Barking Man Stephen Port Charged With Murdering Four Young Men
Port, 40, appeared in court accused of drugging four men he met through gay websites with GHB, after their bodies were found in and around a Barking churchyard.
Published
Stephen Port spoke only to confirm his name, his age and his address. In October 2015 the 40-year-old stood in the dock at Barkingside Magistrates' Court in east London in a grey prison-issue tracksuit, flanked by three uniformed officers, holding one arm and glancing again and again at the floor. He gave no indication of a plea. He was charged with four counts of murder and four counts of administering a poison with intent to endanger life or inflict grievous bodily harm.
The prosecution's case was that Port had met four young men through gay websites, invited them back to his home in Cooke Street, Barking, and given them large amounts of the drug GHB, on which they overdosed. Their bodies had turned up over fourteen months in and around the same few streets.
Anthony Walgate, 23, was a fashion and design student at Middlesex University, originally from Hull and living in Barnet. He was pronounced dead on Cooke Street on June 19, 2014. Gabriel Kovari, 22, had come from Slovakia and was living in Lewisham. A dog walker found his body near the churchyard of St Margaret's Church, on North Street, on August 28, 2014. Just under a month later, on September 20, the same dog walker found Daniel Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend in Kent, near the same churchyard. Jack Taylor, 25, a forklift truck driver from Dagenham, was found on September 14, 2015, near the ruins of Barking Abbey, close to North Street.
The four deaths had not been linked at first. Only after further inquiries were they referred, on October 14, to the Metropolitan Police's homicide and major crime command. Deputy District Judge Shlomo Kreiman remanded him in custody to appear at the Old Bailey the next day.
Port was convicted of all four murders in November 2016. Years later an inquest jury found that failings by the Metropolitan Police in the way the first deaths were investigated had probably contributed to the deaths that followed.
What this story covers. The court appearance, the charges, the allegation about GHB and the websites, the four men's ages, homes and the dates and places they were found, the referral to the homicide command on October 14 and the remand come from the Press Association's report of the hearing, as published by The Irish News early on October 20, 2015; the report does not give the date of the hearing. At the hearing these were allegations. The conviction, the sentence and the inquest findings are reported, with their own sources, in this archive's stories of November 2016 and December 2021. Some later accounts, including the judge's sentencing remarks, give Daniel Whitworth's age as 23 rather than 21.
Sources
- London 'serial killer' remanded, The Irish News (Press Association)
Related News
- November 23, 2016: Stephen Port Convicted of Murdering Four Young Men in Barking
- December 10, 2021: Stephen Port Inquests: Jury Finds Police Failings Probably Contributed to Three of the Four Deaths