Met Police warned seven years before Stephen Port murders of ‘failure’ in similar serial killer case

Police were warned seven years before the Stephen Port murders of a “serious failure in policing” in not linking the deaths of another gay-related serial killer, an inquest heard.

Anthony Walgate, 23, Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, were murdered by Port between June 2014 and September 2015, after being lured to their deaths via gay hook up apps such as Grindr.

Port was caged for life in 2016 after he was convicted of giving his victims lethal doses of the date rape drug GHB.

A second round of inquests into their deaths, which is seeking to establish whether the police made mistakes in their enquiries, has heard a string of apologies from senior figures.

But today, the jury was told about a report from the Met Police’s LGBT+ Advisory Group which revealed the force was warned in 2007 it lacked knowledge of the gay scene.

Notorious serial killer Colin Ireland tortured and murdered five gay men in London in 1993, and the police investigation “failed to deal adequately with LGBT life and culture”, the inquest heard.

The report said Scotland Yard had failed to “recognise common threads” in linking the victims as gay, until after the fourth man was killed.

The inquest heard: “The investigation of the serial murders by Colin Ireland was hampered by a lack of knowledge of the gay scene in London and the special culture of S&M/bondage.

“In particular, valuable time was lost before the police managed to recognise two common threads to the crimes.

“These links were established only after the death of the fourth victim.”

Andrew O’Connor QC, representing the coroner, Judge Sarah Munro QC, presented the report during the hearing on Friday, November 19.

He said it was possible to “recognise echoes” of the Port murders in the document.

The inquest heard the report, a Thematic Review of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender related murders, stated: “Police at the time failed to deal adequately with LGBT life and culture.

“The initial investigations of the first murders seemed to us to be more focussed on determining promiscuity and risk taking, and seemed predisposed to interpreting circumstances as sex acts ‘gone wrong’.

“We would argue that given the rarity of such suspicious circumstances the police should have been in a position to link the first two murders, and to have done much more to warn the community at all times after that - particularly following the murder of Andrew Collier.

“This represents a serious failure of policing.”

In the Stephen Port murders, police failed to link the deaths - despite three of the bodies being found in the exact same spot in a Barking churchyard.

The first three deaths were treated as non-suspicious.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy told the inquest that since 2015, in Barking and across London, “there has been a significant increase in engagement” with the LGBT+ community, including training, an LGBT+ staff network and continued work with the advisory.

He said: “London is an incredibly diverse and rich capital - there are so many communities, languages and cultures.

“We always need to be doing as much as we possibly can to inform communities, engage communities and work with communities to ultimately make London as safe as we possibly can do.”

The inquest continues.