A Killer's Mistake Season 1 Episode 4
#A Killer'sMistake
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#A Killer'sMistake
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00:00Taylor, 25, single, and a young man with plans.
00:04Jack had a lot of confidence, and he knew what he wanted to do in life, and he went out there and done it.
00:10After midnight, Jack left this club and decided to do something he may never have done before, make a date with a man.
00:20Within 36 hours of this meeting, in the early hours of the morning, Jack Taylor was found dead.
00:30We knew something had happened to Jack, and we just didn't know where to start.
00:36Jack had been murdered by Stephen Port.
00:39He told me the truth, Stephen.
00:40I'm telling you the truth, yes.
00:42He was lying. He'd already killed four times.
00:46People started turning up dead.
00:49It's just a sexual predator in every which way.
00:54Unfortunately, it resulted in the deaths of four men.
00:56How to catch and convict the predator serial killer.
01:00As detectives piece together the evidence, they form a picture of a suspect.
01:04Which part of the puzzle will reveal Stephen Port?
01:07What would be the killer's mistake?
01:10Stephen Port, I don't really like saying his name to be completely honest with you.
01:14He's ruined our lives.
01:15He's ruined our family.
01:17He's took our jack away.
01:18Baby, by the world.
01:19Baby, by the law you're wrong, it
01:24is a bad thing, but he's done.
01:25Take over for free time.
01:26He's ruined my life.
01:26He's ruined his fate.
01:27I see him with you.
01:28He's ruined my life.
01:29I see him with you.
01:30The art, he's from there.
01:30I see him with you.
01:31Stephen Port would spend hours in a police interview room denying his crimes.
02:01Refusing to accept that evidence of his online behaviour incriminated him in multiple murders.
02:12It had taken 18 months before Port was arrested in connection with the death of four men.
02:18Were you involved in administering any drugs or poisons or noxious substances to him?
02:23No, I don't know, Mr. Ducks to anyone. We'll give drugs to anyone.
02:27At first, detectives refused to accept that there had even been murders.
02:32But the sisters of Port's fourth victim, Jack Taylor, would not accept that their brother had died of an overdose, as the investigators had said.
02:40How could he have? Jack did not do drugs.
02:44We asked the police about the syringe that was found on Jack and it wasn't used.
02:55So, you're telling us it wasn't used, but you're also telling us that he just sat there and injected himself and done an overdose.
03:03Jack's was one of a series of bodies found in or near the ancient grounds of this church in Barking, North East London.
03:11Like a string of other young men, he had spent time in the home of Stephen Port, a man who disguised himself as he trapped his victims.
03:20We know that Stephen uses the dating apps available to the gay community extensively, but not just that.
03:27We know that he uses them with false identities.
03:31Port rehearsed how he would kill, arranging a series of early hookups via the web.
03:36He would vary which sites he visited.
03:39He is using another site called Fit Lads.
03:44And through that he meets a young Muslim man who'd never taken drugs or drunk alcohol in his entire life.
03:52The man is plied with poppers and says that he felt unconscious.
03:57And when he came round, Port gave him a drink, some clear liquid to drink, which he said was water, but he thought was perhaps something else.
04:06It again tasted slightly funny.
04:09Not only did the water taste a bit funny, but he felt a bit funny.
04:13He said he felt like he was partially paralysed and he realised that his underwear had been removed.
04:19Now, he didn't want to involve the police or to report this to anybody because he didn't know what his family would make of revealing his sexuality, which he hadn't.
04:30As bad as the experience had been, the young man was lucky to escape.
04:36He may well have been the last of Port's visitors to leave his flat alive.
04:40Just ten days after this encounter, Port books an escort on a site called Sleepy Boys, and he offers £800 for a young 23-year-old man to sleep with him for the night.
04:58The man was called Anthony Walgate, a fashion student from Hull.
05:03The appointment made with Walgate by Port was for the 17th, the night of the 17th of June 2014.
05:12What would be his fate?
05:14Port described his version of events to Cody Lackey, an ex-con himself who befriended Port.
05:27In handwritten letters from his cell whilst awaiting trial, Stephen Port graphically told his pen pal of the role played by Chemsex Drugs at his flat embarking.
05:38He took this guy back to his house. He was preparing drinks and stuff like that.
05:45He said that this person, the first victim, was administering his own dosage of the drug, and then he had a funny turn as Stephen Port described it.
05:57Port had met this guy for sex earlier that evening, had spiked him or convinced him to take a fatal dose of GHB, had sex with him.
06:07He'd become unconscious and died.
06:12Two days later, on the 19th, Walgate is dead.
06:19Anthony Walgate's body is found propped up in a sitting position against a wall off the communal entrance of a block of flats embarking.
06:29It's the block of flats where Stephen Port lives.
06:32He dumped him outside his house and then phoned the police when he clearly wasn't responding.
06:40Emergency ambulance, what's the address of the emergency?
06:43Port, in his call to the emergency services, claimed to have simply come across the tragic scene.
06:50Cook Street, there's a young boy who got his capsule outside.
06:53Stephen Port tells the police that he's found him there, that he's found this young man and he thinks he must have collapsed through drugs or through some other medical calamity.
07:07Obviously, sure, it was the guilt of the man, because anyone with any modicum of humanity and stuff would have looked after that person and stayed with them.
07:17But the fact that he ran away was an admission of guilt in my eyes.
07:22But not in the eyes of the police.
07:25Initially, Anthony Walgate's death was not considered a murder.
07:29It was a chem sex-induced overdose, called in by a man who'd simply stumbled on the victim.
07:34But a week after making the 999 call, Port was arrested for lying.
07:42What's the explanation for this young man suddenly being found dead outside this block of flats?
07:47They do a few inquiries around it, and those inquiries will include looking at Anthony Walgate's phone billing history and trying to find out what was he doing there, why was he embarking at all.
07:56They realised through the Sleepy Boys website that he was in fact an escort, but not only that, he'd been booked for that night on the 17th of June by Stephen Port to come to those flats.
08:09Stephen Port, the very man who's phoned them up and alerted them and said,
08:13I've just found this young man outside my block of flats apparently collapsed.
08:17The belief that the death of a young man was a by-product of consensual sex dictated an inquiry which was not searching for evidence of a killer's mistake.
08:29How the police viewed the possibilities of Anthony Walgate's death would have dictated in which way they investigated it and to what depth some of the investigation went.
08:45If they were looking at it as an unexplained death, but not necessarily a homicide or a sex crime, then some of the sampling and some of the scientific work that would have been done around Anthony's body would be different to that in a full-blown murder investigation.
09:04So it's possible that that is where evidence that could have tied Stephen Port to Anthony Walgate might have been missed.
09:13Indeed, inside Port's flat, there was a mass of evidence which might have incriminated him.
09:21That should have been looked into more, especially when they knew that he'd lied and lied and lied.
09:27That that would have been enough to look into it and had they had done that and had they had looked at his computer and everything else,
09:35that we now know that they had everything, it wouldn't just be Jack's life that was saved.
09:41We know he had searches on there for drug rape and drug porn and things like that.
09:48What was on his phone? How many other contacts might they have found?
09:52If they went through his account on Sleepy Boys and Grindr and FitLads and these other sites he was using.
09:59Something else would have been uncovered.
10:01Port's video stash revealed much about his murder methods, his modus operandi.
10:07We know that Stephen watched a lot of pornographic material where other men were being drugged and raped and abused, while drugged.
10:19None of that was uncovered by police after the death of Anthony Walgate.
10:24It's hard to be too harsh on people who are doing their best, but you do have to ask the question as to why nobody thought that Stephen Port merited further and wider investigation at that point.
10:40An internal police investigation would later ask the same question, but for now, Port remained unsuspected of murder, able and willing to kill again.
10:51Stephen Port's second victim was a young gay man called Gabriel Kavari.
11:01Gabriel Kavari was just 22 years old and he'd moved to London from Slovakia.
11:06And he started a sort of relationship with Port.
11:10He lived with him in the flat in Barking for a short period.
11:14And during that period, Kavari was texting his friends and saying, Stephen Port is not a nice guy.
11:20Nice or not, Port was in a consensual relationship with the recently arrived Gabriel, a sexual one too.
11:32On August 28th, 70 days after the death of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kavari was discovered dead.
11:39His body left in exactly the same position as Anthony's in St Margaret's Church graveyard, just a stone's throw from Port's flat.
11:47He's got sunglasses on and his upper clothing has been pulled up to expose his midriff.
11:55The sunglasses were kept by police, but not tested for DNA.
12:01Port had successfully gambled on Gabriel's death being written off as another overdose.
12:06He was growing in confidence.
12:07You know, it's a secluded area, but actually it's very close to the centre of Barking.
12:17You know, just brazen, really, that he would, you know, obviously the first person he left outside his house.
12:24The second person he, you know, he took here not a long distance and just sort of left him.
12:29You know, this is somebody who doesn't think he's going to get caught or isn't thinking about it or doesn't care.
12:38Having lived a life without crime, now aged 39, armed with the means to attract young men to his flat
12:45and to spike his victims with drugs, rendering them defenceless,
12:50Stephen Port had killed twice in three months and the killing hadn't stopped.
12:55We get this slightly delayed initiation of his violent spree.
13:04But once it starts, he revels in the sense of power, of autonomy, which he hasn't had up to this point.
13:12It's not something which is intrinsic to his nature and it's something which has been denied him by his rejection.
13:18So the sense of power must have been intoxicating once the series has started.
13:23Port, the killer, had left a trail of evidence suggesting he was a murderer
13:28but was suspected at this point only of lying in a 999 call.
13:33The upshot of this is, is that Stephen Port is still free to carry on his activities.
13:55And those activities included, in the, just a few weeks, the murder of at least another two young men.
14:08He had made mistakes.
14:10But which one would lead police to investigate?
14:13Stephen Port.
14:13By August 2014, the bodies of Anthony Walgate and Gabriel Kavari had been found,
14:26apparently dead from a drug's overdose, in or near this secluded graveyard.
14:31What was going on?
14:33So what you've got now is you've got two young gay men found inexplicably dead with their clothing pulled up within 500 yards of each other in the same part of London and within a few weeks of each other.
14:57And living just yards away from where the bodies are found, Stephen Port.
15:02Local journalist Ramsey Alwakeel would one day investigate Stephen Port's behaviour as emergency services had arrived at the scenes.
15:11So he must have seen the body, you know, being found and kind of, you know, he, I mean, he left the guy in public.
15:19So clearly he's not that concerned about somebody coming across it.
15:23You know, he's almost just sort of going, oh well, you know, on to the next one.
15:28So did you have any involvement in the death of the male that we just spoke about a short while ago, Gabriel Kavari or Gabriel Klein?
15:41No, I didn't know.
15:41It was odd for us, certainly, for there to be two deaths in a short period of time.
15:45They were both men in their 20s or 30s.
15:47We asked the police, as I think you would, if there was anything to be worried about, basically, if the public were, you know, at risk.
15:54The police said no, but on September 18th, 2014, just 31 days after the body of Gabriel Kavari had been found, propped up against this wall, a third young man, Daniel Whitworth, was found dead.
16:10You know, two deaths in sort of East London, it does happen, so I think we weren't sort of panicked at that point.
16:18When it really started looking odd for us was when the third man died.
16:24It was found in the same churchyard.
16:28And did you go with Daniel to meet people?
16:31No, no, I knew he was doing the same as I was, but I'd see him at that party and we'd have a brief conversation with him about it, but I've never actually engaged with him outside of a place.
16:42Daniel Whitworth's body is found in the identical location to Gabriel Kavari.
16:48Same churchyard, same wall, sitting up against the wall, clothing pulled up.
16:54Identical to the other bodies.
16:59He was young, gay, and a user of dating sites.
17:03The similarities were remarkable, but a piece of evidence would emerge that would prove crucial later on.
17:10So the difference being with Daniel Whitworth, he had a suicide note, or at least a note was found on his body in his left hand in the churchyard.
17:20In the letter, Daniel confessed to being involved with the death of Gabriel Kavari, the second man found dead in the vicinity.
17:28And in this note, he said that the reason he committed suicide was that he felt guilty about Gabriel, who had died while they were having sex.
17:42And he felt it was on his conscience that he had placed in the churchyard, and because he felt so bad about it, essentially, he was committing suicide in the same place in the same way.
17:54And then, just almost as a PS, he said, please don't blame the guy that I was with last night. It was nothing to do with him, it's all on me.
18:04The letter was actually written by Stephen Porte.
18:13If the police had suspected foul play as the cause of the three deaths, Porte might have been a suspect.
18:20Detectives could have compared his handwriting with that on the note and seen that they were the same.
18:27But they did not. Instead, it was assumed to be a genuine suicide note.
18:34From the police perspective, while it ought to have mattered, while they ought easily to have been able to prove that this was a false trail,
18:43it was wonderful news, because they not only had an explanation for Daniel Whitworth's death,
18:52but his explanation of his own death was dealing with the murder of Gabriel Kavari.
18:58And at a stroke, there were two dead bodies that were effectively explained away.
19:05Porte had got away with murder using a schoolboy trick.
19:09The suicide note is remarkable in its naivety, in its child-like qualities.
19:18But it worked. No DNA tests were carried out on the note.
19:22Nobody really looked behind this note to try and see if it was genuine or not.
19:28And Daniel Whitworth's case went to a coroner for an inquest,
19:33and the coroner was quite particular in asking the police officers what they had done to try to establish the provenance of this suicide note.
19:44And I think it was slightly embarrassing, really, because they said, well, we haven't really done anything.
19:52It was just a note that we found on him, and we've taken it at face value.
19:56Until further forensic and detective work was carried out on the letter, catching Stephen Porte would not be possible,
20:04and it would be over a year before the letter was uncovered as a forgery.
20:08The prevailing theory seemed to be that Daniel Whitworth was the latest man found at a gay meeting site, the churchyard,
20:15who had overdosed on relaxant drugs like GHB.
20:18His was not the latest in a series of murders, because there had not been a series of murders in the estimation of the police at that stage.
20:26The press were told this was all a weird coincidence.
20:30And I sort of thought, well, it's not that satisfying, but at least we've got an answer, which is, you know, carry on as you were.
20:38No need to avoid the graveyard. There's no serial killer on the loose.
20:42But it turns out there was a serial killer on the loose.
20:45In March 2015, Porte stood trial for the offence that he'd been accused of a year earlier, perverting the course of justice.
20:55He had claimed not to know victim number one, Anthony Walgate.
20:59But detectives had later discovered that Anthony and Porte had spent the night together before Walgate apparently overdosed from drug use.
21:06So Porte had lied.
21:08He was sentenced to eight months in prison.
21:10He spent three months inside, during which time bodies stopped turning up at St Margaret's churchyard, or the roads nearby.
21:21It was in September 2015 that Jack Taylor was out with friends at the Dagenham Trades Hall Club.
21:28At 10.30 he's seen arriving at the hall, and at 12.30 he leaves.
21:33After departing from the Trades Hall, Jack calls a minicab, checks in on a dating app.
21:4125-year-old Jack Taylor communicates with Stephen Porte on Grindr, and it's three in the morning, but notwithstanding that, he goes over to Barking to meet him.
21:54He heads for Cambridge Road embarking after he and Stephen Porte had agreed to meet.
22:04Nobody was yet investigating them, looking for them, but Porte was leaving digital footprints.
22:10One of the messages that they exchanged on Grindr was Porte asking Taylor if he'd ever taken tea, by which Taylor assumed him to mean crystal meth, and he said no I never have done mate.
22:28The dating apps allow people to pick partners, he has just used that to pick victims.
22:35Shortly after three, Porte is recorded on security cameras near Cambridge Road in Barking Town Centre.
22:41Porte collects him at the railway station, meets him there and they go back to Porte's flat.
22:47Porte travels back to Cambridge Road and again is captured on camera, this time with Jack Taylor.
22:52Jack could not possibly have known how much danger he was in.
22:59Within 36 hours of this meeting, in the early hours of the morning, Jack Taylor was found dead.
23:09So we got a police pill through for what we now know was Jack Taylor, Porte's fourth victim.
23:15The body he was found embarking, not that different situation from the first three deaths.
23:20And I thought, you know, that's like what happened last year, you know, that's a bit odd.
23:27Still unsuspected of being a killer, Stephen Porte has claimed victim number four.
23:32Will he be stopped before another young man is drugged and killed?
23:36What would it take to uncover the killer's mistake?
23:39For Stephen Porte to be arrested for murder, police had to suspect him of involvement in the death of four young men.
23:55And in late 2015, they did not.
23:57Uncovering any mistake that would lead to his arrest and conviction would take a change of mind at the Metropolitan Police.
24:04Porte's fourth victim and the determination of a family to get to the truth would become key to catching a killer.
24:11Jack, 25, was a forklift truck driver and very much loved by a family that lived just a few miles from Barking in Dagenham.
24:19He was very passionate about family, always wanted to spend time with his family. His friends loved socialising. Just loved being with his family and friends all the time. Just wanted to be a part of everything, didn't they?
24:32Yeah.
24:33It came as no surprise to his sisters that Jack had been out on that Friday the 13th of September.
24:40Jack was very much the life and soul. And he would get on with everybody, he'd be really sociable. He was a really friendly person. He was the sort of person, he walked in a room and he lit the room up. That was just the way he was.
24:56Later that weekend, the news emerged. Jack has been found dead.
25:03I might help if I show you a picture. I'll call this CRT. This is Jack Taylor.
25:15Do you recognise that bit?
25:18Hmm.
25:20Taylor's body was found on the other side of the church wall at St Margaret's. He was propped up against the wall, sitting position, had his upper clothing pulled up to reveal his belly.
25:33Exactly the same as the other deaths in the area. In his pocket was found a syringe and a small glass medicine bottle.
25:44This was reported to local police as a suspicious or unexplained death. Police attended and the conclusion they came to was that this death was probably self-inflicted by misuse of some sort of substances.
25:58Not something the Taylor family were prepared to accept.
26:02From what we were told that there was something not right, we knew that because Jack didn't take drugs.
26:07The Taylors became crucial to the eventual investigation into Stephen Port.
26:11There was a range of reasons why the sisters were sceptical about what they'd been told as they investigated what evidence they knew of.
26:20We asked the police about the syringe that was found on Jack and it wasn't used.
26:25So you're telling us it wasn't used, but you're also telling us that he just sat there and injected himself and done an overdose.
26:35Another reason for their scepticism, the location where Jack was found.
26:39And the fact that he was where he was when we were taken to the area, that's not somewhere Jack would ever be.
26:46It just didn't add up. Their own internet research revealed how Jack was the fourth young man to have been found in the vicinity of the churchyard.
26:53So we was trying to find out, like, if there was anything else that had happened around that area, anything similar.
27:00So as we started to go back, obviously, that's when we came across the other boys.
27:05With hindsight, how could it have been missed, especially knowing that they were all gay, that they were all young, they'd all use the same drug, they'd all had sex.
27:13It just seems like, you know, links should have been drawn that weren't.
27:20Stephen Port was going about his daily life throughout this time.
27:24He worked as a cook in a cafe in East London, and he was still dating via gay sites and apps.
27:30The Taylor sisters were yet to suspect him, but they were getting near to the truth.
27:35It was just, well, it was heart-wrenching.
27:37And we always knew that we, like, basically had, like, a big puzzle.
27:42And as we were getting more and more information and we were putting it together, we didn't know what the middle bit was.
27:51The local newspaper embarking was equally sceptical.
27:55Four gay young men found dead each just yards from the home of a man who had reported the first death.
28:01The evidence that foul play was involved, to some, appeared clear.
28:05When you think that there was so much linking these deaths to each other and to Stephen Port,
28:12you have to think, how smoking does a gun have to be?
28:19Together, media and family turned to the police for explanations.
28:23Jack Taylor's family, along with a local newspaper embarking,
28:28kept up pressure on the Metropolitan Police to look again at Jack's death.
28:37Other evidence struck the women.
28:39Until now, police had not suggested that the deaths of the men were linked.
28:43It was when researching the inquest into the death of Daniel Whitworth, Port's third victim in June 2015,
28:48that the remarkable similarity of the discoveries of the bodies struck the Taylors, as evidence that the deaths were linked.
28:56We then followed the coroner's report back then at what had come out, and basically it was nigh on the same as Jack.
29:04The coroner into the death of Daniel Whitworth had also suggested more work should be done on the case.
29:11Momentum was building to look again at events surrounding the deaths near the St Margaret's graveyard.
29:16And eventually, their pressure had some sort of success in that somebody decided to get another officer,
29:26who hadn't been involved before, to have a look not only at Jack Taylor's deaths,
29:31but at the three that had gone previously.
29:34And that officer was surprised, shocked by what was found,
29:39and made the suggestion that, do you know what, all these four deaths look like, they're murders,
29:46and they look like they're linked.
29:48And that was the point where the alarm is raised almost.
29:52The homicide team are involved, and all of a sudden, the investigation that these offences
29:59probably should have had from the very beginning, starts to take place.
30:04Investigating officers now decided to track Jack Taylor's movements on the night before he died and checked his phone.
30:13They uncovered that he'd agreed to meet a man embarking.
30:16They trawled through security camera images of the town.
30:19There he was.
30:21But who was he with?
30:23And so there was a police appeal for a man who'd been with this dead guy hours before he died.
30:29On the 13th of October 2015, the Met issued a CCTV image taken from Barking Station,
30:37which showed Jack Taylor walking with a tall, blonde man.
30:43I think about 24 hours passed, and Stephen Porte was arrested on suspicion of four murders.
30:52It was now that detectives began a series of interviews with Stephen Porte.
30:57I don't recognise his face.
31:01So you don't recognise his face?
31:04I do not know. No.
31:06The truth began to emerge.
31:08Taking the decision itself to consider the deaths as murder and Porte as a suspect
31:14meant that any mistakes he had made might now be uncovered.
31:18The resultant publicity generated even more evidence.
31:21After Porte's arrest and charge, the media coverage of the events brought forward a horde of people
31:34making allegations about Stephen Porte.
31:36They included the young Muslim boy.
31:38And it was clear that Porte had a settled method of what he liked to do and what he would do.
31:50And that was to contact men normally younger than him, normally considerably younger than him,
31:55on internet or apps, and get them to come to his flat, where he would ply them with a drug, with GHB predominantly,
32:05and then also inject them with something, to render them unconscious, during which time he would rape them.
32:11He has thought through every detail of how he is going to make this happen.
32:17And he has used all the tools of our time at his disposal.
32:22Tools like the internet and dating apps.
32:26Officers discover that Stephen Porte had cancelled his Grindr account just hours after the death of Jack Taylor.
32:33Why would he do that unless he was hiding something?
32:37They discover that he had used Grindr to contact Jack and others.
32:41The case against him was building.
32:44Whilst on remand, Porte began his pen pal friendship with the ex-con Cody Lackey.
32:49The handwritten letters, unknown about by police, were revealing.
32:54Stephen told me in his letters that he met this guy on Grindr, he invited him round to his.
32:59They were both taking this drug, GHB, and he said that the guy knew what he was doing,
33:06he was administering his own amount of the drug.
33:09Then apparently he took a funny turn, Stephen took him outside.
33:12I think he then rang the emergency services.
33:15Emergency ambulance, what's the address of the emergency?
33:19Cook Street, it was a young boy, I think I think he's captured outside, I don't know.
33:24Said that he found this body outside, but then he put the phone down
33:27when he was questioned by the operator from the emergency services.
33:32The telephone number you called him from.
33:37Hello?
33:38They then rang him back, Stephen put the phone down again,
33:40and then when the ambulance and police turned up, he scarpered inside.
33:44Porte was revealing his version of events about Anthony Walgate.
33:48That's not all he gave away in the letters, he was candid about the effects of muscle relaxant drugs.
33:55And he seemed to know an awful lot.
33:57He said you can't intentionally kill someone with GHB and stuff because the taste,
34:01they'd be able to taste it and stuff because it had quite a sour, like distinctive taste and stuff.
34:05But I think he was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince me and stuff.
34:08The odd written relationship continued whilst Porte was behind bars.
34:14In one letter, Porte says that all of the men had died because they did not know the dangers of GHB.
34:20He even offered to give lectures about the subject when he was released.
34:24He said Porte was not a killer.
34:26He was sticking to a line of defence that even some police officers had believed as the bodies turned up.
34:31That gay men were dying because of drugs overdoses, not because of murder.
34:35He said he wanted to become an anti-drug advocate and stuff.
34:38He wanted to speak out at schools, colleges, universities and in the media and stuff.
34:43He wanted to get himself a media profile, speaking out against drugs and stuff and the dangers of drugs
34:49and highlighting like recreational drugs, if you will.
34:54Through his pen pal, Porte later perfected his defence.
34:58The young man had been inexperienced in how much drugs they should take.
35:02They'd overdosed and died.
35:03Porte had not been responsible for their deaths, which had followed consensual sex.
35:09This was not going to be a straightforward case for detectives to gain a guilty verdict.
35:16I might help if I show you a picture.
35:20I'll call this CRT.
35:22This is Jack Taylor.
35:26Do you recognise that man?
35:27It was during the inquest into one of Porte's victims, Daniel Whitworth, that the first breakthrough occurred.
35:38The coroner felt that the Daniel Whitworth suicide note lacked authenticity and should be subject to more forensic analysis.
35:45One section did not ring true.
35:46Don't blame the man I was with last night.
35:50They told us repeatedly that they had checked it, DNA checked it, sampled it, everything had been done and that there was no reason for us to look into that.
36:01We were also told that all the deaths were not connected, which obviously is not true because the suicide letter, in the suicide letter, stated that Daniel had supposedly killed Gabriel.
36:15So it was connected. We were told there was no connection.
36:20The coroner thought the same. She returned an open verdict.
36:25An open verdict means the death was suspicious, but there was no clear cause.
36:30Would the relevance of the suicide note expose what really had happened around and in St Margaret's churchyard?
36:37Were Stephen Porte's mistakes about to be uncovered?
36:45The suicide note allegedly left by Daniel Whitworth, victim number three, claims that Daniel had been with Gabriel Kavari, victim number two, on the night that he had died.
37:01In this note, he expressed not only his sorrow for committing suicide and upsetting his family and his friends by that, but saying that the trigger for it was the fact that Gabriel had died.
37:19The note also urged people not to blame the man who Daniel had been with the night before.
37:25Who was that man?
37:28Stephen Porte.
37:29Stephen Porte.
37:32The apparent suicide note, this was finally submitted to a handwriting expert.
37:36And the handwriting expert looked at other things written by Stephen Porte, looked at other things written by Daniel Whitworth, and concluded that that suicide note was not written by Daniel Whitworth.
37:48The handwriting matched exactly that of Stephen Porte, and more evidence would emerge when other tests were carried out on the note.
37:58And an expert made a statement to say that conclusively, the paper that was used for the suicide note for Daniel Whitworth was the same as the paper on which Stephen Porte had written his other letters.
38:14And crucially and clinchingly, Stephen Porte's DNA was found on Daniel Whitworth's suicide note.
38:22The sunglasses found by the body of another victim were tested for DNA, sure enough, Porte was on them. Still, he protested his innocence.
38:31And Stephen, did you write this letter, the CRT letter, the photos of it that's found with Daniel?
38:41No.
38:42No.
38:43No.
38:44No.
38:45Yet more evidence, a blue sheet which had come from Porte's bedroom, and found over a victim's body.
38:50Not only was Stephen Porte's DNA found on the Daniel Whitworth's alleged suicide note, but Whitworth was found wrapped in a blue sheet, or the blue sheet with him.
39:05And Stephen Porte's DNA was also found on that sheet.
39:10Are you telling us the truth, Stephen?
39:12I'm telling you the truth, yes.
39:13By the letter?
39:14Yes.
39:15It had taken forensic science to prove that the four deaths were linked and that Porte had been with all of them, something he tried to cover up with a fake letter.
39:24It was the handwriting on that letter which was his undoing.
39:27When seen side by side with Cody Lackey's, which the police did not have available to them when investigating, the similarities are particularly pronounced on the letter P.
39:37I mean, the fact is, yes, it's, in theory, this was a wonderful plan.
39:47And if it had been properly executed and properly, you know, he'd taken account of DNA and of handwriting comparisons and all the things that can be done with handwritten notes, if that was all dealt with, this was genius.
40:02This was, you know, the stroke of a master criminal.
40:05But Porte was no master criminal.
40:07His other mistakes were exposed, one by one.
40:10Stephen Porte's mobile phone was examined during the investigation and it was found to contain no fewer than 83 separate video clips of pornographic material,
40:25many of which involved a man apparently having sex with another man who was unconscious.
40:32It was quite clear that this was something that represented Porte's main sexual interest.
40:40The evidence of his internet habits had revealed the full extent to Porte's modus operandi.
40:46He would lure the men, often in an online disguise to his flat, having met them via an app, and then spike their drinks with drugs.
40:59Particularly within the gay community, relationships are formed through the use of the apps.
41:05It's a ready selection rather than emerging organically.
41:11And really, if you think about it, what Stephen Porte has done in selecting his victims is simply an extension of this.
41:19He's chosen his victims in the way that in the 21st century, people choose their partners, their relationships.
41:28And then there was the discovery of CCTV linking Port with his fourth victim, Jack Taylor, which first exposed the serial killer to investigation.
41:38And suddenly, that piece that we'd written a year before saying,
41:43don't worry guys, there isn't a serial killer on the loose, apparently, just felt, you know, almost, there's a tragic irony to it because it was wrong.
41:56In November 2016, Porte was found guilty of the murder of four men.
42:09Writing this letter was the killer's mistake, which led to his conviction, and a sentence which means he will join the small group of serial killers to have received a whole life sentence.
42:20Stephen Porte will never be released.
42:23It's just a sexual predator in every which way, and unfortunately, it resulted in the deaths of four men.
42:36I don't think he can put how much we miss him into words, to be honest. I don't think he can. Any of us. It's just...
42:43Our worlds have just been squashed.
42:53He's a monster. That's all he is, he's a monster.
42:57He had no value for life, and he didn't care what he did to boys and what he would do to people's families by what he's done.
43:01And being in prison is just too good for him, to be honest, because he's took people's lives, and he's destroyed our families for the rest of our lives.
43:15And, of course, I would say for the rest of our lives to the people who have lives so much more than just men.
43:18And, you know, we're not allowed to have people to have a situation that he can't say when he tells us about it.
43:19We're not allowed to have a situation.
43:24We're not allowed to have a situation here.
43:25A situation.
43:26I wasn't allowed to have a situation here.
43:28And I would hope to have them not problem.
43:31We're not allowed to have a situation here.
43:33You know, that's a situation where the man is not allowed to have time.