RedHanded - Episode 25 - The Grindr Killer

Episode Date: December 21, 2017

Join the girls today as they delve into the murky world of London’s most recent serial killer, the Grindr Killer - Stephen Port. They’ll pull apart this bizarre case of GHB poisoning, catfishing galore, the world’s most fake suicide note and utterly sh*t body disposal, to ask the very serious question of how Port’s crimes were missed   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Today's episode 25, A quarter of a century. Who'd have thought that we'd be here? You? I didn't think that we'd give up. No, definitely not. This episode is very much brought to you thanks to the support of our fantastic patrons. Thank you guys so much for donating and for sticking with us despite the upset with Patreon over the last couple of weeks. We're so glad that they listened and that they aren't changing their fee structure.

So we just wanted to take a quick second to thank you and also just to clarify that nothing about your pledges will change. We wanted to highlight this because many people have obviously seen the change, but maybe not the U-turn that Patreon did to rectify their disastrous plans. Let's be honest, it was really going to screw this over for us. I also noticed on the list that some people are on there twice, so it looks like people have gone away and come back. So thank you very much for coming back.

And our new ones this week are Jamie McLeod, Heather Ron, Florence SJ. Winter Amora. Winter is such a great name. It's a fantastic name. And Maggie James, who Maggie is our very first $20 patron. So thank you, Maggie. We absolutely love you. And Phil and Shauna Bailey. Is that like a couple donating together? I think so. Isn't that really sweet? Maybe one day we'll find love like that hannah that's where we subscribe jointly to a murder podcast and donate together to them that's adorable i'm not gonna hold my breath five star review thank yous we have st pona who said they really love these podcasts

and binged all of them over two days they like the variety of stories covered and keep up the profanity don't worry about it we will love that it just comes so naturally but people just seem to i don't even notice but we absolutely will because we can't stop apparently another one from cause creative it says always a great feeling seeing a new episode keep up the great work oh i love that we're there like i have that with so few podcasts where i'm like waiting for a new episode so that's awesome and we have berber lee i love this one i've actually bumped this one up the list because I love it so much they say that the cases we cover are still interesting even if they've heard them on other podcasts which is nice

because we were a bit concerned about that in the beginning and they like the humor and the commentary and crucially the intro music they asked if it was the same as the great british bake-off or whether all british music sounds the same no our intro music is not the theme to the great british bake-off no it's definitely not we found it on a royalty-free website when we first started this and it's called like murderous symphony 5 or something it's called murders 30 murders 30 okay hannah does all the editing so she's the only one that sees it every time, but yes, I don't think that the Great British Bake Off are using

Murders 13 for their intro music. I feel like we should play a little snippet of it in here, just enough that we won't get sued. But I'll leave that with you, Hannah. Also, social media moment of the week. I absolutely love this. It's from SuperBen9 who asked us

on instagram if we're gonna be at crime con next year seriously ben super ben we wish we were gonna be at crime con next year we are so far from being at crime con next year we are so very not being at crime con next year but hey if you guys are listening and we know that the majority of our listeners are in the us and you guys are like hey we know that the majority of our listeners are in the us and you guys are like hey we want to meet those girls with the great murder mystery music going on at crime con why not tweet at crime con and let them know about us and maybe that we should be there but other than that failing that we'll definitely be doing the live episodes for our patreon people and we're also planning a maybe live episode in a pub somewhere.

Keep your eyes peeled for that. Start a hashtag campaign. Get red-handed to CrimeCon. We'll like the shit out of that. Oh, and also, we had our first real-life, actual, real fan mail. Oh, yes. Oh, my God. From Regan in Tacoma.

She sent us the loveliest Christmas card. She sent us a Christmas card and it was absolutely fantastic. We posted it on our social media pages. It was so sweet. Oh my god, you're also forgetting about the amazing mittens. Did you guys listen to... If you guys are long-time listeners, I'm sure you've listened to the Late Bodom episode by now. It's one of our best cases, but we know the sound quality isn't great on that it was very early days but

the Finnish gentleman who runs the great blog it's called like mysteries and curiosities or something we'll we'll post it again we've posted about it on the Instagram he sent us his mum made us matching red-handed mittens and I will post a picture of them because they are so fantastic so we're actually receiving fan mail we're not receiving hate mail this is great there'll be a lot of effort to send it from America or Finland with hate mail though I'd be like calm down I mean I wouldn't be surprised. Calm down. Let's crack on with our 25th episode of Wonder and Joy. And this being a momentous occasion, we decided that because of popular demand, we're going to revisit our roots and remaster and update our very first episode. A lot of people have been asking us,

where's episode one to three? We took them down in early days because the sound quality wasn't great we were still figuring it out we didn't really know what we were doing we still don't really know what we're doing but we know more than we did then we're doing the grinder killer because yeah we think a majority of you probably wouldn't have listened to it back in the olden days so we are covering the most recent London serial killer. His name is Stephen Port, aka the Grinder Killer, aka the Cemetery Poisoner. And this case is so unsettling because it's so modern, it's so close to home, and it creeps us out so much. When we first started recording, I was living quite close to where it all happened,

but I have escaped now. So let's get on with it. Stephen Port was a 41-year-old living alone in Barking, East London who is now serving a whole of life sentence convicted of 22 offences against 11 men including four murders, four rapes, four assaults by penetration and 10 of administering a substance. Port selected and groomed his victims through sites like Grindr. I think this is the main reason I find it so terrifying is that these day serial killers don't have to roam the streets for their victims anymore. Like the way we use social media can leave us at risk of things like this and we've seen this before. So Port lured these unsuspecting young men he met on gay social media sites to his flat

where he then administered the fatal doses of GHB. He would then rape his victims and make their deaths look like accidental overdoses or suicides. Naport had a fetish for sex with unconscious, boyish-looking young men called twinks in the community, and he would later claim that he had never intended to kill anybody, but that his fetish seemed to have just turned into a fixation, which then turned into a compulsionulsion and eventually left four young men dead. So these four men? Anthony Woolgate, a 23-year-old fashion student from Hull, Gabriel Cavari, 22 from Slovakia, Daniel Whitworth, 21-year-old chef from Kent, and Jack Taylor, a 25-year-old forklift driver from Dagenham. What makes this case bizarre is that despite the striking similarities

between the victims and their deaths, police failed to link them or even suspect a murder, let alone that they had a serial killer on their hands, until the fourth victim was discovered. And this is the London Metropolitan Police. This is not a tiny police department in the middle of nowhere. They know how to run a homicide investigation, one would hope. They're not lacking in expertise or resources and experience. So it's actually really frustrating because you'll see as we go through it, obviously hindsight is 20-20, so it's reasonably easy for us to say that, but I think the similarities and the things that are missed are so glaringly obvious that you can't really speak about this case without speaking about police incompetence

at the same time. Absolutely and I think that we are certainly fair to the police. I try very hard to understand that serial investigations are the most complicated investigations that any police force could ever be faced with and like you said there will be more allowances been able to made for this case if it happens somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The London Met, keep that in front of your mind when you're listening to what we talk about in this case. And because of this case and the issues that followed it, the Met are also reviewing 58 other deaths of young men involving the drug GHB to make sure more foul play wasn't missed. This could be potentially seen as just overkill, like to be seen to be doing something

because they missed so much in this botched investigation. But having said that, since the trial, more men have come forward alleging that Stephen Port had raped them. And generally speaking, we know that serial killers start small and they grow in confidence and they need a bigger hit each time as the thrill of each kill starts to wear off. They do start with assaults. And they start experimenting and then they incrementally escalate.

So it's, I would say, for us at least, it's a certainty that Port attacked and raped men prior to the killings. I think that's fair to say. I think when you look at a lot of serial killers, how they get started, it's exactly like you say. It starts small. They experiment because they're not yet sure exactly what gets them off. And usually, I mean, even with John Wayne Gacy, I mean, he attacked that boy, but it was an accident. Then they realise, shit, that really did it for me. This is it now. I know that this is what I like. This is what gets me off. This is what hits my serial killer spot. And then that's why they can't stop themselves and we've talked about

this before haven't we hannah where it's like when the link between killing and violence gets intertwined with sexual drive that's when you end up with the most dangerous type of killer because imagine if your sexual drive was motivated by somebody having to die for you to get off or someone having to suffer for you to get off we can't stop ourselves wanting what we want but this what they want is so extreme and horrifying so today we we are just going to be focusing on the four murders that port was convicted of and before we do that we just wanted to cover a little bit of background on port to start to build a picture of him as a person. Now his family and his parents understandably after the you know all of this came out shut themselves off from the media and since the trial we haven't heard that much from them so there isn't a huge amount of

information available on Port's home life or his childhood or necessarily on Port himself but you can tell from the police interviews which we will post on the Facebook group because you guys should definitely watch them. It's very, very revealing of a lot of things. He seems to have such a very low IQ. And you need to watch them with subtitles because fucking hell, he's a mumbler. You can't understand what he's saying. He's low IQ, like we said. He's so awkward.

You can tell how much confidence he's lacking in when you watch these police interviews. I don't think it's an act. I think that's who he was. Very, very awkward. And almost just childlike in his behaviour. And in the interviews, you can even hear that he says, he even says about one of his victims at one point, it's a shame that we didn't get to do more together. Jesus Christ. What does that mean to you? Like, how childish is he? It's almost like, did he not understand the finality of death? What he was doing, the consequences. Was he not able to link his actions to his consequences? Because to say, it's a shame we didn't get to do more together. It's like,

oh, that person just left or it was a big accident. I think childlike absolutely hits it on the head with Stephen Paul. Like that's absolutely it. I don't know whether, I think obviously he wants to have sex with unconscious people, that's his thing. What's the obsession with that? That's very weird because he wasn't a necrophile because, I mean we can safely say that I think, because he didn't keep the bodies or put them somewhere where he could like get at them like Bundy did or anything. Well I think that he's not the most attractive man in the world and we know that he was using other people's pictures on Grindr. Some of them, some of the pictures he was even wearing a wig.

So he's obviously very aware that he isn't particularly attractive. So maybe he thought the only way he can get, maybe it started as the only way I can get people to have sex with me is if they are unconscious. And then it escalated from there that's definitely at the core of it because obviously his physical appearance will definitely have contributed to his lack of confidence but i feel like it's more than that he reminds me of like almost like dharma a little bit because totally lacking in any confidence lacking in social skills a total fear of abandonment i kind of feel like with the type of the his sort of MO with this. And just wanting almost like a human sex object that couldn't reject him, couldn't judge him, and couldn't leave.

It's the ultimate control, isn't it? To put someone in that state and then to rape them. It's just the ultimate form of control and the ultimate way of like, you can't now reject me. And I wonder whether, obviously the more men that have come forward now he hasn't been convicted of but i wonder obviously if you drug someone and rape them when they wake up they are going to leave like they're not gonna stick around and then with the murders obviously they're dead so they can't stick around either but i wonder whether he just he wanted someone who would be still alive but just unconscious all the time exactly exactly what Dharma wanted a sex zombie with Stephen Port I

think it was yes you drug them you rape them they wake up they're horrified probably disgusted by you well definitely disgusted by you and they leave with this though they never really leave because they're dead they haven't rejected you they're dead so maybe it's easier for his ego and his with his psychology to be able to deal with now a dead man that he just has to dispose of rather than a man who looks at him with disgust and rejects him and leaves potentially i really do think because of all of this like clear insecurity with his appearance and the pictures that were so different on on the sites like it really is like ultimate nightmare catfish from hell like that's what it is and he's stupid dharma he's stupid dharma that's what it is like he didn't even have

the i mean oh my god dharma was a monster don't get me wrong but like he didn't even have the like creativity to like dharma did let me try this and maybe there'll be a sex zombie and stay with me forever. This guy was just like, oh, it's another one, he's dead. He's a dullard. It's kind of like Gary Ridgway as well, the Green River Killer. Very low IQ, very stupid, dumped all the bodies in the same place, went after sex workers, didn't get caught for ages. So I don't know, he's like Dharma meets Ridgeway. Apart from all of this, a fun fact about Stephen Port that we came across

during the research was that he was, as you know, he was a chef. And guess what? He even appeared in an episode of Celebrity MasterChef on the BBC in 2014. 2014 being the beginning of his killing spree. It blows my mind that he is in the middle of his killing spree and he's on the BBC rolling meatballs with that guy from JLS. Like, it's not like... He's not very prominent in this episode of Celebrity Masterchef. No, no, he's in the background. He's just, like, in the background rolling some meatballs.

But this is the beginning of his killing spree not the middle this is like he's probably definitely attacked men and raped them by this point but the story begins as we're about to at june 2014 so june 19th and the body of anthony wargate 23 is found propped up in a sitting position on cook street embarking east london and it's really important to note that his body is found near the communal entrance to Port's own block of flats. So Port has literally just dumped Anthony Walgate's body outside of his own block of flats. And 999 receive a call from Port himself, who reports that he has seen an unconscious young man on Cook Street and he is just the worst fucking liar in the world. Once again we've got the the audio recording of this

999 call and we will post it on the Facebook group so you guys can have a listen because it's just so bizarre. He tells three different stories in the phone call. He forgets what he says, he does his usual mumbling, he throws in some fake coughs, like that's going to throw them off. And he even hangs up at one point, like they're not just going to call him back. It's, you called 999. At first, at first he says that the man is at Cook Street, number 47, and that he was just about to get in his car. So he couldn't speak to the operator anymore.

And the operator rightly tells him not to worry about his car because he's on the phone to 999 reporting that he can see an unconscious body so at this point port freaks out and just hangs up i mean the only thing i can think of is someone being like oh i'm late for work i'm gonna have to go and get in my car and go yeah that's what he says that's what he says the best excuse for being late for work is finding a fucking dead body like you could literally be like ring your boss and be like, I found a corpse. I'm going to be 15 minutes late. Any boss would be fine with that. Oh, if that was the truth, obviously. But it's not.

He killed Anthony Walgate and dumped him outside his flat. So he's like, shit, why did I call 999 to report this? And hangs up. At this point, they call him back. And now, Port says, because his story changes, that he was simply driving past Cook Street. And that he saw the man. And he has no other details to provide. So the operator now knows that something's up because, well, before he said that he was walking to his car past Cook Street and now he's saying he's driving past Cook Street,

he drove past Cook Street and that's why he saw the body. So the operator tests him and asks him which number Cook Street the man was outside. Port lies and says that he didn't see because he was just driving past. The operator now reminds him that he said number 47. And Port's like, oh yeah, 47 then. I mean, they then call him back once more. So when the paramedics arrive on site, find Anthony Walgate's body and they call Port back.

And Port now says that he was in fact in his car park when he saw the man. Because he'd just left his flat and was walking to his car before driving away. So now he's telling not the truth, but he's saying, oh, that is actually my car park. And I just saw the body when I was walking past to go to my car. He's not very bright. I truly believe that this was his first kill because this just feels like blind panic. Absolutely, it's his first kill. He doesn't know what to do. I would agree with that. So when Anthony's body is discovered,

it's found that he died of a lethal dose of GHB, which is, what is it, Saruti, chemistry A-level? Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid? Well, maybe. GHB, it comes in like a little glass bottle with a glass pipette and you put it in, I mean, your drink or someone else's. It's a depressant in the same way that alcohol is a depressant, but it's a really fine line between it being a party drug and it knocking you out. So it's possible to go out and have a good time. It's very difficult to know the dosage because it's just a pipette. Like it could literally, you could go over the edge at any time and also that makes it kind of the perfect date rape drug because you can't smell it the only thing that maybe you would be able to detect it isn't like your drink might be a little

bit salty but if you're already smashed you're not going to notice and it's really fast acting and it only stays in your system for 12 hours and all four victims were found with super high levels of GHB in their blood which means it was administered 12 hours or less before they died. So during the investigation into Anthony's death, the police discovered that Port had hired Anthony as an escort. Port is questioned, then arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice for making false statements to the police about finding Anthony collapsed outside his flat when in fact he had died inside. Port is released

on bail because Anthony Wargate's death is ruled as an accidental overdose. So like they can't, they haven't got him on anything because they just think this was an accidental overdose, he died in Port's flat, Port moves him outside in a panic and that's, that's rather than anything else. So this takes us to august 2014 when port meets gabriel cavari on grinder we think and gabriel comes to stay at port's flat like days later he moves in with him five days later on august the 28th gabriel's body is found propped up again in a sitting position against the graveyard wall at St Margaret's Church in Barking and this is 500 meters from Ports Flat and from where Anthony Walgate's body was found

just six weeks before and I think it's really important to note Gabriel and Anthony look so similar they're like early 20s but they could easily pass for like 15 16 like they would be id'd in the corner shop if they were trying to buy booze like that's what they look like and also the dump sites are 500 meter meters apart it's the same cause of death they look exactly the fucking same and their bodies were positioned in the same way as well the cause of death everything it's just so striking it's bizarre and still, the police don't link the two cases. And I guess at this point, maybe you could argue that we're being unfair because there's two bodies. Yes, both died of an overdose of GHB. And yes, we know that GHB is a party drug. We know

that it is used in the party scene. So maybe it can at this point still be chalked up to a coincidence. I also think it's fair to say that GHB is more prevalent on the gay party scene than otherwise. Yeah. East London, like, I'm not... Okay, at this point, okay, fine. They haven't linked the two crimes yet. No, actually, I'm gonna take that back, because they now know. They should have looked into Gabriel's death more, and they would have known that he was living with Stephen Port.

Stephen Port, who was out on bail in a case of the death of Anthony Walgate for perverting the course of justice on how he had died following a drug overdose. So no actually I won't say that. Why didn't they look into where Gabriel was living and what he was doing? They just decided this was an overdose, no foul play. And we'll see this time and again like you literally just have to scratch the surface to find the similarities. It's not hard. Yes that that's the key thing i think so now we're in september and it's september 18th daniel whitworth 21 arranges to meet port again through grinder but i know they were also using other apps but we're not sure exactly which ones but either way two

days later his body is found propped up in a sitting position and this time unbelievably in the exact same spot as Gabriel Cavarri's in the exact same spot okay Daniel is even found by the same lady walking her dog who found Gabriel the month before what the hell this woman finds a body and then continues to walk her dog through the same churchyard, finds Daniel's body in exactly the same place. And we'll again post the interview that you can watch of her following this discovery. And she says, when I saw the body, I was just thinking, please just be drunk. Please just be passed out.

But no, it's just unbelievable. He dumps him in the same place. The stupidity. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space

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trait with serial killers, you know, their first kill will in many cases be an accident or even if it is thoroughly planned, it doesn't really go as they expect it to. And then that is enough, the thrill of that is A, enough to keep them going for a long period of time. They've built up to it for so long, they can continue to get off on that memory for a while and also the fear you need to see if you get away with it so give it some time before you go into your next kill then as we see the desire and the insatiability of their drive to do this to kill will overcome them so they will devolve and the cooling off period will get shorter and shorter and shorter until they get into like

you know spree killer mode what is it that ted bundy said about the spanner the first time you kill you know where everything is because everything is so organized and perfect by your 18th kill you don't know where the spanner is part of it is because you become ted bundy definitely became arrogant as time went on that he was never going to get caught and i also think it's because it becomes more frantic and in the sense that they devolve and they lose control with each kill slipping into that sort of like what I know some people call like berserker mode where they're just killing and killing and killing until they're caught but what's interesting with Daniel Daniel's body that was found remember in the same place as Gabriel's body he has an apparent suicide note in his hand it's a note written, firstly, to frame Daniel for Gabriel's death.

And the note is so bizarre as far as suicide notes go. I mean, because it's not a suicide note. But it's bizarre because the police don't realise it's not a suicide note. So we'll read it to you now. We'll post it on the Facebook group again, but good luck reading it because the handwriting is awful. I'm sorry to everyone, mainly my family, because I can't go on anymore. I took the life of my friend Gabriel Klein. We was just having some fun at a

mate's place and I got carried away and gave him another shot of G. I didn't notice while we were having sex that he had stopped breathing and I tried everything to get him to breathe again, but it was too late. It was an accident, but I blame myself for what happened and I didn't tell my family I went out. I know I would go to prison if I go to the police and I can't do that to my family and at least this way I can be with Gabriel again. I hope you will forgive me. BTW please do not blame the guy I was with last night. We only had sex then I left. He knows nothing of what I have done. I have taken what GI have left with some sleeping pills, so if it does kill me, then that's what I deserve. Feeling dizzy now, as took 10 minutes ago,

so hoping you understand my writing. I dropped my phone on way here, so it should be in the grass somewhere. Sorry to everyone. Love always, Daniel P. pw upon discovery of this quote unquote suicide note it was taken totally at face value by police they didn't consult daniel's family to check the handwriting they didn't have the handwriting analyzed professionally and why is it that we feel that this should have been taken, that they should have looked deeper into this? Suicide notes are typically very short or they're very, very long. This is neither. It's one paragraph. And like I said, we'll post it so you can take a look at it. It just, it's crazy to me. Regardless of the handwriting, that's a whole other issue because it's obviously not

Daniel's. The content of it is so ridiculous. Like, why would you, in your last dying note to your family, give a shit about the guy you just had sex with? Give a shit about dropping your phone? Comment on your handwriting? It's bizarre. So it's Stephen writing as Daniel and making Daniel take responsibility for Gabriel's death, claiming that he gave him too much GHB by accident and didn't realise while they were having sex, only noticing that Gabriel had stopped breathing afterwards. But what's interesting is the only evidence that puts Daniel and Gabriel in the same room is Stephen Port's police interviews.

Yet in the note, Daniel states he wants to be with Gabriel again. And you can see interviews with Daniel's family and they were like, we states he wants to be with Gabriel again. And you can see interviews with Daniel's family and they were like, we had no fucking idea who this Gabriel guy was. Like he, we don't think he would have hid it from us if he was in like a significant relationship with someone. But the most grating part that really, really upsets me is the BTW. Please don't blame the guy. I was with this last night. Because who writes BTW in a suicide note? Like that just seems, like I know people abbreviate things and I blah blah blah blah blah and there's loads of them kicking around, but like in a suicide note to your family it just seems

a really bizarre thing to do. And also Stephen tries to account for the difference in handwriting by claiming the drugs he had taken to overdose were kicking in and he hoped his family could still read his writing. Even though the note is completely straight. Like it doesn't look like someone, I mean firstly it doesn't look like someone who's just got a bit drunk and like it's a bit messy.

It's someone else's handwriting. Like how fucked up do you have to be for your handwriting to evolve into somebody else's handwriting that's ridiculous exactly it's so stupid it's just not daniel's writing full stop and the stuff about dropping his phone in the grass like why would you care that's gen that's obviously steven poore after having moved the body realizes the phone has dropped and he's gonna have to account for that somehow but if you've

taken a fatal drug overdose i just don't think you're gonna care about your phone if you've killed someone and lost the phone in the churchyard that's why you're going to be like oh so my phone is just somewhere here in case you're wondering why when you find it later don't worry that was me yeah exactly and so i just think that if an expert came anywhere near this, there are so many red flags. And a lot of other stuff was missed with Daniel's death too. Daniel was found in a bed sheet, which will be very important, so remember it, and a bottle with traces of GHB in it. And the police take the note at face value,

determining that Daniel had accidentally killed Gabriel, then taken his own life out of guilt. So they've solved two cases in one hit. Yeah. But what else I think is important for this one is that Daniel had bruising on his body under his armpits, like he'd been dragged. Combining all of these things together,

all of the flaws that we've highlighted within the suicide note, the bed sheet, the not testing the handwriting, the GHB bottle and the bruises. Like Hannah said, hold on to these because we will come back to them. But right now we're going to move forward to March 2015. Bear in mind that all of these things, Gabriel's death, Daniel's death,

all have taken place while Port is out on bail following his arrest for perverting the course of justice in the case of Anthony Walgate. But March 23rd 2015 Port pleads guilty to perverting the course of justice and is sentenced to eight months imprisonment. But he is released just over two months later on the 4th of June with an electronic tag. All this time that he was in jail and all the time that he was on electronic tag, nothing happens. But he's out now. And then after June, he's on electronic tag. That comes off in September. And immediately, September 13th, Jack Taylor, 25, meets Port on Grindr. And in the early hours,

they agree to meet. Jack travels to Barking, arriving at about 3am in the morning. And the next day, so the very next day, we see now he just 3am in the morning. And the next day, so the very next day, we see now he just spends no time with these guys. The next day Jack's body is found in the same position as the others and by the same graveyard wall as the previous two victims. Again, he's dumping his fourth victim, Jack Taylor's body, outside of the same churchyard that he dumped Gabriel and Daniel's bodies. It's just crazy. And now the police still haven't linked these murders and Jack Taylor's sisters decide to do some investigating of their own. And by that we mean they are literally just googling other deaths in the area and they start to make better connections between the death than the police had. Then 15th of October Port is finally identified on CCTV with Jack near Barking Station shortly before his death and Port finally is arrested. The apparent suicide note and bedsheet

found with Daniel Whitworth is now finally examined and Port's DNA is found. So Port is charged with all four murders. Because now he can be linked to all four victims. But this is crazy to me. So now test Port's DNA against the bed sheet. Fine. They have now an actual suspect. So they do it.

They had Port's DNA before. Because he was arrested. He went to jail. And then was out on remand. For perverting the course of justice in the case of Anthony Walgate. Do they not just take your DNA as soon as you're arrested? So be on file. Why didn't they run it against that?

Well, exactly. And if they just tested it when they found it with Daniel Whitworth's body, they would have saved Jack's life. Exactly. All they had to do was test that DNA, test the fingerprints on the suicide note, run it through their databases, and they would have had a hit for Stephen Port. And they would have been able to already link him to having been involved in the case of another young man who died, Anthony Wargate. That's why he was there. And they didn't even do that, and they didn't make this link until Jack was already dead.

And as we said, Port was convicted of 22 offences against 11 men, four murders, four rapes, four assaults by penetration, and ten of administering a substance. But he was cleared on three counts of rape. He has been given a whole-of-life sentence, and he will never be eligible for parole. What's really interesting is there's a guy called Peter Thatchell, who is an LGBT activist,

who is campaigning against Stephen Port having a whole of life sentence, which is interesting. For why? Well, his reason is that he says that he doesn't believe anybody, including Stephen Port, should ever face a whole of life prison sentence because, well, his exact words were, Peter Thatchell, LGBT activist, says, it makes me uncomfortable that Stephen Port received a whole of life sentence. The argument is around rehabilitation. I think we've spoken about this before, but I think it was on Suzanne Capper, which isn't up anymore, but I think it's how you feel about rehabilitation, isn't it? Because I, I mean, you and I are both against the death penalty,

and I kind of think it could be the same argument, because a whole of life sentence that means you believe that this person has done something so awful they can never be rehabilitated and if prison isn't for rehabilitation what's the point? Exactly it comes down to what you think the justice system and the prison system in your country is there for because I know that people will disagree with us I would absolutely say of course it's to protect the public from people that would do us harm of course it's for retribution of course it's for punishment but it's also if it's not for rehabilitation then why not just kill them but I I'm obviously against the death penalty so I have to say I absolutely do believe in rehabilitation

that should happen but I also think in a case like this, is it wrong? That Stephen Port can rehabilitate himself, can become a better person. But I guess Peter Thatcher's point is fair. If you don't believe in the death penalty, why would you believe in a whole of life sentence? But I think it's a different argument because the death penalty is the state killing. Killing is wrong and to teach you that lesson, I'm going to kill you. It's fucking for abstinence that's an illogical argument yeah the only thing i can think of is if you're looking at prisons as a way of keeping dangerous people totally separate from the general population actually when we first did this case many moons ago we received a negative

review from someone who said they couldn't believe that we thought in this day and age we could believe that homophobia and especially institutional homophobia is a thing and I'm sure that person isn't listening I'm sure we've lost them forever and you do have a right to your opinion but it is incorrect I think I find it quite upsetting to think that there are people who live in a world who where they think there's no prejudice and there's no... That we live in a utopia now where everything's fine and everybody's equal and there aren't the less dead and everyone's got the same levels of visibility within society. That's just not the world we live in. And you don't even have to just take our word for it because the Met have said publicly that the evidence heard at Stephen Port's trial potentially missed opportunities to catch Port's killer sooner.

And I think we've illustrated that. But it was interesting to hear from this person who doesn't believe that institutional homophobia exists. And I think they even said the police aren't nearly as dumb as some of these hosts want them to be, or something like that. We're not saying that the police are dumb. We're saying that it is everybody faces, everybody has their own biases and everybody has unconscious biases. They're not even aware that they have. And I think I'm not necessarily saying that's what the case was here, but how can you listen

to this case, listen to what happened, hear the facts of the crime as we've put them out to you, and still believe. Leave alone this case. How can you still? Just be aware of the political climate that we are in now and still believe that homophobia, bigotry, racism, all of these things are not still alive and well in our society. I find it hard to believe that you don't see that. And of course, you know, maybe if people don't face these prejudices or have them, you know, at the front of their mind, it can be hard to understand. But what I'd say is look past your own privilege and look at the fact that these things absolutely do happen. There is a police incompetency here, but I think it is intertwined and goes to the core of institutional

homophobia and I'm I'm fine to say that I saw a t-shirt the other day that said if you're not angry you're not paying attention yeah and I need it and I feel like that is that is a very accurate way to put this and I think you can watch the media and we all know like Hannah and I have talked about before the the idea of the less dead it is absolutely a thing that is real. It happens. We care very much about certain types of victims, and we care less about other types of victims. Look at any time a sex worker gets killed, the paper will read four prostitutes killed. Why aren't they just four women killed? And I know that you can argue about the semantics and how it would be described, but if I was murdered, it wouldn't be senior conference producer murdered it would be woman 2028 murdered why can't that

person just be described as a woman and the reason that I feel passionately about that is because the minute we call them a prostitute and you read that in the paper you care less you absolutely care less and there's something in there about a very insidious form of victim blaming that we have as long as we call them prostitutes and we use that as a way to explain to underpin the reason why they died like almost by putting prostitute in there as the third word in that sentence before even the fact that that person was murdered don't tell me that that doesn't load that sentence with you thinking that that person died because they deserved it and in this case it's the same i agree whether it's people of color whether it's gay people whether it's

sex workers this isn't just us saying it the met have accepted failings in this and the ipcc so the independent police complaints commission was also conducting an inquiry into the mishandling of this case and 17 police officers are under investigation facing possible charges of misconduct over the catalogue, and this is their word, catalogue of failures in Catching Port. So before we give you guys the update, let's discuss the mistakes that we feel were made along the investigation of this case. Firstly, as we've said, all of the men were in their early to mid-20enties. All were young, boyish looking, similar looking, all gay, all died of lethal GHB overdoses and all were found in the same area within just 15 months of each other.

Anthony Woolgate, police questioned and charged Port with making false statements about Anthony's death. They knew Port had hired Anthony as an escort and they knew Anthony died in Port's flat. They also knew that Port moved the body and lied about it. Okay, first kill. Should they have looked into this more? Possibly. But by the time it gets to Gabriel Cavari, Gabriel Cavari moved in with Port and a week later turns up dead, just 500 metres from where Anthony was found five weeks before. And again, both died of GHB overdoses. But again, nothing is is linked despite Gabriel's friend John Pape who he had previously been living with before he moved out of John's house and into Port's house. Again very similarly to Jack Taylor's sisters conducted his own investigation and linked Anthony and

Gabriel's deaths. John Pape even took this information he found again just by googling deaths in the area seeing these news reports and comparing the location of cook street and saint margaret's church you can see how close they are and this is what john pape said and he took this to the police and despite his suspicions the police still didn't link these two murders now just over three weeks later daniel whitworth's body is found in the exact same location as gabriel's by the exact same woman walking her exact same dog and daniel is found with this suicide note. Despite this and the police conviction that Daniel had killed himself, the coroner refused to rule Daniel's death as a suicide because of her misgivings. She was the

one to find the bruising on Daniel under his armpits and on his chest suggesting that his body had been moved. So she ruled an open verdict on his death. So why, if the coroner is ruling an open verdict, why isn't it looked into more? Also, Daniel's family were told that the handwriting in the note would be analysed, and it wasn't. The bedsheet and the note found with Daniel weren't processed for DNA either. And later, as we know, Port's DNA would be all over both of them. And what's really interesting is that the original inquests were suspended pending the criminal trial. But then with Port convicted, I still thought nothing's really going to come of this. But the families of the murdered young men were not going to give up.

They've now joined together and they have one lawyer who represents all four of them to get justice for their murdered loved ones. And quote, And last month, Lord Justice Holyrod quashed the original open verdicts that had been ruled and said new inquests were both necessary and desirable because the coroner had been given insufficient evidence to give her the full picture regarding the deaths. He also said that it seemed surprising that the original police investigation had revealed so little about the true circumstances and the judge said that it was imminently sensible for all four inquests to be held together and whatever comes of this we will certainly keep you guys updated. And we do like to do a bit of a background check on our serial killers, because I think it's safe to say for both of us, well, certainly my first reaction when I read about a serial killer or anyone who's done horrendous things is, what happened to you?

That's my initial gut reaction. And with Stephen Port, it's been quite hard to find out what that is, because there just isn't that, maybe it's because it's such a recent case, but there just isn't that maybe it's because it's such a recent case but there just isn't that much kicking around and there are very few interviews with his family and they are in the daily mail so they might who knows it's probably like someone who lived next door to them and not even their parents but Stephen's parents it would seem were not fine with him being gay but they stated that he was a good boy and he would just go along with anything to avoid an argument. And his parents think Stephen was taking the fall for someone else, that he wasn't acting alone. His parents mentioned an older man who stayed at his flat often,

but Stephen insisted that they were not in a relationship. One of the seven people who came forward claiming to have been raped by Stephen alleged that there was another person in Stephen's flat that night who participated in the rape, but he was unable to identify him. That said though, that is one out of the seven people who came forward. I've been thinking about this a lot, of whether Stephen Port was acting alone or whether there was some sort of puppet master involved. And yes, the police did miss things, so it's possible they could have missed other things. But because of the just sort of slapdash nature of all of it i find it very

difficult to believe there's a criminal mastermind behind it i think it was just stephen port and he didn't know what he was doing but he got away with it four times absolutely and so while the the outcomes of the inquest haven't been completed yet so it would be inappropriate for us to make claims now but it does seem that crucial opportunities were missed in this case. I think that's undeniable given all of the blunders, all of the oversights that were made with during this investigation. But what's truly shocking is now, as we mentioned before, that the Met are now re-examining 58 unexplained deaths involving the drug GHB from a four-year period across London

in case signs of suspicious death were missed, which is, like I said absolutely truly terrifying and who knows I don't really believe that Stephen Port killed anybody else I don't because I think what's interesting is that in the timeline it fits the longest period of inactivity he has an ankle tag on because he's just got out of prison and you don't see anything in that time and also because he doesn't have a very varied mo, if he was killing more people, they'd be in the graveyard. He's not hiding them anywhere else. I agree with you.

That is the case of Stephen Port, the grinder killer. It's weirdly been like visiting an old friend. It has. Yeah, I'm glad that we could do this case again because it definitely is one that is interesting. Thank you for listening, guys. So follow us, you know the drill, at Red Handed, the pod on all the social medias.

If you want to make a little donation, help support the show, head on over to patreon.com slash redhanded. No more weird fee structures. So we would really appreciate that. And we'll see you next week when we are doing... What are we doing? Drum roll.

We are... We're really, really excited about next week's case. Is excited the right word? Probably. Weird word, but right, right feeling? I don't know. We're going to be diving deep into Munchausen's by proxy. When we cover the case of,

and I can hear people yelling it at us, Gypsy Rose Blanchard. So it's a weird case. One of the weirdest I've ever come across. We're really looking forward to doing that for you guys. So join us next week. See you then. Bye. you you They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

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