Serial killer Stephen Port given whole life term for murder of four gay men
By Will Stroude
Stephen Port has been handed a whole-life prison sentence and will most likely die in prison after being found guilty of murdering four young men, the BBC reports.
The 41-year-old serial killer should die in prison, said sentencing judge Mr Justice Openshaw.
Port, who was also convicted of multiple sex offences, lured victims Gabriel Kovari, Jack Taylor, Daniel Witworth and Anthony Walgate to his flat using online dating apps including Grindr, before injecting them with lethal doses of date-rape drug GHB.
The victims’ bodies were all dumped less than 500m from Ports home in and around the same churchyard in Barking, East London, between June 2014 and Setpember 2015.
Following the guilty verdict, police have urged dating apps to offer greater protection to users.
However the Met police have come under intense scrutiny themselves for initially failing to link the deaths. 17 officers are currently the subject of an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigation.
Veteran LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has accused the force of institutional homophobia over its handling of the case.
“If four young middle class women had been murdered in Mayfair, I believe the police would have made a public appeal much sooner and mounted a far more comprehensive investigation,” he said.
“The killing of low income gay men in working class Barking was treated very differently. Police officers stand accused of class, gender and sexuality bias.”
Donna, the sister Port’s final victim, Jack Taylor, suggested that the victims’ sexuality played a part in the police not treating his death as suspicious in a special interview with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme yesterday (November 25).
“It was seen as gay drugged men who had just sat there, done an overdose, and that’s that,” she said. “As if it were normal.”
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