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This programme contains some strong language | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:09 | |
In the summer of 2014, this church graveyard in east London | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
became the dumping ground for the victims | 0:00:11 | 0:00:13 | |
of gay date rape serial killer Stephen Port. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
His murder and rape spree lasted over a year, | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
before he was finally brought to justice. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
This is the story of how police repeatedly let the killer | 0:00:34 | 0:00:38 | |
slip through their fingers. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:41 | |
Stephen Port took Jack's life, but they let that happen. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
As far as we're concerned, they're just as guilty as him | 0:00:45 | 0:00:50 | |
and we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
On the 19th of June 2014, Stephen Port called the emergency services | 0:01:28 | 0:01:34 | |
claiming he had discovered a man collapsed | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
outside a block of flats in east London. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:40 | |
He was lying. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:41 | |
Port had date-raped and murdered 23-year-old Anthony Walgate, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:06 | |
and dumped the body outside his own front door. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:10 | |
When the emergency services arrived at Cooke Street, | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
they found the body of Anthony Walgate. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
The police constable who attended the scene believed the death | 0:02:33 | 0:02:37 | |
was suspicious and noted... | 0:02:37 | 0:02:38 | |
After questioning Port, | 0:02:43 | 0:02:45 | |
Barking and Dagenham officers accepted his claim that he had found | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
the body outside his front door when he returned from a night shift. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:53 | |
I had this book made to put some special photos in of Anthony. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
These pictures do reflect his personality. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
He was always the life and soul of the party. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
He was always one that wanted to make people laugh. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
They make me smile, because these are my favourite pictures of all. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
He really did have a zest for life. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:30 | |
He just threw himself into everything he did. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
I've no doubt he would have succeeded in what he did, | 0:03:33 | 0:03:36 | |
because he had such passion, such drive to do it. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:39 | |
But that's been taken away from him. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
When I first received the news about Anthony, | 0:03:50 | 0:03:52 | |
I was on holiday in Turkey at the time. My phone was turned off, | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
so I turned my phone back on on the Sunday evening | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
and received hundreds of missed calls, text messages, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
so I rang Paul, my other son, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:05 | |
who then told me that Anthony had been found dead in the street. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
I just literally went into shock, there and then. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
I don't even remember the flight home or anything about it. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
It was awful. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:16 | |
When I rang Barking and Dagenham Police, | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
the first initial contact was, Anthony's been found dead in the street. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:25 | |
So I said, "Was he shot? | 0:04:25 | 0:04:26 | |
"Was he stabbed? You know, had he been beaten up?" | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
"We don't know." | 0:04:31 | 0:04:33 | |
And at that moment, they weren't treating it as suspicious. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
So I said, "Well, it is suspicious." | 0:04:36 | 0:04:38 | |
I said, "You found him dead in the street. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:40 | |
"He hasn't been beaten up, he hasn't been stabbed, he hasn't been shot, anything. Something's not right. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
"Where's his phone? Why don't you track his phone?" | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
"No, it's too expensive." | 0:04:47 | 0:04:49 | |
They refused to ever investigate it from the very beginning. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:54 | |
Right. This is what's left of Anthony's property. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:02 | |
His whole life. I've been waiting two-and-a-half years for all this | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
stuff to come back. Police took it from his room after he'd died | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
and put it into storage. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:12 | |
Because they've been stored so long, all the clothes are mouldy. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
So I'm trying to salvage what I can. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:18 | |
This is the saddest thing, it's been broken. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
Anthony loved it. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:24 | |
It's quite sad looking at that. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
Not a lot for somebody's life, is it? | 0:05:29 | 0:05:30 | |
This is a lot of his designs, | 0:05:33 | 0:05:34 | |
his bits of fabric that he was working with. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
Anthony was studying fashion and design at Middlesex University. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:44 | |
All he ever wanted to do was be a famous fashion designer, | 0:05:44 | 0:05:47 | |
for everybody to know his name. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
That's all he ever wanted. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:52 | |
He wanted to be... You're upsetting me now. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
He did get fame, but for all the wrong reasons. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
A week after Anthony's death, police received dramatic new evidence. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:14 | |
One of his friends revealed that Anthony had hooked up with Stephen Port | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
via a male escort website called Sleepyboy, | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
a couple of days before his body was found. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
Port was then arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
for lying to police about not knowing Anthony. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
After changing his story, Port admitted he had hired Anthony as an escort | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
for the night, but insisted Anthony had died | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
from a self-inflicted drugs overdose. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
Stephen Port was saying that when Anthony got there he had taken GHB | 0:06:47 | 0:06:53 | |
and then, an hour or two later, he'd gone back into the bathroom | 0:06:53 | 0:06:57 | |
and taken more GHB, | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
at which time, he was violently ill. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
Stephen Port had then said that Anthony had gone to sleep | 0:07:03 | 0:07:07 | |
and he went to work and left him for eight hours | 0:07:07 | 0:07:09 | |
while he went and did his shift. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
So then Port said he came back from work and found Anthony dead, | 0:07:11 | 0:07:15 | |
so he panicked and carried him outside. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
So I'd said to the liaison officer, | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
"Why would you leave a total stranger that you've never met before, in your flat, in bed?" | 0:07:20 | 0:07:27 | |
I said, "You just wouldn't do... You wouldn't do it." | 0:07:27 | 0:07:29 | |
"Well, he did." | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
After Port was arrested for lying to police, | 0:07:32 | 0:07:36 | |
they took samples of his DNA. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
He was released on bail and later discounted as a murder suspect. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:44 | |
Every single time I tried ringing the police, I kept saying to them, | 0:07:44 | 0:07:47 | |
"Have you found anything else out? | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
"Have you done any more investigating? | 0:07:49 | 0:07:50 | |
"Have you looked at Anthony's computer?" | 0:07:50 | 0:07:52 | |
Because I had Anthony's computer. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:54 | |
They took Port's computer at the same time | 0:07:54 | 0:07:56 | |
and wouldn't look at either of them. | 0:07:56 | 0:07:58 | |
"Why would we do that? It's too expensive." | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
It was a total and utter open-and-shut case to them. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:05 | |
If police had looked through Port's computer, they would have found vital | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
evidence. Immediately before he accessed Anthony's escort profile on | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
Sleepyboy, Port did several disturbing online searches. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:20 | |
These included date rape drug, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
unconscious boys rape videos, boys being drug raped, | 0:08:26 | 0:08:30 | |
unconscious porn videos. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:32 | |
In the early hours of the next day, | 0:08:33 | 0:08:35 | |
Port messaged Anthony to arrange a meet-up. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
It makes me feel absolutely furious that they would never entertain the | 0:08:46 | 0:08:51 | |
idea that Stephen Port had anything to do with his death. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
If maybe they'd listened to me in the first place and investigated it, | 0:08:54 | 0:09:00 | |
any investigation whatsoever, three more young boys would still be alive. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:05 | |
Stephen Port was born in 1975 in Southend, | 0:09:09 | 0:09:14 | |
then his family moved to Dagenham in east London. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:16 | |
Bullied at school, he was a loner who went on to become a chef. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:22 | |
In 2005, Ryan Edwards got to know Stephen Port as a neighbour. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:33 | |
So I used to live there, where the blue chairs are on the first floor, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
so diagonally opposite to Stephen's flat here. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:40 | |
So I had a good view, actually, there, of wherever he was out | 0:09:40 | 0:09:45 | |
with, normally, young men on the ground floor. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
Stephen's appetite for men was extremely high. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:54 | |
It was almost like an insatiable thirst, because it was, literally, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:59 | |
one after another, after another, after another. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
Port was regularly meeting young men through gay dating and escort sites. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:07 | |
He had multiple profiles and used a variety of fake names. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:11 | |
Stephen's type was, in gay terms, a twink, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
which is, you know, a young, slim, gay guy. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
Sometimes, effeminate. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
The chaps that Stephen would date would be sort of 16, 17, 18 | 0:10:23 | 0:10:27 | |
and almost a bit vulnerable types. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:30 | |
Stephen did have a peculiar, childlike personality. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:37 | |
There was one time when it was coming up to one of my parties | 0:10:37 | 0:10:39 | |
and I found an old, disused toy truck. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:42 | |
I gave him the toy truck as a present and so it was a bizarre sight. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
There was a party happening, Stephen was sat on the floor, cross-legged | 0:10:48 | 0:10:53 | |
and pushing the toy truck up and down the floor. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
Again, like a world of his own. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:57 | |
Just like a child would play with a toy. It was very, very bizarre to see. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:02 | |
Ryan detected a darker side to his neighbour | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
when he dropped into Port's flat | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
one afternoon for coffee a little unexpectedly. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:12 | |
Stephen took ages to get to the door | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
and he sort of shuffled up and opened the door, | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
and he looked absolutely dreadful, | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
like he hadn't slept a wink. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:20 | |
His eyes were red raw | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
and he was very... Almost slurring his speech. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:26 | |
As I sat down, I was completely shocked, | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
because on the coffee table was a massive clear plastic container | 0:11:30 | 0:11:36 | |
that actually filled the whole circumference of the coffee table | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
and it was full of vials of clear liquid and sachets of white powder. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:45 | |
I was completely taken aback. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:48 | |
There were dozens and dozens of clear bags of white powder | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
and, again, dozens of these vials of clear liquid. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
It really disturbed me, because... | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
it was a huge... It was obviously a huge amount of drugs, | 0:11:57 | 0:12:01 | |
far beyond personal use for someone. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
So, you know, what on earth was he doing with them? | 0:12:04 | 0:12:07 | |
When Ryan met some of Port's boyfriends, | 0:12:09 | 0:12:11 | |
they revealed the violent and abusive character. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
On this one occasion I asked, "Why? What happened?" | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
And he said, "Stephen had pushed me into a TV and I cut my head." | 0:12:18 | 0:12:24 | |
There was another time where one of the boyfriends said that Stephen had | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
actually been violent to him. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:31 | |
I did see a trend towards the later years, | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
the issues the boyfriends were describing to me seemed more sinister. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
In the summer of 2014, | 0:12:39 | 0:12:40 | |
just two months after killing his first victim, Port struck again. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:45 | |
22-year-old Slovakian Gabriel Kovari moved to London in June | 0:12:51 | 0:12:56 | |
and began looking online for a room to rent. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:58 | |
I met Gabriel online. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
He had a profile on a kind of | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
gay social networking stroke dating site | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
and because I had this spare room, I agreed to meet him. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
He was Slovakian. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:18 | |
He was very smart, very sweet-natured. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:22 | |
After six weeks in John's spare room Gabriel announced he was leaving. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:28 | |
I didn't kind of pry into what he was doing | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
and who he was going to meet. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:33 | |
I know he went and met one guy via, you know, a dating app. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:40 | |
I regret... | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
not having asked more questions about where he was going... | 0:13:42 | 0:13:46 | |
..who he was going to stay with. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:49 | |
The guy Gabriel was moving in with was Stephen Port, | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
who soon introduced his new flatmate to his neighbour. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:02 | |
It was a normal text from Stephen, you know, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:04 | |
"Come over and see my Slovakian twink flatmate." | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
So I went round there and met Gabriel. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:09 | |
Stephen wasn't there and he struck me as a really nice, articulate chap | 0:14:09 | 0:14:14 | |
and so after that first meeting, we kept in touch. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:18 | |
When Ryan texted Port to say how nice he thought Gabriel was, | 0:14:20 | 0:14:24 | |
Port replied saying he was "taking good care of him, hehe". | 0:14:24 | 0:14:29 | |
Within days, Ryan noticed Gabriel's sudden disappearance. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
Suddenly communication stopped. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:45 | |
And I thought that was odd, | 0:14:46 | 0:14:47 | |
and so I picked it up with Stephen, actually via text message, you know, | 0:14:47 | 0:14:51 | |
"Oh, have you heard from Gabriel?" | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
Stephen was then texting me various things saying that, you know, | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
he wasn't sure where Gabriel was, | 0:14:57 | 0:14:59 | |
that he thinks he's left to stay with an army guy. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:03 | |
And then I got - a bolt out of the blue - a text from Stephen, | 0:15:03 | 0:15:05 | |
a long text, saying, "I've got some really sad news, neighbour, | 0:15:05 | 0:15:10 | |
"but Gabriel has gone back home and he's picked up a mysterious illness | 0:15:10 | 0:15:15 | |
"and he's died. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:16 | |
"Whatever you do, please don't mention this on Facebook, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
"to the friends and family, because obviously, they're upset enough as it is." | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
Port had killed Gabriel with a fatal dose of chem sex drug GHB, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:31 | |
then somehow moved his body without being spotted a few hundred metres | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
away to a nearby church graveyard. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
I like coming here. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:41 | |
It's such a quiet area, this churchyard. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:46 | |
I've walked the dogs through the gate and | 0:15:47 | 0:15:51 | |
as I've come through here, | 0:15:51 | 0:15:53 | |
I've looked up | 0:15:53 | 0:15:54 | |
and I could see what I thought was someone asleep, | 0:15:54 | 0:15:59 | |
leaning up against the wall. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:01 | |
He was wearing dark glasses, but they weren't on his face properly. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:06 | |
I went up to him and touched a bit of bare skin. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:13 | |
The skin I felt was cold. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
He was almost semi-clothed in the sense his clothes were up here, | 0:16:16 | 0:16:21 | |
up towards his chest area. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:23 | |
It did look highly suspicious. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
He couldn't have clothed himself | 0:16:27 | 0:16:30 | |
in that way. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
He must have been placed there. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
I just thought the whole scenario didn't look right. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
The police suspected that Gabriel had died from a self-inflicted drugs overdose | 0:16:40 | 0:16:46 | |
and the death was not treated as suspicious. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
They tracked down Gabriel's recent address. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:54 | |
Less than a week after he'd left, | 0:16:54 | 0:16:59 | |
I was working from home | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
and four police turn up at my door | 0:17:02 | 0:17:07 | |
and they tell me that he's been found dead in a cemetery. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:13 | |
And after that, it's a bit of a blur. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:17 | |
So you're not just dealing with the fact that your friend has died, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:24 | |
it's the horrific circumstances and this... | 0:17:24 | 0:17:30 | |
mystery and, I guess, that was why I felt compelled, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:37 | |
even at that early stage, to understand and know what happened. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:41 | |
Many questions remained unanswered about his friend's death, | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
so John decided to do a little investigating of his own. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
I typed in "unexplained deaths Barking", | 0:17:53 | 0:17:58 | |
and this link came up, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:00 | |
which is about two-and-a-half to three months before Gabriel was found. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:05 | |
"Man dies in unexplained circumstances in Barking. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
"Police are appealing for information after a man died | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
"in unexplained circumstances on Cooke Street." | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
So, then, what I did was I typed "Cooke Street" into Google Maps. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
So there's Cooke Street and there is St Margaret's churchyard. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:27 | |
It's like a stone's throw. A couple of blocks away. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:32 | |
That's too close. They're two similar | 0:18:34 | 0:18:39 | |
young men, found dead in the same circumstances | 0:18:39 | 0:18:44 | |
that close, mere streets away. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:46 | |
It made me suspicious. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:48 | |
It seemed suspicious. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
Barking and Dagenham Police did not link the deaths of the two gay young men. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:56 | |
No public warnings were issued to Barking's gay community. | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
At the time of Gabriel's death, I didn't hear anything about it in the | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
local community, | 0:19:03 | 0:19:04 | |
so the information I had on my phone, that crucial evidence, | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
stayed on my phone. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
Had the police even made any kind of outreach to the LGBT community, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:15 | |
then local people, like myself, would've been aware and we could've | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
gone straight to the police with the information we knew, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
and people's lives could've been saved. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
Just a week after murdering his second victim, Port used one of his | 0:19:28 | 0:19:32 | |
profiles on the gay dating site Fit Lads to contact 21-year-old | 0:19:32 | 0:19:37 | |
Daniel Whitworth. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:38 | |
On the 3rd of September 2014, | 0:19:40 | 0:19:44 | |
Port suggested they meet for a drink before dinner at his flat, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:48 | |
"Just so you can get to know me a bit, so you know I'm not some psycho." | 0:19:48 | 0:19:52 | |
It was about three weeks later, I'm coming through this gate | 0:19:55 | 0:19:59 | |
and I've seen what looked like another young man lying in exactly the same spot, virtually. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:06 | |
And I thought, "No, I don't believe this." | 0:20:06 | 0:20:08 | |
I thought, "Please, God, don't let this be another body." | 0:20:08 | 0:20:11 | |
I thought, "I don't believe it, it can't be." | 0:20:11 | 0:20:14 | |
This body was placed in exactly the same position as the previous one. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:20 | |
Again, I was thinking, "What made him sort of want to sit in the same, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:25 | |
"you know, L-shaped position?" | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
This was very suspicious to my way of thinking. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:32 | |
Well, anybody would've thought it was suspicious. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:35 | |
Barking and Dagenham Police, | 0:20:36 | 0:20:39 | |
I don't really think they know what they're doing, quite honestly. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
They're nothing better than the Keystone Cops. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
After drugging, raping and murdering Daniel Whitworth, Port had planted | 0:20:47 | 0:20:51 | |
a fake suicide note on his body. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
It suggested that Daniel had been in a relationship with Gabriel Kovari, | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
the previous young man to die, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
and that they had been using GHB, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:03 | |
and Gabriel accidentally overdosed and died. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
Now Daniel was taking his own life out of remorse. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
We were just going about our usual routine | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
and there was a knock at the door, | 0:21:17 | 0:21:19 | |
and there were two policemen | 0:21:19 | 0:21:20 | |
who immediately removed their hats | 0:21:20 | 0:21:24 | |
and held their hats in front of them. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:26 | |
And I thought... | 0:21:26 | 0:21:29 | |
"Oh, my God." | 0:21:29 | 0:21:31 | |
They said they were sorry to inform us that somebody who matched | 0:21:33 | 0:21:37 | |
Daniel's description was found in Barking | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
and they were very sorry, but it looked like he'd taken his own life. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:47 | |
And...I turned away, | 0:21:49 | 0:21:53 | |
I turned my face from them and I could feel the tears | 0:21:53 | 0:21:58 | |
and I gave way to them. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:00 | |
They said they'd found a suicide note | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
and he was just found, peacefully, underneath a tree. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
We were led to believe it was a drug overdose. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
We were extremely confused, because Daniel was quite a happy lad, | 0:22:13 | 0:22:18 | |
everything was going his way, | 0:22:18 | 0:22:20 | |
it just didn't seem to make any sense. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
I've used this box since the death of Daniel, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
basically, to keep everything in - | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
photographs and... | 0:22:36 | 0:22:38 | |
things. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
He did have his whole life ahead of him. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:42 | |
Adam raised Daniel by himself. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:47 | |
He was his only child, yeah. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:49 | |
He was the apple of his eye. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:51 | |
I mean, I'm Daniel's stepmother and I love him dearly, | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
but I can't... | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
begin to imagine... | 0:22:59 | 0:23:01 | |
Sorry. | 0:23:07 | 0:23:08 | |
There are no words. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:18 | |
The pathologist who examined Daniel's body noted there was... | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
Police did not treat the death as suspicious | 0:23:40 | 0:23:42 | |
and focused on Daniel's apparent suicide note. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:46 | |
Mandy says the police asked them to verify it was Daniel's handwriting. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:51 | |
Police sent us the bottom half, not even the bottom half, | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
but the goodbye part of the suicide note via e-mail | 0:23:56 | 0:24:01 | |
and we couldn't be sure, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
because we hadn't seen his handwriting on a regular basis. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:08 | |
We used modern technology to communicate. | 0:24:08 | 0:24:12 | |
This is one of the last birthday cards I got from the boys, | 0:24:13 | 0:24:18 | |
which is in Daniel's handwriting. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
This was really all we had to compare the note to. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
We did say that we couldn't be sure | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
and they did say that they had experts in the field to look at this | 0:24:27 | 0:24:32 | |
handwriting, so that it could be analysed, | 0:24:32 | 0:24:36 | |
and that's exactly what we thought was happening. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
Later, Mandy and Daniel's father Adam saw the whole suicide note. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:47 | |
It was so cold... | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
and to the point and matter-of-fact, and Adam voiced this immediately, | 0:24:52 | 0:24:58 | |
almost immediately, | 0:24:58 | 0:25:00 | |
said, "There is nothing here | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
"that tells me this is Daniel. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
"Absolutely nothing." | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
It also said, you know, "Don't blame the guy I was with last night." | 0:25:10 | 0:25:15 | |
And so one of our first questions was | 0:25:16 | 0:25:19 | |
"who is this man that he's mentioning? | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
"Who was he with last night?" | 0:25:22 | 0:25:24 | |
And he said, "We don't know. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
"We may never know. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
"We won't know the answer to everything." | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
In retrospect, I don't believe they were looking for the answers. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:36 | |
If they were looking, they wouldn't have had to have looked very far. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
The links were there. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
The links were there. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:45 | |
Gabriel's friend John Pape | 0:25:51 | 0:25:53 | |
grew even more suspicious when he heard about the third death of a young man in the area. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:57 | |
It may have been mild paranoia, | 0:25:59 | 0:26:01 | |
but at the time I was thinking, "You've got | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
"now three young men turning up dead in the same area in Barking. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:10 | |
"There's something very wrong going on here." | 0:26:10 | 0:26:14 | |
And because I knew Gabriel, I started to worry that I might be in danger | 0:26:14 | 0:26:20 | |
and so I called the detective from Barking and Dagenham. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:26 | |
And I said, "If this is murder, you have to tell me, | 0:26:26 | 0:26:30 | |
"because I'm concerned for my own safety." | 0:26:30 | 0:26:34 | |
I suppose my thoughts ran to, "Are these young men being murdered?" | 0:26:34 | 0:26:39 | |
And I was assured that it wasn't murder. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:43 | |
During this period, Port tried to bolster his cover story. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:48 | |
Using a false Facebook profile, he posed as Jon Luck, | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
a 21-year-old former gay porn star from California, | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
now living in Dagenham. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
He claimed to have known Gabriel | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
and began spreading stories about Gabriel and Daniel's involvement in | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
dangerous chem sex orgies. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:07 | |
This person is saying that Gabriel and Daniel were together | 0:27:07 | 0:27:15 | |
at a party in Barking. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:18 | |
Essentially, a drug-fuelled orgy. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
So he says, "Young guys, loads of drugs provided by older guys. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:27 | |
"They take advantage of the young ones when they are passed out. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
"One collapsed and when he woke up, one was fucking him. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:35 | |
"They say these parties last three days, nonstop, | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
"they give them shots with dope inside and coke." | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
Obviously, the first port of call is to go to the detectives at Barking | 0:27:45 | 0:27:50 | |
and Dagenham, and, immediately, I ran into that brick wall. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:54 | |
"You're not next of kin, there's nothing we can tell you." | 0:27:54 | 0:27:58 | |
But the point is, I was trying to engage with them, | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
because I felt that maybe I had information about Gabriel's final movements. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:07 | |
And they said that they would speak with their superior officer | 0:28:07 | 0:28:12 | |
and get back to me, and they never did. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
John Pape then contacted gay online news site Pink News and Galop, | 0:28:17 | 0:28:22 | |
an LGBT support group with close links to the police. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:27 | |
Both organisations approached Barking and Dagenham Police to highlight John's concerns. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:32 | |
Galop called the police and they said, "We've got a guy | 0:28:32 | 0:28:36 | |
"and he thinks he's got relevant information. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:39 | |
"He thinks that possibly Gabriel and Daniel were at the same chem sex | 0:28:39 | 0:28:43 | |
"party. Do you want to speak to him?" | 0:28:43 | 0:28:46 | |
And the police said no | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
and also that these deaths are not suspicious. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:52 | |
On the 23rd of June 2015, Daniel Whitworth's parents were summoned to the | 0:28:55 | 0:29:00 | |
inquest into his death. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:02 | |
They were confused to learn that the police had recorded that they, | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
the Whitworths, had identified the handwriting on the suicide note as Daniel's. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
More surprises were to follow. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
The coroner asked the detective whether this handwriting had been properly analysed | 0:29:15 | 0:29:22 | |
and he responded that, you know, | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
they'd taken it back to the police station and had a look. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:30 | |
It was such a shock, | 0:29:31 | 0:29:33 | |
because they said that they were going to get this handwriting | 0:29:33 | 0:29:37 | |
expertly analysed by a handwriting specialist | 0:29:37 | 0:29:40 | |
and they didn't do it. They quite simply didn't do it and if they had, | 0:29:40 | 0:29:45 | |
they would've known pretty early on that that was not Daniel's handwriting | 0:29:45 | 0:29:51 | |
and they were then looking at murder. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:53 | |
And before you know it, | 0:29:56 | 0:29:57 | |
they're asking the detective in charge about a blue bedsheet that | 0:29:57 | 0:30:02 | |
Daniel was found on that we knew nothing about. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:05 | |
The coroner did ask the inspector in charge had they done any DNA testing | 0:30:05 | 0:30:10 | |
on the bedsheet, to which he replied that he hadn't. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:15 | |
And when he was asked why | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
they hadn't done any DNA testing on the bedsheet, he said | 0:30:17 | 0:30:21 | |
they didn't feel the need to scrutinise this bedsheet, | 0:30:21 | 0:30:26 | |
because he didn't think there was anybody else involved at that time. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:31 | |
The DNA on the bedsheet would most likely have matched with Stephen | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
Port's DNA, which was already on the police database. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:39 | |
And then, we hear that he was bruised under the arms. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:45 | |
The coroner said that there was bruising found under Daniel's arms | 0:30:45 | 0:30:52 | |
and across his chest, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:54 | |
which suggested he had been manhandled. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:58 | |
And so there we had it. | 0:30:59 | 0:31:01 | |
We had our third-party involvement. | 0:31:01 | 0:31:05 | |
There was no way this was a suicide. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:09 | |
He was taken there. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:11 | |
He was taken there. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:12 | |
The coroner recorded an open verdict, | 0:31:15 | 0:31:17 | |
concluding that third-party involvement could not be ruled out. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:22 | |
At the end, we came out and I specifically said to the liaison, "You know, | 0:31:22 | 0:31:28 | |
"we've been given an open verdict, can we now reopen this? | 0:31:28 | 0:31:32 | |
"Can we carry on with investigations? | 0:31:32 | 0:31:35 | |
"Because there's a lot that we've heard in there today," | 0:31:35 | 0:31:38 | |
and they actually said, "No, that's it. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:42 | |
"It's an open verdict | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
"and that doesn't mean that we can carry on with it. | 0:31:44 | 0:31:48 | |
"That is the conclusion of Daniel's death." | 0:31:48 | 0:31:52 | |
"That's your lot, live with it," | 0:31:52 | 0:31:55 | |
was the attitude. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:56 | |
I just think that we were hurried along | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
to get a line drawn under this | 0:32:00 | 0:32:03 | |
and it's left another family, another family besides ours, | 0:32:03 | 0:32:09 | |
and Gabriel's family, and Anthony's family, | 0:32:09 | 0:32:13 | |
in this awful, awful position. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:17 | |
That's a huge mistake. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:20 | |
In early 2015, Stephen Port was convicted of perverting the course | 0:32:22 | 0:32:26 | |
of justice during the investigation into Anthony Walgate's death. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:31 | |
He was sentenced to four months in prison, | 0:32:31 | 0:32:34 | |
but was released two months early on licence. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:37 | |
On the 13th of September, on gay dating app Grindr, | 0:32:39 | 0:32:43 | |
he exchanged messages with 25-year-old Jack Taylor. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:47 | |
Jack was lovely. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:50 | |
He was a beautiful person. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:53 | |
He was funny, very considerate. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:56 | |
He was like a big brother to me and Jen, | 0:32:56 | 0:32:59 | |
even though he was our younger brother. He looked out for us. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:01 | |
I just remember his smile, his laugh | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
and just the way he was in general - | 0:33:07 | 0:33:09 | |
happy, caring. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:11 | |
There will always be a hole... | 0:33:12 | 0:33:14 | |
now that he's gone. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:16 | |
Always. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:18 | |
Jack went out on the Saturday evening to visit friends. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:26 | |
He had a few drinks with people | 0:33:26 | 0:33:28 | |
that he would normally have had a drink with. | 0:33:28 | 0:33:30 | |
He didn't come home Sunday night. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:32 | |
We then started to think there was something a little bit odd | 0:33:32 | 0:33:35 | |
and then, come Monday, as I come out of college, Mum had rung me. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:40 | |
And then, whilst I'm on the phone to her, | 0:33:42 | 0:33:44 | |
the police had pulled up outside | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
and they came in and asked Mum and Dad if they was Jack's mum and dad. | 0:33:47 | 0:33:53 | |
So, they've obviously said yes and they said, "Your son's dead." | 0:33:53 | 0:33:58 | |
It was as simple as that. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:00 | |
"Jack's dead." | 0:34:00 | 0:34:02 | |
And, obviously, I heard the scream from Mum | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
and... | 0:34:06 | 0:34:08 | |
I just slid down my fridge, onto my floor | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
and just sat there crying. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:17 | |
It's like you was living in a nightmare at that point... | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
..waiting for somebody to say it wasn't true. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:24 | |
Police told the family Jack was found in a park, next to a churchyard | 0:34:26 | 0:34:30 | |
in Barking having died of a drugs overdose. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:34 | |
They'd said that there was a syringe found in Jack's pocket | 0:34:34 | 0:34:40 | |
and a powder in his wallet. | 0:34:40 | 0:34:42 | |
They said that the coroner had also found a needle mark in Jack's arm. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:47 | |
Well, straightaway, our immediate thoughts were, | 0:34:47 | 0:34:51 | |
"Jack wouldn't have done drugs." | 0:34:51 | 0:34:52 | |
He was anti-drugs, | 0:34:52 | 0:34:54 | |
so something wasn't right. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:56 | |
Nearly two weeks after Jack's death, | 0:34:59 | 0:35:01 | |
his sisters say they contacted Barking | 0:35:01 | 0:35:03 | |
and Dagenham Police for an update on their investigation. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:07 | |
Me and my sister were just blown away to find out that | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
nothing had been done for 11 days. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
No investigation. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:15 | |
It was just a case of Jack had just gone and sat there, | 0:35:15 | 0:35:19 | |
done an overdose and that was that. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:22 | |
Unhappy with the police's investigation, Donna and Jen began their own detective work. | 0:35:23 | 0:35:28 | |
I'll just put these ones here, | 0:35:28 | 0:35:30 | |
because these are about Jack and his needle mark and arm... | 0:35:30 | 0:35:34 | |
Jack's last steps on Friday night | 0:35:34 | 0:35:35 | |
and Saturday night. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:37 | |
'Me and my sister, Jen, we sat up till four, | 0:35:37 | 0:35:41 | |
'five every morning after Jack died | 0:35:41 | 0:35:44 | |
'and what we'd do is we'd get pieces of paper | 0:35:44 | 0:35:47 | |
'and we'd put things around the outside, like a jigsaw puzzle, | 0:35:47 | 0:35:51 | |
'to see what bit fitted with what.' | 0:35:51 | 0:35:53 | |
We did a lot of research on the internet and we come across, | 0:35:56 | 0:36:00 | |
obviously, the other boys that had been found in Barking. | 0:36:00 | 0:36:04 | |
This one is when we found Gabriel and Daniel online. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:10 | |
That was the third boy that passed away. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:12 | |
It did all look suspicious to us. | 0:36:13 | 0:36:15 | |
The three young boys, all in their 20s, all found around the same area. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:20 | |
They all had GHB. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:22 | |
It really did seem suspicious to us. | 0:36:22 | 0:36:24 | |
Me and my sister questioned the police a few times about these other boys | 0:36:25 | 0:36:29 | |
and Jack, and we'd said about, you know, "Could there be a connection?" | 0:36:29 | 0:36:34 | |
They'd said no. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:35 | |
The Taylor sisters say they continued to raise questions with the police | 0:36:40 | 0:36:43 | |
and as a result, officers eventually agreed to show them where Jack's body was found. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:48 | |
We just walked out the train station, didn't we? | 0:36:50 | 0:36:52 | |
And they were both waiting for us, the two police officers, | 0:36:52 | 0:36:55 | |
and when we arrived, they told us that they had CCTV footage of Jack | 0:36:55 | 0:37:00 | |
meeting a man. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:01 | |
We were really shocked, because, obviously, | 0:37:09 | 0:37:11 | |
this is 14 days after Jack's died, | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
so we wasn't aware that there was any CCTV. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
The man in the CCTV footage was Stephen Port, | 0:37:18 | 0:37:22 | |
captured here on his way to meet Jack Taylor. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:26 | |
We was expecting them to say, "Right, we know who this man is, | 0:37:26 | 0:37:29 | |
"we've already asked him, you know, questions regarding when he met Jack, where did they go." | 0:37:29 | 0:37:36 | |
And when they said no, we was really shocked. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:40 | |
It was shocking, just how much they wasn't bothered about who that man was. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:48 | |
Jack meets a man at Barking Station | 0:37:51 | 0:37:54 | |
and then they've got footage of him walking through a particular route. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:59 | |
According to his sisters, | 0:38:03 | 0:38:04 | |
police claimed that Jack and this man then parted company. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:08 | |
The police had said that they'd got Jack with this man, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:13 | |
walking through this area, together, up until this point. | 0:38:13 | 0:38:17 | |
And then they'd said that they lose the man | 0:38:20 | 0:38:23 | |
and then Jack's alone. And then they'd said that Jack goes straight ahead, on his own. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:28 | |
Towards the green, where Jack was found dead. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
Which, to us, just didn't feel right, did it? | 0:38:31 | 0:38:33 | |
-No. -It just didn't sit right. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
They told us that Jack was found just sitting, leaning against the wall there. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:51 | |
Just around about here, wasn't it? | 0:38:56 | 0:38:58 | |
It's just awful to think that... | 0:39:00 | 0:39:04 | |
this is where he was. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:05 | |
The fact how dirty it is. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:09 | |
Look how dirty it is. He just wouldn't have sat here, would he? | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
We just knew something was wrong. | 0:39:14 | 0:39:16 | |
For whatever reason, he wouldn't have walked through the green. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:19 | |
He definitely wouldn't have sat here on his own, in the pitch-black. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
He didn't do drugs anyway, | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
let alone sit here and inject himself. It was just... | 0:39:26 | 0:39:30 | |
you know, the whole situation didn't make sense, not for Jack. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
Convinced the police were wrong about their brother walking alone | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
into the park, Donna and Jen returned to the last known point where CCTV had | 0:39:43 | 0:39:48 | |
captured Jack with the man. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:50 | |
We said again and again and again, "Could he have gone left?" | 0:39:52 | 0:39:56 | |
And they'd said no. "No, definitely not." | 0:39:56 | 0:39:58 | |
Shortly after, a sergeant came on the scene | 0:40:00 | 0:40:02 | |
and we explained everything to him. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
The sergeant said he would go and have a look. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:07 | |
He got back to us and he said that we were right. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
Jack turned left, that wasn't Jack that walked into that green area. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:19 | |
There was never any footage of Jack on his own. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:24 | |
He was always with this man. | 0:40:24 | 0:40:26 | |
Jack's sisters wanted the police to release an image of the man to the | 0:40:29 | 0:40:33 | |
public to try and get an identification, | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
but they say the police were initially reluctant. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
When they were saying things like, | 0:40:40 | 0:40:41 | |
"Because it's non-suspicious, we don't normally release footage," | 0:40:41 | 0:40:45 | |
it really upset us, because this is our brother. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
And not only that, this is a person. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
You know, this is a human being. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:53 | |
So me and Jen said, "Well, we want it released, | 0:40:56 | 0:40:58 | |
"because we want to know who this man is." | 0:40:58 | 0:41:01 | |
You know, he's with our brother and we want to know, who is he? | 0:41:01 | 0:41:07 | |
Because he would know what had happened to our Jack. He could know. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:10 | |
They eventually released the footage of Jack meeting the man at Barking | 0:41:14 | 0:41:19 | |
Station and two days later, a man was arrested. | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
On the 15th of October 2015, 16 months after the death of his first | 0:41:27 | 0:41:33 | |
victim, Stephen Port was finally arrested for the murders of four young men. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:38 | |
The Met Police moved the case from Barking and Dagenham to a specialist homicide unit. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:47 | |
A year later, the families of the victims finally saw Stephen Port brought to justice. | 0:41:53 | 0:41:59 | |
Port was found guilty of murdering four young men and of drugging | 0:42:01 | 0:42:05 | |
or sexually assaulting a further seven. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
He was ordered to spend the rest of his life behind bars. | 0:42:09 | 0:42:12 | |
The loved ones of Port's victims have been left to deal with the catalogue of police failings. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:20 | |
Stephen Port, he is a liar. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
And yet, the police continually believed him. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
It made me furious, absolutely furious. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:32 | |
They didn't want to investigate it | 0:42:32 | 0:42:34 | |
and it was just easy enough to believe him. | 0:42:34 | 0:42:36 | |
Perverting the course of justice - job done. Case closed. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:39 | |
I truly do believe that the Barking and Dagenham Police that investigated | 0:42:45 | 0:42:51 | |
Anthony's death and the others are homophobic. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:54 | |
I genuinely believe if Anthony had been a girl, left outside, like trash | 0:42:54 | 0:42:59 | |
that they would've put more effort into it. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:02 | |
A lot more effort into it. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:04 | |
But as they were all young gay boys, they didn't. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
They did nothing. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:09 | |
Stephen Port took Jack's life. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:21 | |
But they let that happen. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:24 | |
As far as we're concerned, they're just as guilty as him. | 0:43:24 | 0:43:29 | |
They should be held accountable for his death, | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
because they could have prevented it | 0:43:32 | 0:43:34 | |
and we have to live with that for the rest of our lives. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:37 | |
I don't think they cared at all. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
They couldn't have. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:47 | |
For 15 months we believed Daniel had taken his own life. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:51 | |
We were going to suicide organisations for help. | 0:43:51 | 0:43:57 | |
And then...suddenly, you're told... | 0:43:58 | 0:44:03 | |
quite matter-of-factly... | 0:44:03 | 0:44:05 | |
it appears to be a murder. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
How can I put into words how let down I feel by an establishment... | 0:44:08 | 0:44:16 | |
that is there to protect the community? | 0:44:16 | 0:44:19 | |
I can't. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:22 |