Stephen Port killed four young men in Barking, east London, between June 2014 and September 2015. He met each of them through gay dating or escort websites, gave them overdoses of the drug GHB at his flat, and left their bodies near his home. Anthony Walgate, 23, was found outside the block where Port lived. Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, were found in or beside a churchyard a few hundred meters away. For more than a year the Metropolitan Police treated the deaths as separate, non-suspicious drug cases.
Port was not charged with murder until after the fourth death, when a CCTV still of Jack Taylor walking beside a tall man at Barking station was recognized as Port. In November 2016 an Old Bailey jury convicted him of all four murders and of 18 further offenses of drugging and sexually assaulting other young men. Mr Justice Openshaw ordered that he never be released. Five years later, fresh inquests found that all four men had been unlawfully killed and that failings in the police investigation probably contributed to the deaths of the last three. The police watchdog then reopened its own inquiry, and in 2023 told eight current and former officers they were under investigation for possible gross misconduct.
Port was born on February 22, 1975, in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, and his family later moved to Dagenham in east London, according to a 2022 PinkNews account of the case. His sister told his trial that he was quiet and was bullied at school. He trained as a chef after art college proved too expensive, and he came out as gay at 26; his sister said their mother took the news badly.
When he was charged in October 2015, his father told PinkNews that Port had worked for 13 years as a chef at a bus garage in West Ham and had recently started a new job stocktaking in shops. His mother described him as 6 feet 3 inches tall. He lived alone in a flat in Barking. A neighbor told the trial in 2016 that Port had a love "bordering on obsession" for Transformers toys, according to the Barking and Dagenham Post.
At his sentencing he was 41 and had no previous convictions for violence. The judge said his sexual preference was for young men whom he had made unconscious with drugs, mainly GHB or the related substance GBL. Prosecutors told the jury he had searched the internet for pornography of drugged young men. Police later linked 18 accounts on 12 apps and websites to him, according to PinkNews.
In December 2012 Port was arrested on suspicion of raping a young man after allegedly drugging him. The case was dropped when the man withdrew his statement, an inquest heard in October 2021. That arrest never led to a charge, but the record existed, and the 2021 inquests found it was not used.
GHB is a sedative sold as a clear liquid. At Port's sentencing the judge explained that an overdose causes dizziness and nausea, then drowsiness, unconsciousness and eventually coma. Port gave it to the men in drinks, by the court's findings, and sometimes by other means, at doses that, the judge found, he knew carried a high risk of death. All four men died of GHB toxicity or of mixed drug overdoses. In March 2017 a 23-year-old man who had supplied drugs to Port, Gerald Matovu, pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to supplying GHB and mephedrone and to offering to supply GHB, PinkNews reported.
Anthony Walgate grew up in Hull, in Yorkshire, and moved to London to study fashion. He wanted to make his name in that world. His mother, Sarah Sak, remembered a shy and reserved boy who grew in confidence in London; they spoke several times a week. "The longer Anthony was in London, I could see a cygnet becoming a swan," she told the inquests in 2021. To support himself he sometimes worked as an escort.
Port contacted him through an escort website and arranged to meet him at Barking station on June 17, 2014, for an overnight booking at a price of 800 pounds. The judge later found that Port never meant to pay. Shortly before he messaged Walgate, Port had searched online for drug-rape videos and date-rape drugs, the inquests heard. At the flat he drugged Walgate. In the early hours of June 19, Port moved the body outside to the entrance of his block, put a bottle of GHB in the young man's pocket and got rid of his phone. He then rang 999 at 4:18 a.m., without giving his name, to report a young man collapsed in the street, and hung up when asked for a contact number. Police traced the call.
He first told officers he did not know Walgate. When that failed, he admitted Walgate had been in his flat and said the young man had taken drugs himself; Port said he had panicked and moved the body because "he's in my bed, they are going to think I did this to him," as the Barking and Dagenham Post reported from the trial. He was arrested for perverting the course of justice on June 27, 2014, and released on bail. In March 2015 he was jailed for eight months for lying to police about the death.
The investigation into Walgate's death was the one the 2021 inquests examined most closely. One officer concluded there was nothing to suggest an assault, despite bruising on the body. Sexual swabs were not sent for DNA testing. Officers ran a check on Walgate on the Police National Database, but not on Port; that check would have shown the 2012 allegation and a British Transport Police record from the same month, June 2014, of Port at Barking station with another young man who was under the influence of drugs. The Crown Prosecution Service was not told that Port was a suspected sex offender when it ruled out a homicide charge. Requests by borough officers for the Met's specialist murder teams to take over were turned down.
Port's laptop was seized, but it was not sent for forensic analysis for about 10 months. When the material came back, in June 2015, the officer who reviewed it reported only selfies, sex videos and dating messages as relating to Port's "lifestyle," and did not find the searches for drug-rape videos. "It was there on his laptop and we should have got it," the senior detective on the case, Detective Sergeant Martin O'Donnell, told the inquests. He called his failure to log the 2012 allegation "a terrible mistake." The officer who had handled the laptop, Detective Constable David Parish, said he had spent seven and a half years wishing he had acted differently.
Walgate's mother told police she believed her son had been murdered and was told it was "probably drugs." A friend of his raised concerns again and again. Two friends told the inquests they believed police assumed an overdose because he was a gay sex worker; the senior detective denied that officers had written him off.
Gabriel Kovari came from Slovakia. He was a university graduate who wrote poetry and illustrated it with his own drawings; his brother called him the most artistic person in the family, "smart, talented, kind," and said he trusted people too much. In the summer of 2014 he was living in London and looking for a place to stay. On August 23, 2014, he moved into Port's flat.
Around August 25, while still on bail over Walgate's death, Port drugged him. The day before the body was found, Port phoned his sister and told her he could not wake a man in his bed; he said they had both taken drugs and that he had found the man dead when he got up for work, she told the trial. On August 28, 2014, a woman walking her dog found Kovari's body by the churchyard wall near the ruins of Barking Abbey, a few hundred meters from Port's flat. A bottle of GHB had been planted with him.
Port then covered his tracks with lies. He told a neighbor that Kovari had moved out, and later that he had died in Spain, and asked him not to mention it on Facebook. He contacted Kovari's former partner in Spain under the false name "Jon Luck" and gave him a false account; the High Court later recorded that information from "Jon Luck" had reached the original inquest. A friend of Kovari's, who had grown close to him that summer, tracked down the former partner in Spain himself; he and another friend gave police information that could have led to Port, and both were repeatedly ignored, a summary of the inquest evidence found. The second friend had received pictures from inside Port's flat and was the last person Kovari spoke to; police never traced him.
The scene was not declared suspicious, so no forensic post-mortem was carried out, his clothing was not seized and no samples were taken. The coroner later noted that the death was classed as non-suspicious within five hours. Police did not tell his family of his death, and the family liaison officer never contacted them and recorded him as Lithuanian.
Daniel Whitworth grew up in Gravesend, in Kent. He was a chef who had been offered a new job at a spa resort in Sevenoaks, liked animals and loved hosting family dinners. His grandmother remembered a mischievous child who became a caring and ambitious young man. He had been with his partner, Ricky Waumsley, for four years, and they planned to buy a home together in Gravesend. "He was literally my world. He was my first boyfriend and my first love," Waumsley told the inquests.
Whitworth met Port through a dating website called Fitlads and went to his flat on September 18, 2014. The next morning Port deleted a Fitlads account, the judge found. That night he left Whitworth's body in the churchyard, with a bed sheet. The same dog walker found him on September 20, 2014, and told police she had found another young man a few weeks earlier.
On the body was a handwritten note. Written as if by Whitworth, it claimed that Whitworth had accidentally caused Kovari's death and had then deliberately taken an overdose himself; it mentioned "the guy I was with last night." Officers at the scene thought the "guy" might be a homeless man who slept in the churchyard.
Police accepted the note. The bed sheet, Whitworth's clothes, sexual swabs and a drug bottle planted with him were never sent for forensic tests, although all of them carried Port's DNA or fingerprints, and the pathologist had recommended DNA testing of the sheet. Full phone data, which would have shown that Whitworth was not in Barking on the night Kovari died, was never obtained. Waumsley had told police that Whitworth was at home on August 27, but the detective who closed the case, Rolf Schamberger, admitted at the inquests that he had missed that statement. His closing report was based on the Kovari report, contained the wrong name in places, and wrongly said that no injuries had been found and that a diary had been seized for a handwriting comparison. One officer dismissed bruising on the body, although the pathologist said it could have come from the body being moved. Police closed the Kovari and Whitworth investigations in January 2015.
Whitworth's father told the inquests he was shown only a section of the note at first and never confirmed it was his son's handwriting: "I definitely did not say it was." Daniel was left-handed, and his father had assumed an expert would examine the note. Waumsley was not allowed to see it until the first inquest in 2015, a year after the death. He said the note was impersonal and did not mention family. When Whitworth's stepmother asked officers what GHB was, they told her to ask Waumsley. He said he and Daniel were pushed aside as an unmarried gay couple: "If it was a straight couple I wouldn't have been pushed out as much as I was at the time."
After Port's arrest, a handwriting expert attributed the note to him, and the notepad was found at his address.
On June 19, 2015, the East London coroner held inquests into the deaths of Kovari and Whitworth and recorded open conclusions in both. A police officer told her that Whitworth's family had identified his handwriting. The coroner said she could not be satisfied that Kovari had been unlawfully killed, and that her concerns about a third party's involvement in Whitworth's death "cannot be allayed by the evidence." She raised those concerns with police; the coroner who heard the later inquests said they should have prompted officers to reassess their work.
Outside the police, people had begun to see a pattern. PinkNews said it first heard of claims linking the deaths in December 2014 and contacted Scotland Yard early in 2015, and was told the deaths were being treated as separate incidents with nothing suspicious linking them. The Barking and Dagenham Post also made enquiries. The human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said he raised concerns about a possible serial killer after the first three deaths in 2014. Kovari's friend went to gay charities, the gay press and Tatchell because, he told the inquests, "I didn't trust the police to link it properly."
Port's eight-month sentence did not keep him off the streets for long. He was released in 2015, before Jack Taylor's death, and the trial heard that he went on drugging young men. The jury convicted him of offenses against several other men, committed between 2012 and October 2015, some of them after his release. The law gives these men lifelong anonymity.
Jack Taylor, 25, lived with his parents in Dagenham and drove a forklift truck at a bonded warehouse that stored champagne, where staff were drug-tested. His family knew him as firmly against drugs. He was moving to day shifts so that he could train in the evenings to become a police officer, and his sister said he had once helped save the life of a man threatening suicide in Chadwell Heath. "He always lit up a room with his warm nature," his sister Donna said. He was not openly gay, the judge noted.
He met Port through Grindr. CCTV showed them meeting at Barking station at about 3:15 a.m. on September 13, 2015. He kept the body in the flat during the day and that night moved it to the churchyard, where he left it just over the wall and planted a bottle of GHB, a tourniquet and medical wipes beside it. On September 14, 2015, a park warden found Taylor's body, a few steps from where Kovari and Whitworth had been found a year before.
The duty inspector that day, Jason O'Donohue, declared the death "unexplained but non-suspicious." Two detectives who had worked on the Kovari and Whitworth deaths came to the scene, but neither told him that the cases shared features: young gay men, drug paraphernalia and missing phones. He said at the inquests that he did not know where the earlier bodies had been found until he saw a graphic at Port's trial: "I was absolutely flabbergasted." A post-mortem recorded a mix of drugs and alcohol, and police told the family about two weeks later that it was an overdose.
His family did not accept it. His father had reported him missing when he failed to turn up for work. His sisters, Donna and Jenny Taylor, kept their own notes listing three earlier deaths nearby, GHB, an address and an earlier arrest for perverting the course of justice over the first death, and pressed officers to do more. A parks police constable with no investigative experience began contacting people who had last seen Taylor. Footage from Barking station showed Taylor meeting a tall man no one had identified. "We think because the police treated Jack as a drug addict the police didn't look any further," his father told the inquests in November 2021.
The link came almost a month after Taylor's death. The CCTV still was released, and a detective who had worked on Walgate's death recognized the man beside Taylor as Port. Another officer then connected the case to the Kovari and Whitworth files. On October 14, 2015, the four deaths were referred to the Met's Homicide and Major Crime Command, and Port was arrested that week. Accounts differ on the exact day of the arrest; PinkNews in 2022 gave October 18, 2015.
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, and on October 20, 2015, he appeared at Barkingside Magistrates' Court, where he spoke only to confirm his name, age and address. He was remanded in custody and appeared at the Old Bailey by video link from Pentonville Prison the next day. The Met referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission over its failure to link the deaths, and Detective Chief Inspector Tim Duffield of the Homicide and Major Crime Command appealed to the gay community for information, suggesting that anyone anxious about talking to police contact the LGBT charity Galop. Police repeated the appeal in December 2015. After the case was reported, charges of rape, sexual assault and further counts of administering a substance were added.
The specialist team found what the borough investigations had not. Port's DNA and fingerprints were on a bottle and a blanket connected with Whitworth's body and on sunglasses Kovari had been wearing. The "Jon Luck" who had supplied information to the first inquests was Port. Evidence showed he had bought GHB around the time of each death, and high levels were found at each post-mortem. Jack Taylor's body was exhumed for a further post-mortem.
The trial began at the Central Criminal Court in October 2016 before Mr Justice Openshaw and a jury of ten men and two women. Port denied 29 offenses against 12 men: four murders, seven rapes, four sexual assaults and the administering counts. The prosecutor, Jonathan Rees QC, told the jury that Port had shown another man pictures of young men, one of them an alleged murder victim, before drugging and raping him.
At trial Port changed his story again. About Walgate he repeated that the young man had taken drugs himself and that he had moved the body in panic. About Kovari, he claimed at trial that the body his sister heard about was Walgate's. About the note on Whitworth, he first denied writing it, then said he wrote it at Whitworth's dictation, and at trial he blamed Whitworth for Kovari's death. About Taylor, he first denied knowing him, then claimed Taylor took drugs himself after Port left. The jury rejected each account. The evidence took four full weeks, the judge said, and the jury deliberated for about 28 hours.
On November 23, 2016, the jury convicted Port of all four murders. It also convicted him of four rapes, four sexual assaults (assault by penetration) and ten counts of administering a substance with intent, 22 offenses against 11 men in all, and acquitted him of three counts of rape. Alternative counts of manslaughter for each death were left without verdicts once the murder verdicts were returned.
On November 25, 2016, Mr Justice Openshaw sentenced Port to life imprisonment with a whole life order for each murder, meaning he will never be released. The judge accepted that Port intended really serious harm rather than death, but found that he foresaw a high risk of death, especially after Walgate died. He listed the aggravating features: four murders, a persistent course of drugging young men, planning, the removal of phones and the planting of evidence, the abandonment of the bodies in ways that robbed the men of dignity, and two murders committed while Port was on bail. The absence of earlier convictions for violence, he said, "counts for little." The seriousness of the case was so exceptionally high that a whole life order was "justified; indeed it is required."
For the rapes and assaults by penetration he imposed discretionary life sentences, and for each count of administering a substance the maximum of 10 years, all to run alongside the whole life order. He said the killings had "greatly increased the distress of their loving families," and that whether the police had acted correctly "is for others to decide."
Relatives in the public gallery cheered and clapped. Outside court Jack Taylor's sister Donna said: "We finally have justice for Jack and the other boys."
In August 2018 Port began an application to the Court of Appeal against his murder convictions, PinkNews reported; a lawyer for the families said the convictions remained safe. A single judge dismissed the application at the first stage, so it did not go to a full panel, the Barking and Dagenham Post reported. Jack Taylor's sisters said they were glad, as the application had worried them. No later appeal was reported.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission, the predecessor of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), investigated the Met's response after the force's own referral in October 2015. In March 2017 it served misconduct notices on 17 officers, having gathered more than 700 documents and about 200 statements. All but one of the officers gave "no comment" interviews and answered in writing instead. The final report went to the Met in August 2018. The IOPC and the Met agreed that no officer had a case to answer for misconduct or gross misconduct; the performance of nine officers had fallen below the standard required, and they were to undergo measures to improve it. None was disciplined, and the coroner later noted that five had been promoted.
Because the first inquests had been held before anyone knew Port was responsible, the East London Senior Coroner asked the High Court to quash them. On November 28, 2017, Lord Justice Holroyde and Mr Justice Green quashed the 2015 inquisitions into the deaths of Kovari and Whitworth and ordered fresh investigations, saying the new evidence made them "both necessary and desirable in the public interest" and that it would be sensible to hear all four deaths together. The court stressed that the earlier coroner was not at fault; she had not had the full picture.
The Chief Coroner, Mark Lucraft QC, approved judge-led inquests after a campaign by the families, who crowdfunded for legal representation. Covid-19 delayed the hearings. They opened at Barking Town Hall on October 5, 2021, before Her Honour Judge Sarah Munro QC and a jury, with Andrew O'Connor QC as counsel to the inquests. Hudgell Solicitors, led by Neil Hudgell, acted for the families, with Henrietta Hill QC as their counsel.
Over eight weeks of evidence, officers admitted failing to carry out basic checks, failing to send evidence for scientific examination and failing to show professional curiosity. They blamed understaffing, a heavy workload and junior officers acting in senior roles, and denied homophobia. Families and friends described being dismissed. Kovari's friend said he believed "institutional homophobia" lay behind the response; counsel for the Met told him that "incompetence does not always equate to prejudice."
In a ruling reported on December 2, 2021, the coroner decided as a matter of law that the jury could not express views on whether homophobia or prejudice played a part. She directed the jury to return conclusions of unlawful killing for all four men, and asked it to decide whether features of the investigations into the first three deaths had probably or possibly contributed to the later ones.
On December 10, 2021, the jury found that Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor were each unlawfully killed, and returned narrative conclusions for three of the four men. It found that failings in the police investigations probably contributed to the deaths of Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor. "We believe there were fundamental failures in these investigations, which were at a basic level," the jurors wrote. They acknowledged the pressures on borough officers but said the failings "cannot be overlooked." They found "a complete breakdown of oversight of the investigation" and said that "basic lines of inquiry were not followed."
Asked whether omissions or failures in the Walgate investigation had contributed to the three later deaths, the jury answered yes, for both the specialist crime directorate and borough officers. Asked whether the failure to run Police National Database checks on Port probably contributed to the deaths of the three later victims, it again answered yes.
The coroner told the families she hoped they had "finally been listened to." The Met's Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball called the findings "devastating," offered "my own and the Met's heartfelt apologies," and accepted that the deaths "could probably have been prevented had the initial police responses and investigations been better," while denying institutional homophobia. The families said they were angry that the jury could not consider homophobia, said the officers' actions were "in part, driven by homophobia," and called on the Commissioner, Cressida Dick, to resign. Sarah Sak called the verdict "a massive victory." In February 2022, the week after Dick resigned amid a series of scandals that included this case, Sak called the force "a shambles" and said her meeting with Dick after the inquests had felt like "a PR exercise."
On January 25, 2022, Judge Munro published a prevention of future deaths report. She said she had been "extremely concerned and disappointed" by the evidence of a series of errors, and listed concerns about the Met's practice. Officers had lacked professional curiosity. Kovari's death had been classed as non-suspicious within five hours, although an inspector later admitted he did not know the cause, and Whitworth's death had been classed the same way without any check on whether the note was genuine. The word "unexplained" in the Met's current policy on deaths, she warned, "may once again distract officers" from treating a death as suspicious until shown otherwise.
She found leadership at inspector and sergeant level inadequate; one inspector's closing reports contained "serious material inaccuracies," and gaps in leadership may have contributed to the failure to obtain intelligence on Port and the delay in examining his laptop. Families had been wrongly told of the deaths in three of the four cases. Guidance on when specialist murder detectives should take over from borough officers needed to be clearer, and the 2015 coroner's concerns about the Kovari and Whitworth cases should have prompted a fresh look. She also raised the escort website through which Walgate met Port, which checked escorts but not their clients. On homophobia she made no finding of her own, but agreed with an IOPC view that assumptions about the lifestyle of young gay men, and about how vulnerable such men may be, could not be ignored. She noted that of the 17 officers investigated, nine had been found to have performance failings, none had been disciplined and five had been promoted. The Met had until March 18, 2022, to respond.
On the day of the jury's findings the IOPC said it was considering whether to reopen its investigation. On June 23, 2022, it announced a reinvestigation, saying there was significant new information from the inquests, that its original investigation had been "materially flawed," that some lines of enquiry had not been followed and that the earlier inquiry should have been wider in scope. Neil Hudgell said the original report had been hampered by a "wall of silence" from officers.
On November 16, 2023, the IOPC said it had told eight Met officers, five still serving and three who had left, that they were under investigation for possible gross misconduct, over possible breaches of the standards on equality and diversity, duties and responsibilities, authority, respect and courtesy, and honesty and integrity. Five of the eight had been subjects of the 2018 investigation. The team had examined about 3,500 documents, including the original material, the inquest evidence, the coroner's reports and the trial records. A finding that an officer may have committed gross misconduct does not automatically lead to disciplinary proceedings, the IOPC's regional director, Steve Noonan, said. The families said they were "cautiously encouraged," and Hudgell said that "no comment interviews simply will not do."
In August 2022 the Met settled civil claims brought by the families of Anthony Walgate and Gabriel Kovari and by Daniel Whitworth's partner. No amounts were disclosed. "Our thoughts and sympathies are with the families as always," a Met spokesperson said. Senior officers said they would reform the national approach to unexplained deaths so that such cases are categorized and investigated more clearly.
The families and friends of the four men did much of the work that eventually linked the deaths, and they spent years more pressing for the inquests and the reinvestigation. Anthony Walgate's mother, Sarah Sak, became the most public of them. She wrote a book about her son, A Life Stolen: The Tragic True Story of My Son's Murder (Seven Dials), and urged other families "do not give up, no matter how long it takes, keep shouting."
The BBC One drama Four Lives, written by Jeff Pope and Neil McKay, was shown on three nights from January 3, 2022, with Stephen Merchant as Port and Sheridan Smith as Sarah Sak. It told the story through the families and friends who pushed the case forward. Sak said Smith did "a fantastic job," but that the real police response had been "10 times worse" than the drama showed.
At the time of the inquests Port, then 46, was serving his sentence. Under the whole life order he will die in prison, Police Professional noted in 2022.
Homophobia. The families, Kovari's friend and Whitworth's partner have said that prejudice against gay men shaped the police response. Officers denied it, and the Met denied institutional homophobia. The inquest jury was barred by law from considering the question, the coroner made no finding on it, and she accepted only that assumptions about young gay men could not be ignored. The IOPC's 2023 notices include possible breaches of the standard on equality and diversity, but no finding had been published by October 2026. The question is open.
Other victims. After the 2021 inquest findings, the Press Association reported that a new alleged victim had come forward, saying he was drugged and sexually assaulted by Port during the same period. No charge or outcome was reported, and reports attribute no other deaths to Port.
The "Grindr killer" label. Newspapers called Port the "Grindr killer," but Grindr was only one of the platforms he used. He met Walgate through an escort website and Whitworth through Fitlads, and police linked 18 accounts on 12 apps and websites to him.
Small differences in the record. Some reports give Daniel Whitworth's age as 21, the age recorded by the High Court, the IOPC and the inquests; the sentencing remarks give 23. One early PinkNews report gave Jack Taylor's age as 21; every other source gives 25. Reports differ on the exact date of Port's arrest in October 2015 and on the month of his release from his 2015 sentence. One 2016 newspaper timeline placed Kovari's death in September 2014; the High Court and the inquests give August 28, 2014.
Port is serving a whole life order imposed on November 25, 2016, and will not be released. His application for leave to appeal against the murder convictions was dismissed at the first stage. The IOPC reinvestigation into eight current and former officers was still open at its last public update, in November 2023.
February 22, 1975: Stephen Port born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
December 2012: arrested on suspicion of raping a young man after drugging him; the case is dropped when the man withdraws his statement.
June 17, 2014: meets Anthony Walgate at Barking station.
June 19, 2014: Walgate found dead outside Port's block of flats after an anonymous 999 call at 4:18 a.m.
June 27, 2014: Port arrested for perverting the course of justice; released on bail.
August 23, 2014: Gabriel Kovari moves into Port's flat.
August 28, 2014: Kovari found dead in the churchyard near Barking Abbey.
September 18, 2014: Daniel Whitworth visits Port's flat.
September 20, 2014: Whitworth found dead in the churchyard with a forged note.
December 2014 to early 2015: PinkNews and friends of the victims raise concerns; police say the deaths are not linked.
January 2015: police close the Kovari and Whitworth investigations.
March 2015: Port jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice.
June 19, 2015: first inquests record open conclusions for Kovari and Whitworth.
September 13, 2015: Port meets Jack Taylor at Barking station at about 3:15 a.m.
September 14, 2015: Taylor found dead near the churchyard.
October 14, 2015: the deaths referred to the Met's Homicide and Major Crime Command; Port arrested that week.
October 20, 2015: Port appears at Barkingside Magistrates' Court charged with four murders.
October 2016: trial opens at the Central Criminal Court.
November 23, 2016: convicted of four murders and 18 other offenses; acquitted of three rapes.
November 25, 2016: whole life order.
November 28, 2017: High Court quashes the 2015 Kovari and Whitworth inquests.
August 2018: IOPC final report; no case to answer for misconduct; nine officers' performance below standard. Port applies for leave to appeal; later dismissed at the first stage.
October 5, 2021: fresh inquests open at Barking Town Hall.
December 10, 2021: jury finds all four men unlawfully killed and that police failings probably contributed to three deaths.
January 3, 2022: Four Lives first shown on BBC One.
January 25, 2022: coroner's prevention of future deaths report published.
June 23, 2022: IOPC announces reinvestigation.
August 2022: Met settles civil claims by three of the bereaved parties.
November 16, 2023: eight current and former officers told they are under investigation for possible gross misconduct.