The Grindr Serial Killer: Stephen Port’s Murders By BBC Three

If I want to kind of conjure him up in my mind, then I just sort of remember how he laughed.

And a smile would break crosses face.

Fuck.

If the police had acted earlier, they could have potentially prevented further rape and murder.

Unless you build online, you had a profile on a kind of gay social networking stroke, dating site and on this profile, its stated that he was looking for a room to rent and because I have this spare room. I agreed to meet him.

He was Slovakian. He was very smart, but very sweet-natured.

It was really nice, having a stay.

I can remember being quite sort of surprised by all seemed quite sudden and he was going to move out maybe like the next day, then kind of pry and what he was doing and who he was going to meet. I know he went and met one guy via, you know, a dating app.

I regret.

Not having a small questions about where he was going, who he was going to stay with.

so less than a week after he left, I was working from home and four police turn up at my door and they tell me that he’s been found dead in a cemetery and

After that, it’s a bit of a blur. I can remember. My thoughts were. Is it suicide?

As he died of exposure, but it was August. So you’re not just dealing with the fact that your friend has died.

It’s the horrific circumstances and miss.

Mystery.

And I guess that was why I felt compelled, even at that early stage to understand and know what happened.

I typed in unexplained deaths barking.

And this link came up, which is about two-and-a-half to three months before. Gabriel was found man dies in unexplained circumstances in barking. Police are appealing for information after a man died in unexplained circumstances on Cook Street. So, then what I did was, I type Cook Street into Google Maps,

So there’s Cook Street and there is st. Margaret’s Church yard.

It’s like a stone’s. Throw a couple of blocks away that feeling in the pit of the stomach that there’s something wrong here. That’s too close. They’re too similar, young man, found dead in the same circumstances that clothes mere streets away. It made me suspicious. It seems suspicious.

Michael ende.

Checking Gabriel’s Facebook page because I figured if other people knew he was dead, if his family knew is dead or his friends that there would be some sign of it on his page, people posting things. And there wasn’t

It concerned me that it was taking the police that long to contact them on Facebook. Thierry tells me that they’ve found another young man dead in the same Cemetery as Gabriel.

It may have been mild paranoia. But at the time, I was thinking, you’ve got now, three young men turning up dead in the same area in barking. There’s something very wrong going on here. And because I knew Gabriel, I started to worry that I might be in danger. And so I called the detective from barking and dagenham and I said,

If this is murder you have to tell me because I’m concerned for my own safety. I suppose my thoughts ran to are these young men being murdered and I was assured that it wasn’t murder. Thierry is talking to

Someone online who claims to have known Gabriel whilst he was in London. And this person is saying that Gabriel and Daniel the third death that they were together at a party in barking. Essentially a drug-fueled orgy.

So he says, young guys loads of drugs provided by older guys, they take advantage of the young ones when they are passed out one collapsed. And when he woke up one was fucking him. They say these parties last three days non-stop, they give them shots with dope inside and Coke.

So I’m thinking older guys drugging younger guys raping them, but with fatal consequences that. Is that how these deaths are happening. I suppose, I felt maybe I had a moral responsibility here to try and draw attention to it and to make sure that it was being investigated properly.

Obviously, the first Port of Call is to go to the detectives that barking and Dagger because I had questions because I felt like I might have relevant information and immediately I ran into that brick wall. You’re not next of kin. There’s nothing we can tell you but the point is I was trying to engage with them because I felt that maybe I had information about Gabriel’s final movements.

And they said that they would speak with their Superior officer and get back to me and they never did.

Gallup called the police. And they said, we’ve got a guy, and he thinks he’s got relevant information. He thinks that possibly Gabriel. And Daniel were at the same can sex party. Do you want to speak to him? And the police said, no. And also that these deaths are not suspicious.

In preparation for the inquest. I made a document and I put in it. The information that I had about these drug rape parties parties, where older men are drugging and raping younger gay men.

The detective stands up. And I remember, I was kind of struck, he didn’t seem like he was on top of things. All the quite disorganized. I can remember. I’m the coroner asked him for phone records. Maybe Gabriel’s phone records possibly to try and ascertain. Whether there was evidence that Gabriel knew Daniel, and I can remember him flipping through his ring binder and he couldn’t find them. And he just said he couldn’t find them and they

Some move on. I was surprised by how disorganized and Flaky it seemed.

Remember thinking at the time that the tone of the notes was all about. It’s all my fault. There’s nobody else who is responsible for this death and that there was nothing in it.

Very impersonal.

The no didn’t make any references to any of his family members. So I had my doubts in the car and I was reading it out. But I think immediately afterwards, she asked the detective, whether they checked the handwriting web. They checked it with the family and he said, yes.

If you record an open verdict, if you can’t prove that Gabriel and Daniel knew each other and therefore, you can’t prove the suicide note, then surely that requires further investigation. So to my mind that left big questions, open-ended questions, and I remember saying to the detective, when we were alone outside. Will there be any further investigation?

And him saying no, that’s it.

I got this email from a detective that serious crime, command, saying that another body has been found and they currently have someone in custody that they are questioning at that moment, for murder for that, death, and for Gabriel’s.

So I haven’t been alone in Kathmandu knowing that back home. A man is being questioned for the murder of my friend and the all my worst fears.

They’re all my worst fears have been realized.

As it transpired, the man who had been messaging, Thierry, who had been describing these chem sex parties. These parties were older. Men are drugging and raping younger. Men was in fact, the killer Stephen ports. The whole thing was his cover story. It was his deception and

It doesn’t rest easy with me that I took that story to the inquest that I gave it a voice but if the police had investigated it earlier that wouldn’t have happened.

If they’d have followed that trail back, that Facebook conversation, it would have led them to Stephen Port. If they’d have investigated thoroughly at the beginning, they’d given the first death, the significance, that it deserved. They could have potentially prevented further, rape and murder.

This is the place where the man who killed Gabriel brought him, understand that Gabriel was found through there. The churchyard. I just don’t want to go any further. I don’t want to see that. I just don’t feel like this is a Gabriel place.

This is a Stephen Port Place. It’s not to do with Gabriel. He wasn’t alive here. I get that sense when I think about.

Him, the man who killed Gabriel.

of just a kind of

a sort of sick feeling in the bottom of the stomach.

Just doesn’t feel right. I’ve got to go back out and that’s all right.

How can they not have linked? Those first three deaths, you’ve got three young, gay, men, propped up dead within 300 meters of each other within four months of each other.

In my opinion it seems as if the police just went. Oh, well, that’s what young gay men do. Is they take drugs and they die and graveyards and

I wonder what it’d have been the same if these had been young. Women homophobia is a strong word. But I think if you only encounter a community or a group of people by policing them that potentially, you develop a Prejudice about that community. And I’m there for left wondering whether the problem is, there is a lack of diversity within the police force that they are still seeing the gay community as something other.

And I believe that they just wrote off these victims as gay druggies. That’s what happens. Gay. People take drugs. They overdose. So the truth is not, that Gabriel, was present with. Daniel Whitworth, a chem sex party. The truth is that he was drugged and raped and murdered by Stephen port.