Stephen Port: Police failures ‘probably’ contributed to deaths of victims, inquest jury finds

Mistakes by the Metropolitan Police “probably” contributed to the deaths of serial killer Stephen Port’s victims, an inquest jury has found, as the force faced the prospect of legal action over its bungled investigations.

The families of Port’s four victims said their deaths “should be on public record as one of the most widespread institutional failures in modern history”, with one describing Friday’s verdict as a “massive victory” which proved “we were right all this time”.

But the families also said they were “incensed” that jurors in the Barking inquests had been barred from considering the possibility of police prejudice against the young gay men all killed with fatal doses of the drug GHB.

Scotland Yard insisted that it did not recognise the allegations from the bereaved of “institutional homophobia” within its force, but instead saw “all sorts of errors in the investigation, which came together in a truly dreadful way” for which it apologised to the victims’ families.

Police officers missed repeated opportunities to catch the sexual predator after he dumped the body of his first victim Anthony Walgate, a 23-year-old fashion student, outside his own block of flats.

In weeks of hearings at Barking Town Hall, yards from Port’s flat, jurors heard police admit failing to carry out basic checks, send evidence to be forensically examined, and exercise professional curiosity during the 16-month killing spree, from June 2014 to September 2015.

Port, who has been handed a whole life sentence, killed three more times in near-identical circumstances before he was caught, in addition to drugging and sexually assaulting more than a dozen other men.

Concluding the inquests into the deaths of Mr Walgate, 23, Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and 25-year-old Jack Taylor, jurors acknowledged police officers’ “heavy workload”, but said there were failures in the police response that “cannot be overlooked”.

Amanda Whitworth, the stepmother of Port’s youngest victim, said she had been left sobbing at times while hearing evidence laying police failings bare.

“We're still in shock, really, that we've seen what we've seen over these weeks,” she said. “I'm still trying to process what we've seen ... We've felt angry enough at times to where, even though we've been in Barking, we've stayed upstairs and watched it in the family room because you just can't trust yourself not to get angry in the courtroom.”

While coroner Sarah Munro QC had barred jurors from deciding on the issue of homophobia for legal reasons, the four victims’ loved ones have claimed police failings stemmed from prejudice, because the victims were gay and their deaths were drug-related.

Apologising to the families over police failings, Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball said: “I don’t think the Met is institutionally homophobic. I do think we had failings in our investigations.

“I do trust that those failings would not be repeated today. And certainly, every single one of us here and many people beyond us, are here to make sure that they wouldn’t happen again.”

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Jurors deliberated for a week before returning their conclusions, after hearing that none of the victims was from the area, and was either anti-drugs or had no known use of GHB.

“You have to hope prejudice did play a part,” Mr Pape said. “Because if the Met were this incompetent with every serious crime, regardless of the victim's origin, sexuality or the setting in which they are found, rapists and murderers would be going unpoliced and no-one would be protected.”

Mr Whitworth's partner, Ricky Waumsley, said: “I believe it's a mixture of everything - so, a bit of laziness, incompetence, lack of training. But I absolutely stand by that they were being homophobic towards these four victims and making general assumptions that they're all young, gay men who take drugs.”

Mr Walgate's mother, Sarah Sak, said the jurors’ conclusion was a “massive victory” but she is “disappointed” they were not allowed to consider prejudice, and called for the police watchdog to reopen its investigation and for police officers to be sacked.

“If Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel and Jack had been girls found in such close proximity there would have been an outcry,” Ms Sak said. “There would have been a lot more investigation - and there just wasn't.”

Speaking on behalf of the families, lawyer Neil Hudgell said they wanted the police watchdog to reopen its investigation into the handling of the case, and were concerned that officers involved in the case had been promoted, suggesting “a culture of rewarding failure”.

He said: “We ask the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the home secretary, Priti Patel, how that can be right? What faith in policing can the British public have when failings not only go unpunished, but are instead rewarded?”

Mr Hudgell added: “Finally, but most importantly, we want to say to Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel and Jack that you will never be forgotten. We feel your loss every minute of every day, we will forever wonder how your lives would have turned out, but you live on strongly in our cherished memories.”

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