text: Judge says he accepts intention of chef, who murdered four men, was to cause serious harm rather than death 
   
   The serial killer Stephen Port has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of four young gay men he drugged and raped before dumping their bodies near his east London flat. 
   
   The 41-year-old chef, who had a fetish for sex with unconscious boyish-looking men, was convicted on Wednesday of the murders of Anthony Walgate, a 23-year-old fashion student from Hull, Gabriel Kovari, 22, originally from Slovakia, Daniel Whitworth, 21, a chef from Kent, and Jack Taylor, 25, a forklift driver from Dagenham. 
   
   
   
   Sentencing Port to a whole-life order, Mr Justice Openshaw said: “I accept his intention was only to cause really serious harm rather than cause death but he must have known and foreseen there was a high risk of death, the more so after the death of Anthony Walgate, the first victim.” 
   
   
   
   He said: “The murders were committed as part of a persistent course of conduct of the defendant surreptitiously drugging these young men so that he could penetrate them while they were unconscious. 
   
   “A significant degree of planning went into obtaining the drugs in advance and in luring the victims to his flat. Having killed them by administering an overdose, he dragged them out into the street in one case, or took them to the churchyard in the other cases, and abandoned their bodies in a manner which robbed them of their dignity, and thereby greatly increased the distress of their loving families.” 
   
   The judge said: “I have no doubt that the seriousness of the offending is so exceptionally high that the whole-life order is justified; indeed it is required. The sentence therefore upon the counts of murder is a sentence of life imprisonment. I decline to set a minimum term. The result is a whole-life sentence and the defendant will die in prison.” 
   
   There were loud cheers and applause from family members in court, while someone in the public gallery shouted out: “I hope you die a long, slow death, you piece of shit.” 
   
   DCI Tim Duffield, senior investigating officer from the Met’s homicide and major crime command, said: “These evil crimes have left entire families, a community and a nation in shock.” 
   
   He said Port was one of the most dangerous individuals he had encountered in almost 28 years of policing and that a full-life term in prison was the only appropriate punishment in the circumstances. 
   
   Outside court, Taylor’s sister Donna said: “We finally have justice for Jack and the other boys. A sick and twisted scumbag will never be able to hurt or destroy any other family’s life. Jack can finally rest in peace. We will always be completely heartbroken.” 
   
   The judge highlighted Port’s attempt to cover up two of his murders with a fake suicide note as “wicked and monstrous”. 
   
   All four men died after being given fatal overdoses of the date-rape drug GHB, also known as G or liquid ecstasy. Port was convicted of 22 offences against 11 men, including drugging and sex offences against seven men who survived their encounters with him. 
   
   Despite striking similarities between the four murders, which were carried out over 15 months, the Metropolitan police failed to link them until the family of Taylor, his final victim, forced them to re-examine all the deaths. 
   
   The Taylor family are planning to sue the force, and believe Port would not have been stopped if they had not fought for a full investigation. 
   
   The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the Met’s initial response to the murders, including whether “discrimination played any part in actions and decisions”. 
   
   
   
   The judge referred to the police investigation in his sentencing remarks, saying: “It is not to me to say whether the seeming bizarre coincidence of these three gay young men being found dead so close together might have given rise to suspicions that these deaths were not the result of ordinary self-administered drug overdoses but that is how their deaths, including Jack Taylor’s death, were treated at the time; the competence and adequacy of the investigation will later be examined by others.” 
   
   He said police had accepted the death of Port’s first victim, Walgate, “at face value”, adding: “Whether the police were right to do so, in the light of what they knew or ought to have found out, is for others to decide having thoroughly inquired into the matter, which it has not been appropriate for us to do in the course of the criminal trial.” 
   
   The public gallery at the Old Bailey court was packed, and all the members of the jury had returned to court to hear the sentencing. 
   
   Ahead of sentencing, Jonathan Rees QC, prosecuting, read aloud to the court from victim impact statements. Relatives of Walgate described their “devastation”. His mother said her son was clever, funny and talented and wanted to be a famous fashion designer. Port had not only destroyed their family, but had destroyed his own, she said. 
   
   
   
   Kovari’s brother, Adam, said the impact on his family of the loss of his only brother could “hardly be described in words”, said Rees. His murder had “changed their lives for ever”. 
   
   Adam Whitworth, father of Daniel Whitworth, described living two parallel lives, where grief tainted everyday life. Friends had told him that “the light had gone out of his eyes”, said Rees, and he had a “life sentence of grief”. His partner and Daniel’s stepmother, Amanda Pearson, said she had become “bitter and cynical”, that the “rich and fulfilling life ahead of us with Dan has been stolen from us”. It had been painful for the family when they had first wrongly been told he had taken his own life, Rees said. 
   
   Taylor’s family said their lives had been destroyed, and they had had to suffer the “devastating effect” of his body being exhumed. They endured endless sleepless nights, and family members had taken time off work sick. The loss of the son, brother, uncle, brother-in-law had left “a black hole that will never be filled”. 
   
   Port’s family later said they continued to believe he was innocent, ITV news reported. Speaking anonymously to the broadcaster, Port’s mother said: “I know he’s my son – he’s a kind boy. 
   
   “He said all along, ‘I didn’t murder anyone mum,’ he said. Honest truth. ‘I didn’t murder anyone’ - that’s what he told me last Sunday on the telephone.” 
   
   David Etheridge QC, for Port, said in mitigation that at that period in Port’s life, he had descended into a “vortex” of drug-taking, where “gratification of his sexual life was central”. 
   
   Port’s fetish for sex with drugged young men had “graduated to fixation, and fixation to compulsion”. 
   
   He added the prosecution had not alleged “any intent to kill these young men”. The premeditated planning “was to drug to unconsciousness and not to end someone’s life”, said Etheridge. 
   
   As Port was convicted, Stuart Cundy, a police commander who leads the Met’s specialist crime and operations unit, offered personal letters of apology to the victims’ families for the missed opportunities to catch Port sooner. 
   
   During the trial it emerged that Port, a bus depot canteen chef, had been arrested and charged for lying about how the body of his first victim, Walgate, came to be found dumped outside the communal entrance to his flat in Barking, east London, in June 2014. 
   
   Port was bailed. He went on to murder his second and third victims, Kovari and Whitworth, in August and September 2014. Their bodies were found within three weeks, by the same dog walker, propped up in a sitting position in a graveyard near his flat. 
   
   As part of an elaborate cover-up, Port faked and planted a suicide note purporting to have been written by Whitworth claiming he had taken his own life by overdosing on GHB in guilt over accidentally giving Kovari a fatal dose of the drug during sex. The note, which was taken at “face value” by investigating officers, included the line: “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.” Had police attempted to trace that “guy’, which they did not, it could have led them to Port. 
   
   Port was briefly jailed in March 2015 for perverting the course of justice in lying to police about Walgate’s death. He was released in June 2015. Three months later, in September, he murdered Taylor. 
   
   Seventeen police officers are facing investigation for possible misconduct over the catalogue of failures in catching Port. The Met is 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. 
   
   Port used a string of fake online dating profiles and was very active on social media. He met his victims via apps such as Grindr, expressing a sexual preference for young, boyish-looking men he called “twinks”. 
   
   Following his conviction, the force has appealed for any other victims who suffered at Port’s hands to come forward. ||||| London (CNN) A serial killer who drugged and murdered four men he met on gay dating sites has been jailed for life. 
   
   Stephen Port, 41, from London, was convicted of killing Anthony Walgate, 23, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, over a 15-month period between June 2014 and September 2015. 
   
   He was also found guilty of drugging or sexually assaulting seven other victims, who survived. 
   
   A judge at London's Old Bailey handed the killer a whole-life term, meaning he will never be released. "The defendant will die in prison," Mr. Justice Openshaw explained, as cheers broke out in the public gallery. 
   
   In his summing up the judge said Port had committed the murders " in the course of satisfying his lust " for young men whom he had rendered unconscious with drugs. 
   
   'Wicked and monstrous' cover-up 
   
   Port's attempt to cover-up two of the murders with a fake suicide note was, he said, "wicked and monstrous." 
   
   The judge said he accepted that Port intended to cause serious harm rather than death but said "he must have known and foreseen there was a high risk of death, the more so after the death of the first victim." 
   
   Port, a chef and part-time male escort, lured his victims to his flat using online dating sites, before plying them with drinks laced with lethal doses of the sex-enhancing drug GHB in order to rape them while they were unconscious. 
   
   He then dumped their bodies in or near a graveyard close to his home in Barking, east London, and proceeded to foil police with elaborate cover-ups, including deleting dating accounts and planting drugs on the bodies of his victims. 
   
   Familes 'devastated and broken' 
   
   Outside court, relatives of Port's final victim, who drove police to investigate the deaths, expressed their satisfaction with the verdict. 
   
   Jack Taylor's sister Donna said: "We finally have justice for Jack and the other boys. A sick and twisted scumbag will never be able to hurt or destroy any other family's life. Jack can finally rest in peace." 
   
   Stephen Port, 41, was found guilty of more than 20 offenses, including four murders. 
   
   The family are planning to sue the police for failing to properly investigate the earlier deaths of Walgate, Kovari and Whitworth. They believe their son, who was a forklift truck driver, would still be alive if they had linked the deaths and caught Port earlier. 
   
   Prior to the sentencing, in victim impact statements, Walgate's mother said her son's death had "devastated and broken the family," while Daniel Whitworth's father Adam said he had been given "a life sentence of grief." 
   
   Kovari's brother Adam spoke of the difficulty in telling their mother of his death, saying: "There is no pain greater than losing a child," and the Taylor family said they had "truly fallen apart" as a result of Jack's murder. 
   
   A sex attack victim, who cannot be identified, told the court he blamed himself for not reporting the assault sooner, saying that if he had spoke out, he might have been able to prevent Taylor's death. 
   
   Port was given a second life sentence for the rape charges and another ten years for administering drugs. 
   
   Cases dismissed as overdoses 
   
   In mitigation, Port's counsel said he had "descended into a vortex ... he graduated from a fetish to a fixation from a fixation to a compulsion." 
   
   The fall-out of the Port case is likely to continue: UK police are reviewing the chemsex-related deaths of 58 other men , previously dismissed as drug overdoses, amid fears some may be linked to Port. 
   
   And the UK's independent police watchdog has launched an investigation into 17 police officers for misconduct in the case. 
   
   Despite striking similarities in all four cases, police did not realize that a serial killer was at work. 
   
   Murder victim Jack Taylor seen on CCTV with his killer Stephen Port. 
   
   In the first case, Port left Walgate dead in his flat, and went to work. When he came home he proceeded to cover up his actions by dressing the body, putting a small bottle of GHB in Walgate's pocket, and dragging it outside. He then called an ambulance, claiming to have come across the corpse by chance. 
   
   Interviewed by police a second time, he changed his story to suggest Walgate had visited his flat but had died by giving himself an overdose. He said dragged the body outside so that the police would not suspect him of murder. Officers took Port at his word, and charged him with trying to pervert the course of justice. 
   
   "Whether the police were right to do so, in the light of what they knew or ought to have found out, is for others to decide, having thoroughly inquired into the matter," he said. 
   
   Port was convicted and jailed for lying to the police, but was freed months later to kill again. 
   
   He was eventually caught when police found CCTV footage of him with one of his victims at a local station, and his DNA was found on a bottle of GHB planted in Taylor's trouser pocket. 
   
   "These evil crimes have left entire families, a community and a nation in shock," said Detective Chief Inspector Tim Duffield, the senior investigator in the case. 
   
   "Port is one of the most dangerous individuals I've encountered in almost 28 years of policing and a full life-term in prison was the only appropriate punishment in the circumstances," he added. ||||| The police have admitted that they might have missed opportunities to catch Mr. Port sooner and have refocused attention on the use of GHB as a possible weapon. Investigators are now looking into 58 other unexplained deaths in London involving the drug. 
   
   All of Mr. Port’s victims were found slumped against walls in identical positions with their cellphones missing — a woman walking her dog found two of the bodies, in the same spot in a churchyard near Mr. Port’s home, three weeks apart. None were from the area. But the police treated the deaths as unrelated cases of drug overdose and suicide, apparently taking at face value the fake suicide notes that Mr. Port, a 41-year-old canteen chef at a bus depot, had planted on two of the bodies. 
   
   Even when a relative of one of Mr. Port’s victims pointed out the similarities in a string of local deaths after doing an online search, officers initially refused even to consider the possibility of murder. 
   
   Photo 
   
   The relative, Donna Taylor, the sister of 25-year-old Jack Taylor, Mr. Port’s last known victim, said she believed her brother’s sexuality had played a role in the police’s having overlooked important details. 
   
   “It was seen as gay, drugged men in respect of they’ve just sat there, taken an overdose, and that’s that, as if it’s normal,” Ms. Taylor told the BBC on Thursday. “But all these bodies appearing is not normal, is it?” 
   
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   “We were just told that Jack was found up against a church wall and that he died of taking a drug overdose,” she said. “We knew that wasn’t Jack. We knew instantly that that wasn’t Jack — we knew there was more to this.” 
   
   The body of Anthony Walgate, a 23-year-old fashion student from Hull, Mr. Port’s first known victim, was discovered in June 2014 just outside the communal entrance to Mr. Port’s apartment building. 
   
   The other three victims — Gabriel Kovari, a 22-year-old Slovak citizen; Daniel Whitworth, a 21-year-old chef; and Mr. Taylor, a forklift truck driver — were found in the churchyard near Mr. Port’s home. 
   
   Members of Mr. Taylor’s family, who say they believe Mr. Port would still be at large had officers not been pressed to re-examine the evidence, said they planned to sue the police. 
   
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   The Metropolitan Police Service of London has acknowledged that it might have missed opportunities to identify the killer sooner. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has begun a formal investigation into the actions of 17 officers, including whether “discrimination played any part in actions and decisions.” 
   
   So far, the police have rejected the suggestion that the victims suffered discrimination because they were gay, saying in a statement that crimes against people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or L.G.B.T., are “taken extremely seriously.” 
   
   “I hope Port’s conviction today offers reassurance to the L.G.B.T. community that if you have been a victim of crime, our officers will take you seriously, treat your situation with the utmost sensitivity and do their very best to bring offenders before the courts,” Cmdr. Stuart Cundy, of the specialist crime and operations command of the London police, said in a statement on Wednesday. 
   
   Commander Cundy has offered personal letters of apology to the victims’ families for the missed opportunities to catch Mr. Port sooner. 
   
   On Friday morning at the Old Bailey, as the Central Criminal Court is commonly known, Justice Peter Openshaw said that Mr. Port had committed murder to “satisfy his lust” for sex with young men in an unconscious state. He called Mr. Port’s attempts to cover up his crimes with forged suicide notes as “wicked and monstrous.” 
   
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   Mr. Port had placed a fake suicide note in a plastic sheet in the hand of his third victim, Mr. Whitworth, in which Mr. Whitworth appeared to acknowledge his role in the “accidental” overdose of Mr. Kovari, in that way trying to frame one of his victims for the death of another. 
   
   In the note, Mr. Port even made a reference to himself: “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.” 
   
   Peter Tatchell, a gay-rights campaigner, said in a statement that the police had let Mr. Port “slip through their fingers,” noting that they had failed to check the handwriting on the apparent suicide notes. 
   
   “Appallingly, even after the third murder, the police were still maintaining that the deaths were ‘unusual’ but ‘not suspicious,’” Mr. Tatchell said. “They did not issue a public alert to the gay community that a serial killer could be on the loose.” 
   
   Alarm bells might have gone off when Mr. Walgate’s body was found outside Mr. Port’s apartment block. 
   
   Mr. Port himself called the police. He claimed he had not seen Mr. Walgate before, but the police quickly learned that Mr. Port had hired Mr. Walgate through an escort service. Mr. Port then said that Mr. Walgate had overdosed at his apartment, and that he had been too scared to report it. 
   
   Mr. Port was eventually jailed for lying to the authorities, but by then he had killed two more men. 
   
   In June 2015, the coroner at Mr. Whitworth’s inquest said that she was not convinced that Mr. Whitworth had overdosed and that she suspected foul play; even then, however, nothing happened. Three months later, Mr. Port killed Mr. Taylor.
target: – A serial killer who raped and murdered at least four young gay men in London was sentenced to life in prison on Friday. Now it's the police who find themselves in the crosshairs, the New York Times reports. In 2014 and 2015, Stephen Port used dating apps to lure his victims to his apartment, where he drugged, raped, and killed them. According to the Guardian, Port "had a fetish for sex with unconscious boyish-looking men." Despite the bodies of all four victims turning up near Port's apartment—including three in the same churchyard—in a 15-month span and dying from the same drug, police chalked the deaths up to unconnected suicides and overdoses. Police only started looking into the possibility of connected murders after pressure from one of the victim's families. Police have now admitted they maybe could have caught Port sooner, and 17 officers are being investigated. Port left the first body outside his apartment building and called police. Despite changing his story and admitting the victim was in his apartment and he dragged the body outside, police didn't view him as a suspect, CNN reports. Port left a fake suicide note on one of the bodies that read "BTW, please do not blame the guy I was with last night." Police didn't bother trying to find the "guy." And there was more. The family of one of Port's victims is suing the police, accusing them of not looking into the deaths too hard because the victims were all gay. A formal investigation is attempting to determine if "discrimination played any part" in what happened. (He was an NFL draft pick—and a brazen serial killer.)