Serial Killer Stephen Port Sentenced to Life Imprisonment For Murdering Four Men
Serial killer Stephen Port has been sentenced to life imprisonment this morning with a whole life order. The 41 year old chef was convicted of murdering four young gay men by poisoning them with lethal doses of a date rape drug on Wednesday.
Mr Justice Openshaw today described the whole-life sentence as “justified” and that it was “required”. He told Port that he will never be released. In his sentencing remarks the Judge described Port as “wicked and monstrous”.
Port was convicted of a total of 22 offences against 11 men, including drugging and sex offences against seven men who survived their encounters with him.
Port met the men through websites such as Grindr, invited them to his London flat and secretly gave them GHB.
In the course of the trial prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC told the jury that “this is a case about a man who in pursuit of nothing more than his own sexual gratification, variously drugged, sexually assaulted and in four cases killed young gay men whom he had invited back to his flat”.
The victims who died were Anthony Walgate, 23, from Hull, Gabriel Kovari, 22, from Lewisham, south London, Daniel Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend, Kent, and Jack Taylor, 25, from Dagenham, east London.
Rees described the circumstances of each of the deaths as “strikingly similar”. Each was found in an outside location close to Port’s address; three in a churchyard and one in his street. Three were propped up in a similar position. Rees described Port as the common factor, and he had lied to police about his involvement with the victims.
Gabriel Kovari was staying with Port as a temporary flatmate when he was killed in August 2014. Port called his sister to confess he had his body in his bed then later left the 22-year-old in a graveyard close to his house. He later told his neighbour that Mr Kovari had died of an infection in Spain and created a Facebook alias and sent messages to Kovari’s boyfriend.
The same dog walker who found Mr Kovari’s body also found Daniel Whitworth dead in the same spot in the churchyard and “lying in the exact same position” three weeks later. A fake suicide note was found in his hand which purported to be a confession by Mr Whitworth for Mr Kovari’s death.It was later found to have been written by Port but at the time of Mr Whitworth’s death police had treated his demise “at face value”.
In the course of his sentencing remarks the Judge observed that Port’s defence had unravelled during cross-examination.
Scotland Yard believes there could be more victims and is reviewing 58 deaths in London spanning four years involving the drug.
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