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Topics: True Crime, TV And Film
Isabella Timpany
Topics: True Crime, TV And Film
A new documentary on the so-called ‘Grindr killer’ Stephen Port is coming to the UK next month.
Part of C+I’s Killer Britain series, the one-off episode will focus on Port, who found his victims online via gay and bisexual dating apps.
Port would drug his victims with GBH, raping them before eventually murdering the men in his east London flat.
The killer, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, devised fake dating profiles to entice his victims. He invented false claims about his background.
On one site, he claimed to be an Oxford University graduate, as well as serving in the Royal Navy.
The episode reflects on the extensive police investigation before Stephen Port was convicted. Initially, the Metropolitan Police wrongly assumed the first deaths to be drug overdoses and not linked, despite the gay community insisting there was a serial murder at large, which raised questions about the Metropolitan Police having institutional homophobia.
The BBC aired a documentary about the case back in 2017, outlining many of the failures police made in response to the deaths. It was found that crucial witnesses were not questioned, including a neighbour who spotted Port acting suspicious around the time of the murders, the neighbour reached out to the police several times but was never contacted for a statement.
Four Lives, a BBC drama based on the ‘Grindr Killer’ case, aired earlier this month.
Starring Stephen Merchant and Sheridan Smith, the drama focuses on the victims: Anthony Walgate, 23, Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21 and Jack Taylor, 25 - and their families.
Speaking about playing the serial killer, Merchant told The Telegraph: “I don’t feel I have the authority to say that the Met are institutionally homophobic. But it’s hard not to look at the decisions that were – or were not– taken in this case and not feel that homophobia was informing some of it.
“The thing that was so shocking to me, reading the script, was that it felt like the whiff of prejudice could have come from the early 1980s. I had to keep reminding myself these were events that occurred in the mid 2010s.”
Following an inquiry, Met Police Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball apologised for the failings, but denied the force was homophobic.
She said: "We don't see institutional homophobia. We don't see homophobia on the part of our officers. We do see all sorts of errors in the investigation, which came together in a truly dreadful way."
The first episode of Killer Britain with Dermot Murnaghan will air 14th February, 9pm exclusively on Crime + Investigation’