
43:48The End
43:49The End
43:50The End
43:52The End
43:54The End
43:55The End
43:57The End
43:58The End
43:59The End
44:00The End
44:01The End