The Misery Machine - The British Grindr Killer: Stephen Port - The Police Failed The Victims

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

In light of Pride Month, Yergy and Drewby travel to the Barking district of East London, UK, to discuss the case of a serial killer that targeted young gay men on various dating platforms, only to have the authorities brush their cases under the rug and ignore deaths that were very clearly linked.  A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Buy Us A Coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/miserymachine Join Our Street Team! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HfRUPQhB6LOqVupZm92OdV5rLDQcIMpHudmUZwt0C24/edit?usp=sharing Levi's Adoption Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/d658a3a7 Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Port https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38102454 https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/stephen-port-serial-killer https://murderpedia.org/male.P/p/port-stephen.htm https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2245695/stephen-port-grindr-serial-killer-victims-appeal/ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/10/inquest-into-stephen-ports-victims-set-to-begin-in-new-year https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/stephen-port https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/01/13/grindr-killer-stephen-port-inquests-victims-delayed/ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/09/helped-create-grindr-serial-killer-murdering-victim/

Hi, we're the Miser Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And in light of Pride Month, we were doing a case that happened fairly recently and hasn't been talked about enough in my opinion. And that's the British Grindr Killer. And I know you all want to go and party this year. You didn't get to have a Pride last year because of the pandemic at all.

I know I want to go out and party. But this year when you're partying at Pride, please make sure to take proper precautions. Let someone know where you are and stay safe. Yes, please. Let this case serve as in there. examples why you need to stay safe. And if you're listening on YouTube, please like and subscribe.

We just passed 9,000 subscribers. So thank you everyone so far who's helped. Please help us get to that 10,000. It's my birthday in a few weeks. I would love it to have 10,000 subscribers for my birthday. Yes, please. But without further ado. The Grindr Killer.

Stephen Port was born in South End-on-Sea, later moving to Dagenham in Essex, where he grew up and where his parents, still live. He was described as being a loner and was often bullied at school as a child. Teachers describe Port as quiet and neighbors described him as having a peculiar childlike personality, exhibiting odd behavior as a grown man, such as playing with children's toys. A former partner of Port also described his personality as childish and gave that as a reason for ending their relationship. Port came out as gay in his mid-20s, which allegedly crushed his parents.

However, his older sister was supportive of him, claiming to always have known due to her brother's alleged boy band crushes and posters hanging on the wall of his bedroom. After leaving high school, he enrolled in an art college but later dropped out. He lived alone in a flat and barking London and worked as a chef at a stagecoach bus depot in West Ham. Port also briefly appeared on an episode of the television show Master Chef, making meatballs with singer J.B. Gill and actress Emma Barton. I want to find this. We haven't found it yet, but I want to find this episode to see how he was on it. He was described as having an athletic build at the time of the murders due to regularly going to the gym. It was also balding and disguised this by wearing a blonde toupee. Nothing wrong with toupee's gentlemen.

Nothing wrong with it at all. You'll notice the comparison in the pictures, I'm sure. If you've seen this Master Chef episode, leave us a comment. I want to, one, I want to find it, too. I want to hear how weird you thought he was in it. So Port began meeting men via online gay and bisexual dating apps, such as the popular app Grindr, as well as other lesser-known sites such as Sleepy Boys and FitLads. Port constructed false personas in which he made fictitious claims regarding his background, including one in which he pretended to have graduated from Oxford University and served in the Royal Navy. In another, he gave his occupation as a special education teacher at a catering school in Kings Cross. I'm not sure if this is in the notes later, but another one that he did purely to communicate with one particular person of interest was he claimed to be a ex-surfer from California living in London now.

He just created all these false personas. I mean, a special education teacher at a catering school that's kind of... One that's very specific, too. I don't know if that exists. Maybe it does. Maybe it does. I don't know, but this is what he did. He created many purposes.

and as far as I know, never interacted with anyone through his real persona and gave his real name. So this is where the story of Stephen Port starts to take a dark turn. I mean, it was already taking a weird one, but it's going to get dark now. After a string of young gay men started turning up dead in his neighborhood of alleged drug overdoses, except these weren't accidental overdoses at all. And Port wasn't quite the loner that is formed. teachers and neighbors thought him to be. He was a full-fledged serial killer targeting what's known in the gay community as Twinks.

And Twinks, they're your younger, boyish-looking, often stereotyped as blonde. They're slim. They tend to be hairless. Good-looking. Yeah, very, very boyish. So Porte used the drug GBL, which metabolizes as GHB in the bloodstream, not to be confused with GBA. to spike his date's drinks and then proceeded to rape and murder them in his flat and barking. Autopsies revealed that each had died from a drug overdose featuring high levels of GHB, amyl nitrate which is more commonly known as poppers, Viagra,

mephadron, which is known by the street name MCAT and Crystal Meth. It had also been noted that Port often injected the young men in the anus with drugs, claiming it was lubrication. Obsessed with date rape production. pornography. Port would film himself raping the unconscious men. And as far as I understand, there was a couple sources that said he was picked up by the cops prior because he was wandering around in public high on crystal meth. He'd apparently been abusing crystal meth since 2012 was my understanding.

Now, the first unfortunate young man to fall victim to Stephen Port was Anthony Walgate, a 23-year-old fashion student from Hull that dreamt of being a famous fashion designer. Wallgate occasionally worked as an escort and was contacted by Port on June 17th, 2014, pretending to be a client, and offered 800 pounds for his services. They later met at Barking Station. On June 19th, Wallgate was pronounced dead shortly before 8 a.m. after Port anonymously called emergency services reporting that a young boy, quote, had collapsed or had had a seizure or was drunk, end quote, on the street outside his flat.

Now, despite attempting to call anonymously, police were able to trace the call. back to Port and he signed a truth declaration claiming he came home and found Anthony Walgate lying in front of his flat and he attempted to arouse him. However, a friend of Anthony's reached out to the police a week later and informed that Anthony had gone to meet a man and had planned to hook up with him. And Anthony provided this friend with the address of Stephen Port, which was then given to the police. So police brought in Stephen Port for three separate interviews, and on the third interview, Port had admitted that he had hired Anthony's services as a male escort, and that Anthony took an unknown drug prior to having sex. Afterwards, Port claimed

that Anthony was feeling ill, and he allowed him to sleep in his bed while he went off to work a night shift and came back eight hours later to find Anthony dead in his bed, at which he panicked and moved the body outside before phoning the police. Because of violating his signed truth declaration. Port was charged with perverting the course of justice. That is a charge in Britain. I don't believe it's a charge here. Here it would be like filing either a false report. False report or obstruction of justice, I assume. But perverting the course of justice, that just has a special little moxie to it. Yeah, it does. He was also charged with making a false police statement and giving police a false name. I'm not sure of the name in question. He was in prison for eight months,

but released the following June and electronically tagged. Anthony Walgate's mother pressured police to search Stephen Port's computer, but the police said the search was too expensive. Had they done this search, they would have discovered not only the messages between Anthony and Port, but several disturbing searches on Port's computer, including unconscious boys and drugged and raped men. Between August 2014 and September 2015,

Port murdered at least three more men. So he murdered Gabriel Cavari, who was 22, who had moved to London from Slovakia, and had briefly lived with Port. So what I know about this one, he was living with a friend in London where he was splitting rent, but then he said he was going to move into somebody else's flat and sleep on their couch rent free. And that was Port. And that was Port. Yeah, he had also moved to London basically to start a new life as an outgame. man and was an artist. He was very into languages and really was just, you know, starting his life. And I have to say before we finish this with the victims, we really tried to find more about who

these victims were. And unfortunately, there just wasn't that much information, even a high profile case like this. There wasn't many articles that focused on who these victims were. So if you're wondering why that's absent, we tried. I'm sorry. So then we had Daniel Whitworth. He was 21 from Gravesend in Kent. He worked as a chef and had a long-term partner. And then Jack Taylor, who was 25, who lived with his parents in Dagenham, and worked as a forklift truck driver. Their lifeless bodies were found in the graveyard of the Church of St. Margaret of Antioch and Barking, two of which were found by the same woman on separate occasions while walking her dog. Can you imagine that? She found it the first time, and then I can't remember how much time it was later, but from what I understand,

she had a hard time walking that route with her dog after that period of time. So Port had planted a fake suicide note alongside the body of Daniel Whitworth that suggested he was responsible for the death of one of the victims, which was Gabriel Kovari, and that he had killed himself out of guilt. However, the coroner named Nadia Persad posed valid questions surrounding Daniel Whitworth's death that had not been satisfactorily answered by the police department, such as why a bed sheet that Whitworth was found wrapped up and wasn't forensically tested, along with a bottle of GBL that was not tested for fingerprints. And if I recall, they found Whitworth in the graveyard and the GBL bottle was in his hand. Also noted were the

pathologist's findings that there was evidence of rough handling and bruising to Whitworth's body prior to his death. I believe they were bruising in his armpits. Yes, I believe I read that as well. So Gabriel Cavari's roommate, John Pape, who he spoke about earlier, searched on the internet for other unexplained deaths in the barking area and was shocked at the similarities in the case of Anthony Wallgate, especially the locations in which the bodies were found. However, the police did not link the two cases. Upon learning of Whitworth's death, he called the detectives and demanded to know whether they thought the now three cases were linked, as he was now concerned for his own. personal safety. He was assured they were not linked. He also offered to be interviewed since he felt he might have some relevant information regarding Kavari's last movements, but no one contacted him. I believe the news site Pink News even backed him up. And even after that, they still

didn't do anything. So I was watching a documentary, and this is the only place that I saw this. I had mentioned this earlier. I believe it was Daniel Whitworth's partner, was contacted by Stephen Port through the name John Luck. He basically communicated with him. He's like, yeah, I knew who Daniel was. Yeah, we slept together. Things you don't know about Daniel. He was in some dark, dark scenes.

He was into big chem sex orgies in the gay scene. Like stuff that Daniel was not known for and his partner did not know about. He started saying stuff, oh yeah, I think I saw him on the night he died. I just don't want this to get linked back to me or my friends. Like, it's such a sad case. but he was going down a very dark path. Like he was trying to contact people surrounding his victims to basically throw, or what he thought would throw them off the trail, thinking that they were just partiers and involved in some really dangerous activities. I think we should talk about these dangerous activities a little bit.

Yeah, well, this is probably why the cops, well, one of the reasons why the cops weren't that interested. One, because, you know, it's... It's a gay case. Let's just say it what it is. It's a gay case. I mean, we saw this with Jeffrey Dahmer. We saw this with Dennis Nilsson. They just don't care as much when it comes to gay cases.

And not only that, they passed it off as some sort of, oh, they're just having chem sex and overdosing. I don't think they know how to handle it. Probably not. It's sad because this was not long ago at all. Right. This wasn't even a decade ago. So these chem sex parties, I don't want to go too deep in it, but. Folks who are familiar with GBL and GHB would know them as date rape drugs.

But what a lot of folks don't realize is in these chem sex parties, a lot of men will take these drugs as a party drug in order to loosen up and... Honestly, to detach. I mean, loosen up as in detach. I mean, well, that's what poppers are for. Yeah, popper. Yeah. And then they take those too. And I'm not shaming anything like this.

No, no, no. I've heard accounts. I've known some people. That just is what it is. Now, GBL, that one concerns me, obviously, because you can die from it. One, you can easily die from it, and two, quite often people report that they kind of lose track of what happened and have vague memories of what happens, but these are things that people take. And the other things that people take that I've heard, meth, angel dust, ecstasy. All of which could counteract and cause an overdose as well. Exactly. So it's all very dangerous for so many reasons. Police are often very hands-off in these situations. I mean, just like they are with any party drug overdose. They're just like, oh, yep, it's an overdose. Let's close the book and move on.

I feel they just don't know what to do or don't know how to handle or want to be hands off with things they don't understand. So gay cases, anytime drugs or parties are involved, things they just don't get. But they had Dennis Nilsson. Right. I mean, granted, those weren't parties. drugs, but you would think that would have changed some things, and I guess it really didn't. No. And we cover Dennis Nelson, if you want to go back and hear that case. But the other thing, when they told John Pape that these murders weren't linked, or as they put it, these deaths weren't linked.

It's funny to me, nobody was like, huh, all of these men are of similar builds. They wouldn't be like, oh, they're all twinks, but they're all of similar builds, similar ages and they're all gay. You would think there could potentially be a link there that needs to be ruled out, but they apparently didn't think there was one. Daniel Whitworth's stepmother says that when police informed them of her stepson's death, they led her to believe that he had overdosed on drugs despite no investigation having taken place, and they discounted the bruising under his arms, which the coroner later stated meant a third-party involvement could not be ruled out. They took the supposed suicide note left by his body at face value, sending a small fragment to her and his father,

asking them to verify whether it was his handwriting or not. Although they said they were unsure, it was established at trial that the police had recorded this as confirmation that it was Whitworth's handwriting, and the police had not submitted the note for expert analysis. I'm sure they were going to say that it cost too much money. Probably cost too much money. Jack Taylor's sister reported that the police simply accepted the syringe in his pocket, white powder in his wallet and needle marks on his arm

has indicated that he had sat down by himself and overdosed on drugs, although she was adamant that her brother was very anti-drug. She and another sister contacted the police 11 days after Taylor's death for an update on their investigation and were shocked to discover that none were taking place. The sisters then researched for themselves and came across the three previous cases. However, the police responded again by denying that there was any connection. Eventually two weeks after their brother's death, the police agreed to take the two sisters to where Taylor's body had been found at Barking Station, and then told them that CCTV footage of Taylor and another man had been found.

The sisters were appalled rightly so to have not been notified prior to the existence of the footage, and they were even more shocked to be informed that police were not attempting to identify the other man. A sergeant later contacted the sisters to say that upon review, the footage did not show tape. are entering that churchyard alone. The sisters requested that images of the other man be made public in order to identify him. The police were reluctant, claiming that they did not normally release CCTV images, but eventually gave into pressure. Thank goodness, because two days later, Port was identified from the CCTV images and was

promptly arrested. And we'll try to get that up. I saw... I found one. I saw some of the footage, and it clearly looks like Stephen Port. And I'm so... You can clearly make out his facial features. And I'm so shocked the police were like, hey, who's this guy? Let's at least bring him in for questioning.

Yeah, exactly. So he was linked to one overdose that he did time for. And now he's with another man that has overdosed. Clearly, that's suspicious. But thankfully, they got him. And on November 23rd, 2016, Port was convicted of the rapes and murders of Anthony Wallgate, Gabriel Kavari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor, as well as the rapes of three other men he drugged and 10 counts of administering a substance with intent and four sexual assaults. He was found guilty on all counts. In total, 11 men were known victims, known victims of Port's crimes. Port was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order on November 25th, 2016 at the Old Bailey. and for those that are not from the UK or familiar with their laws,

that is the highest punishment you can be given is life imprisonment. They do not have the death penalty. After the arrest and conviction of Port, questions begin to surface regarding how the police handled the investigation, and rightly so. So the bodies of the four men were found in the vicinity of Port's flat in just over a year, the first outside his front door and the other three in a nearby graveyard. The Metropolitan Police, however, neglected to link these deaths.

The first three victims were initially thought to not have died in suspicious circumstances. And despite the Pink News website and the forces LGBT Independent Advisory Group correctly believing there was a serial killer at large, this still did not change the police's mind. So witnesses close to the scene of the crimes were not questioned. So, for example, Port's neighbor who had witnessed Port in a day's state, with a large container full of white powder and bottles of clear liquid when he made an unexpected visit to his home and also reported receiving suspicious texts from Port regarding Cavari.

So he's talking to others about the victims. So following Port's conviction, the Independent Police Complaints Commission opened an investigation into whether 17 police officers should face disciplinary action. The families have also opened a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police. As far as we understand, the civil claim and the investigation is still pending, even though it's been a few years. There's, I think we both read a statement that COVID was delaying the investigation.

I don't know why it would take this many years, but is what it is, I guess. The Metropolitan Police also reported in 2016 that they were re-examining 58 unexplained deaths involving date rape drugs. However, it's been stated there was nothing to suggest that port was linked to any of them. And now you may be wondering, where was Port getting all these drugs? In 2019, Gerald Motovu, who was known to have supplied Port with GHB used in the killings, was arrested and sentenced to 31 years in prison for the murder of 52-year-old actor and businessman Eric Michaels. Yeah, so this wasn't just your standard drug dealer. No.

So using similar methods to Port, Motovu had targeted Michaels on Grindr and given him a fatal dose of GBM. Over a 19-month period, Motovu and Matovu's lover, Brandon Dunbar, targeted 12 gay men over Grindr. Ten of those men had property stolen from them. Eleven of them had their bank cards taken or photos taken of their bank cards, and eight of these men were drugged.

Robbery was the primary motive here and not sexual assault, though they did have sex with some of the victims. So while this was not disclosed prior to trial, it was revealed after Matovu's imprisonment by Matov's lawyer, Louise Sweet, the Motovu has identified as female since the age of eight and intends to seek gender reassignment while in prison. So after doing Dennis Nielsen, I really, really thought that I didn't know much about the grinder killer.

I thought it was an American case. And there is a similar American case involving the death of somebody named Kevin Bacon. Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, and maybe we can find enough to cover that. But when I searched, it was all Stephen Port. Right. But regardless, I thought that after Dennis Nilsson, there was going to be a better handling of a gay serial killer or a serial killer targeting gay men. Unfortunately, there's not, I mean, could he have had a much larger count of victims? I'm sure it's possible. But what concerns me is that he does and we don't know about it or the police aren't going to devote the resources to finding out. Because again, if they can rule it as an over.

overdose and move on, they very well will. It's good that he's behind bars, but I thought there had been good enough change here, good enough progress being made. And unfortunately, there's a long way for the metropolitan police to go. Right. So, guys, be very, very careful out there. You know who you're with. If you're using dating apps like Grindr or Tinder or whatever it is you're using, make sure someone knows where you are. Be safe. Make sure you know what type of drugs you're taking if you're going to take them, be in a safe place. I know it's fun to take a random drug somebody gives you, but just know the dangers in that. And as far as letting somebody know where you are, if you're going to a party, if you're going

to some stranger's house, a couple of these men did tell somebody where they're going to be, and still, they couldn't catch this guy. So just think about that. Imagine if they hadn't told anybody. I'm not saying don't be young and go live it up. I'm not saying that at all. Just be careful. Be very careful, because a lot of people aren't careful.

And I understand that these communities can be very welcoming and you might feel very accepted in them, but predators exist in them too. Stephen Port is not the only one. He should be looked at as a very good example of what could be out there if you're not careful. Again, not to scare anybody, just... I just care about my friends and I care about you, so please be safe. Yeah, please be safe. Jesus, please be safe. If you have any other recommendations for LGBT cases, especially since it's been Pride Month, please send them our way, leave us a comment.

Pride has definitely felt like a corporate cash grab as of late. And while that's quite disgusting, I still think that Pride can be observed in things like this, especially whereas there's a lot of LGBT murders out there that don't have enough information for us to do a case. And it's not that we don't want to cover it. It's just everything that's out there would be five minutes. And that's unfortunate. A lot of these cases fall by the wayside. I was watching a podcast the other day about the rising murders year by year of black trans women in black communities. And I don't think enough people are talking about things like that. And there's not enough information because when researching a case to do for this week, that's the direction I wanted to go. To do that, we'd have to do just miniature episodes, basically stating their name and what happens. There isn't enough information on these women. Or even the killers. I mean, we want to be able to talk about the victims and who they were, but there's nothing.

And some of them aren't even listed by their preferred names, and you can't find their preferred names. It's just their dead names. And so, you know, this kind of ties our hands. But again, if you have any suggestions, something we can make an episode out of, please leave us a comment or send us an email because we definitely want to do more cases like that. And if you are listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. This is the easiest way and best way to support our channel. It doesn't cost you anything. We really like hearing where our listener is from. So if you can leave a comment letting us know where you're from, that means the world to us. And if you're listening on the other

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So we were going over our charitable. Yeah. one last quick thing before we go. Yes. And we're charting like crazy in Kenya. And Kenya in Japan. We are in the top 100. And I think Kenya was top 50.

Yes. We were actually in the top 50 in Japan. We were number 33. Hey, our Kenyan and Japanese listeners, if you want to reach out to us, MiseryMachine Podcasts at Gmail.com, I don't believe chartable tracks the YouTube listens. So this is purely on the podcast platforms, but I was very happy to see that. We usually get a mix of different countries, but it's been consistently Kenya and Japan for a little bit. In Russia.

Yeah, Russia as well. Belarus. But Kenya's not falling out for weeks now. Yeah. So I'm just curious. It'd be cool to hear from some of you. So if you want to reach out, send us an email. I'd love to hear from you.

But until next week, we love you. We love you. Bye.