The emergency call came in just before dawn. A man’s voice, calm and detached, reported a young boy outside on Cook Street. He thought the boy might have collapsed or had a seizure. When asked for the exact address, he stumbled, unsure of the door number.
He said he was just holding his car. Then, abruptly, he hung up. The ambulance service called him back to clarify the location. The man snorted, confirmed the street, and gave no further help.
Anthony Neil, the first clinician on scene, drove around the estate searching. It was deserted. He called control again, and they reached the caller once more. The man was dismissive, impatient, but he confirmed the location.
Anthony approached the second block of flats. At first, he thought he saw bin bags propped against the entrance. As he got closer, he realized it was a person. The figure sat cross-legged, upright, leaning against the wall, a hoodie obscuring the face.
When Anthony pulled the hood back, he knew immediately. The man was dead. There was rigor mortis in the jaw, the eyes were lifeless. He’d been dead for a few hours.
Everything felt wrong. Anthony stepped back, called in the police, and flagged it as a potential crime scene. When Glenn finished his night shift, his colleague dropped him off across the road from his flat on Cook Street. Police were everywhere.
A officer asked him where he was going. When Glenn said he lived at Cook Street, the officer took him to another detective, who asked if he knew a Steven Port. Glenn said yes, he was his flatmate, probably in bed asleep. They asked Glenn to let them into the property.
Inside, they woke Steven. Steven had been sound asleep. As he was interviewed, Glenn heard him say he’d come home from work, seen the young man outside, slapped him around the face to try to rouse him, and when he couldn’t, he called 999. That was all.
Steven was calm and cooperative. Sarah Sack was Anthony Walgate’s mother. Her son was loud, funny, loyal. He had moved to London to study fashion and design and loved every minute of it.
On a holiday in Turkey, on the last night before she was due to fly home, Sarah turned on her phone to a flood of missed calls and messages. Her son called her and told her Anthony had been found dead. She couldn’t understand it. He was young, and young people don’t just die.
When the first officers examined the scene, they noted blood around his mouth, which could suggest a seizure. But the positioning was wrong. He was sitting upright. If he’d been assaulted, he wouldn’t be sitting up.
A body found with the midriff exposed, bruising under the armpits from being dragged, underwear inside out and back to front, a trouser zip open. It looked like someone had dressed him in a rush, panicked, and dumped the body. But the police found no marks on him. There was nothing obvious.
They told Sarah it could be a drug overdose and they’d send off a toxicology screen. It could take weeks. Sarah told them something was wrong. If he hadn’t been attacked, something was not right.
Within days, the police announced Anthony’s death was not suspicious. They told his best friend, Shana, to stop asking questions she wasn’t getting answers to. They had found a bottle of liquid in his bag, GHB, and they decided it was his. It was obvious, to them, that he was just a gay kid into chemsex.
That was the label. That was the story. The police seemed to have concluded it in a day. They wouldn’t entertain any other idea.
Anthony had been cautious. Before meeting anyone, he told his friends where he was going and who he was seeing. He showed them a picture of the man’s profile from the website. Another friend went to the police, gave them a description of the man Anthony was meeting, and later identified a photo of Steven Port as that man.
Port had used an alias, called himself Jordine. Under questioning, Port admitted he had hired Anthony as an escort. He said he panicked when he realized Anthony was dead and moved the body outside. The police believed him.
They swallowed it completely. But Port had told three different stories. First, he was just walking past the body. Then, he had found the body and moved it because it was blocking his entrance.
Then, he said he was having sex with Anthony when Anthony overdosed. He claimed he had agreed to pay Anthony £800 for the night, but when asked if he had that money, the police admitted Port’s bank account was overdrawn. Sarah asked why they believed him. They said they did.
She knew he wasn’t telling the truth. Anthony had a lifelong phobia of being sick. If he had vomited, he would have run. The police kept feeding Port information, matching his stories to their assumptions, never questioning why they kept changing.
Alarm bells should have rung. Port had lied about who he was, made himself younger, changed his name, sent a false address. Anything to hide his identity. The police accepted every word.
Sarah went to her MP, Karl Turner, insisting her son was murdered and the police wouldn’t do anything. He thought homophobia was perhaps an exaggeration. But she was relentless. She kept raising the issue.
The Met’s response was always the same: nothing to see, everything is fine. When the toxicology results came back, they showed Anthony had a massive amount of GHB in his system. That was what killed him. It confirmed their initial theory.
A gay young man engaging in drug-fueled sex, a tragic accident. They never looked further. Sarah knew her son wouldn’t even take a paracetamol. She knew he wasn’t a drug user.
But no one in authority listened. Around the same time, a young Slovakian man named Gabriel Kovar came to London. He was artistic, ambitious, wanted to become an English teacher. He was determined to live in London, even willing to sleep rough.
He told a friend he’d been offered a free room in a flat in Barking, which raised a few eyebrows. But he was determined. Ryan Edwards, a neighbor and friend of Steven Port, met Gabriel one evening. Steven had messaged him, inviting him to meet his new Slovakian flatmate, twenty-two, tall, skinny, cute.
Ryan came over. Gabriel was charming, intelligent, chatty. Ryan noticed tension between the two. Gabriel clearly didn’t find Steven attractive.
At one point, when Steven left the room, Gabriel leaned over and whispered to Ryan: “Steven is not the man you think he is. He is not a nice person. ” Before Ryan could ask what he meant, Steven returned. Ryan was concerned.
He found Gabriel on Grindr and offered him a place to stay if things weren’t working out. Gabriel replied, enthusiastically, that he’d really appreciate that. But the next morning, Gabriel didn’t answer Ryan’s messages. On the 26th of August 2014, Ryan got a text from a new number.
It was Steven, telling him to delete his old number. Ryan asked how Gabriel was. Steven said he’d gone to stay with another local guy, “some soldier guy. He gets around, lol.
” It seemed quick, but Ryan let it go. Days passed. On the 30th of August, Steven messaged Ryan: “Have you seen Gabe around Barking at all? Been trying to contact him, but his phone has been off for a couple of days.
” Ryan said he hadn’t heard anything. Steven said he was worried. His concern seemed genuine. Ryan’s worry grew.
On the 1st of September, Ryan messaged Steven, noting how strange it was that Gabriel had disappeared. Steven replied that Gabriel had mentioned going to Spain to study, but it was odd he hadn’t messaged. He claimed he didn’t even know Gabriel’s surname. “He’s such a nice, beautiful boy.
I just hope he’s all right. ” On the 11th of September, Steven sent a longer text: “I’ve just heard some sad news from one of Gabriel’s friends that Gabe did return to Spain to be with his boyfriend. He died on arrival from an infection. Feel so sad.
He was our friend. ” Ryan was shocked and devastated. He accepted the story. It was a neat, closed chapter.
But before that, on the 26th of August, a woman named Barbara Dean was walking her dog through Barking Abbey grounds. She turned the corner and saw a young man sitting against the wall, head down, dark glasses. She assumed he was sleeping off the night before. But he didn’t move a muscle.
She clapped her hands, made a noise, tried to catch his attention. Nothing. No flicker, no breath. There was no blood, no injury.
But she knew something was terribly wrong. Gabriel Kovar had died from a fatal overdose of GHB. The call came in just after nine in the morning. Before three that same day, the crime scene was closed.
The death was ruled unexplained, not suspicious. It was closed down within five or six hours. No one questioned it. Daniel Whitworth was a shy, hardworking young man.
His parents, Mandy and Adam, had suspected he was gay since he was about twelve, and it never bothered them. He was a go-getter, never lazy. In early September 2014, Daniel told his parents he was going out. Then he vanished.
After three days of unanswered calls and messages, they reported him missing. He was classified as a medium risk, meaning there would be no active search. He wasn’t considered suicidal. Just a few days later, a Saturday, Barbara Dean walked her dog through the Abbey grounds again.
Ever since finding Gabriel, she always looked at that wall. And there he was again. Another young man, in almost the same spot, in the same position. She thought he was sleeping.
But he was so pale. He didn’t move. She noticed something white stuck down his shirt, possibly paper. She called the police and told them it looked like a note.
Police arrived. Daniel Whitworth was found sitting upright, no visible injuries, no signs of struggle. Same area. He had drugs in his pocket, and the note.
When the police came to Mandy and Adam’s door, Mandy was getting ready for work. They took their hats off, and her heart sank. They said Daniel had been found in Barking. With a suicide note.
Mandy clung to hope, asking if they had the right person. But they had found his driving license. They were confident. They said he had taken an overdose.
The note, which they sent only the last line of to the family, read: “I’ve thrown my phone in the grass somewhere. Sorry everyone. ” Mandy and Adam wanted to see the whole note. There was nothing in it that identified it as Daniel’s.
No names, nothing personal. But the police asked if they could verify his handwriting. Mandy said she couldn’t, not from that little bit. Yet the police officer wrote down that the family had verified it as Daniel’s handwriting.
From that point on, they all went with that information. The note detailed that Daniel had had a sexual relationship with Gabriel Kovar, that Gabriel had died of an overdose while they were having sex, and that Daniel felt so guilty he had taken his own life. It said, “Don’t blame the guy I was with last night. ” Daniel and drugs didn’t go together.
Mandy and Adam pushed for them to find the person mentioned in the note. They were told they were “in a terrible state of grief. ” It was explained away. The note gave the police an easy hypothesis, an easy solution.
It closed down two cases very quickly. No more resources, no more investigation. Daniel’s death was ruled a suicide. The cases of Gabriel and Daniel were linked and effectively closed.
Around the same time, Steven Port was charged in connection with Anthony Walgate’s death. The pressure came from Sarah’s persistent campaigning and her MP’s formal complaints. But the charge was not murder or manslaughter. A document to the CPS began with the line: “The deceased, a male prostitute.
” It stated there was no evidence of murder or manslaughter, and the only offense they could consider was perverting the course of justice. Port got eight months in prison, four months inside, four on license. Sarah was furious. She said they had let a murderer go free, that he would kill again.
Port’s neighbor Ryan asked him, once he got out, what had happened. Port replied it was a “minor offense,” a “sixty-second mistake” that cost him ten weeks of his life inside. He joked that at least he hadn’t lost his job or boyfriend. He was getting away with it.
In September 2015, almost a year after Daniel’s death, another young man named Jack Taylor was found dead in a dark corner of the green next to St. Margaret’s Church in Barking. It was yards away from the wall where Daniel and Gabriel had been found. Jack was twenty-five, from Dagenham.
He worked in a warehouse storing expensive champagne, where staff were regularly drug tested. He wouldn’t have risked his livelihood. He had hoped to join the police force. His family knew he would never have willingly taken drugs.
Police found him propped against the cemetery wall. In the report, a detective sergeant wrote: “My suspicions are an overdose or a severe reaction to some form of medication mixed with controlled drugs. I make this assessment based on the syringe, white powder, and clear liquid. ” In his pockets.
So the decision was made again. Non-suspicious death. No further investigation. His sisters, Jen and Donna Taylor, were devastated and baffled.
None of it made sense. They thought it was suspicious. The police didn’t. The sisters refused to accept it.
They poured over details, found out about the other deaths, noted the similarities—chemsex, the locations, the personal histories. They badgered the police. They demanded CCTV. The last known sighting of Jack was on camera outside Barking Railway Station.
He was walking next to a very tall man. The police didn’t seem concerned about who that man was. The sisters pushed. Eventually, the police released the footage.
Ryan saw it on a Facebook post: “Do you know this guy? Last scene with Jack Taylor. ” He knew it was him immediately. He called the police anonymously, gave them the name and number he had, and noted it was likely fake.
Within hours, another police officer identified the man. It was Steven Port. In his first interview about Jack, Port denied everything. “I do not recognize his face.
I did not know him. I did not kill Jack Taylor. ” But the dots started to connect. They found the link to Anthony, then to Gabriel and Daniel.
When Port was questioned about Daniel’s suicide note, he denied writing it. But a forensic examination of his laptop revealed the extent of his obsession with young gay men and with drug rape videos online. It was his life, every day, all day. When the trial came, the survivors testified.
They described how Port had drugged them. One survivor, who met Port years later on Grindr, told the court how Port had asked if he liked chemsex. He said no. Port said, fine, we won’t do that.
They had sex. Port couldn’t maintain an erection. He went to the toilet, came back, and injected a liquid into the survivor’s anus, saying it was lube. He did it again.
The survivor felt dizzy, drunk. He realized Port was trying to drug him. He got dressed to leave, saw the syringe in Port’s hand. Port gave him a glass of water, which he sipped, then asked if Port had given him drugs.
Port said no. He lied that he was allergic to a lot of drugs. Port still said no. The survivor walked to the station, terrified he would pass out.
He did not report it. Gay people don’t trust the police to take them seriously. And how do you tell an officer that a guy you met on a hookup app for consensual sex sexually assaulted you? On paper, it sounds ridiculous.
He lived with the guilt, wondering if his silence had cost Jack his life. He met Port one day, and Jack met him the next. Steven Port was convicted of the murders of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovar, Daniel Whitworth, and Jack Taylor. He was also convicted of drugging and raping seven other men.
The judge sentenced him to life in prison. Outside the court, Jack’s family spoke of the relief and the grief. But Sarah had one more fight. The inquest.
The families demanded to know why the police had failed so badly. The inquest heard how police had not even checked their own intelligence on Port, who was already a sexual assault suspect. They seized his laptop but never examined it, and it contained everything they needed to know. Complaints of drugging and rape had been made against him in 2012 and 2014, but they were never looked at.
There was layer upon layer of incompetence, based on an initial narrative they had spent all their energy validating. An inquest jury found that Anthony, Gabriel, Daniel, and Jack were unlawfully killed. They found that the deaths of Gabriel, Daniel, and Jack could probably have been prevented had the police acted properly. Sarah said, all along, she had said it was homophobia.
If it had been a young girl found dumped by the bins, there would have been a much bigger investigation. The families still wait for accountability. A new IOPC investigation has been opened. But the four young men are gone.
Anthony always used to tell his mother that one day he would be famous. Everyone would be talking about him. They are now, but for all the wrong reasons. He and the others were young men on the verge of making it.
They had dreams, talents, aspirations. They were extraordinary human beings. And they were failed, one after another, by the people who were supposed to protect them.
