Stephen Port

Stephen John Port (born 22 February 1975) is a British serial killer and serial rapist.

He has been convicted of the murder of four young men and multiple rapes and sexual assaults of a number of others.

Port contacted his first murder victim, 23-year-old Anthony Walgate, a fashion student who occasionally worked as an escort, on 17 June 2014 pretending to be a client.

At Port's flat, Walgate was drugged with GHB and raped; he died after Port gave him a fatal overdose of the drug.

The next day, Port placed Walgate's body outside the flat and made an anonymous call for an ambulance.

Shortly before 8:00a.m., Walgate was pronounced dead.

Evidence linking Port to Walgate's death was missed at this time.

Between August 2014 and September 2015, Port murdered three more men: Gabriel Kovari, 22, who had moved to London from Slovakia, and had briefly lived with Port; Daniel Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend in Kent, who worked as a chef; and Jack Taylor, 25, who lived with his parents in Dagenham, and worked as a forklift truck driver.

The bodies of the second and third victims were found in the graveyard of the church of St Margaret of Antioch in Barking, by the same woman on separate occasions walking her dog; the last victim was found in the park adjacent to the graveyard.

Port had planted a fake suicide note alongside the body of Whitworth that suggested he was responsible for the death of Kovari, the previous victim, and that he had killed himself out of guilt.

Port used a number of Internet hook-up sites and apps as a means of initially contacting his victims, including Sleepyboy, Grindr, Hornet, Fitlads, Badoo, Gaydar, Flirt, DaddyHunt, PlanetRomeo, Manhunt, Slaveboys and CouchSurfing.

The families of the victims of Stephen Port were given compensation by the Metropolitan Police over the force's handling of the investigation into the killings.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) re-investigated the Met over its initial handling of their cases.

The original inquests into the deaths returned open verdicts.

Coroner Nadia Persaud said she had "some concerns surrounding Whitworth's death which have not been answered by the police investigation".

Her statement continued: "most concerning are the findings by the pathologist of manual handling prior to his death" and noted that "the bed sheet that he was found wrapped in was not forensically analysed, and the bottle of GBL which was found near him was also not tested for fingerprints or DNA".

A detective was asked why the bed sheet had not been tested.

Port was convicted of perverting the course of justice in March 2015 because his account of the death to the police varied.

He was sentenced to eight months, but was released in June and was electronically tagged.

In 2015, Port was charged with four counts of murder and four of administering a poison.

Port received a sentence of life imprisonment with a whole life order on 25 November 2016.

Port was born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

When he was a year old, his family moved to Dagenham in East London, where he grew up and where his parents still live.

He was described as being a "loner" and was often bullied at school during his childhood.

Former teachers also described Port's personality as "quiet".

His neighbour described him as having a peculiar, childlike personality, exhibiting odd behaviour as a grown man, such as playing with children's toys.

After leaving school, aged 16, he went to art college, but it proved too expensive for his parents and he spent two years training as a chef instead.

A former romantic partner of Port's described his personality as childish and gave that as the reason for ending their relationship.

He came out as gay in his mid-twenties.

He lived with his parents until his early thirties, then lived alone in a flat in Barking, London, and worked as a chef at a Stagecoach bus depot in West Ham.

Port also briefly appeared on an episode of the television show MasterChef.

He was described as having an athletic appearance at the time of the murders due to regularly going to the gym.

He was bald, and disguised this in public by wearing a blond toupée.

The hairpiece was professionally fastened and increased his confidence when meeting other men.

Port met his victims via online gay and bisexual social networks and dating or hookup apps, and constructed biographies in which he made false claims about his background, including one in which he pretended to have graduated from Oxford University and served in the Royal Navy.

In another he gave his occupation as a special needs teacher.

Port used gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), a date rape drug, adding it to drinks given to his victims, raping them, and murdering four of them in his flat in Barking.

The prosecution said that Port himself used a range of drugs, including amyl nitrite (poppers), Viagra, mephedrone, crystal methamphetamine, and GHB or GBL in its liquid form, but GHB was what he used to ply his victims: "postmortem examinations on the four young men who died revealed that each had died from a drug overdose featuring high levels of GHB".

At the Old Bailey in June 2016, prosecutors added six more counts of administering a poison, seven charges of rape and four of sexual assault.

He also faced four alternative charges of manslaughter.