Police believed ‘suicide note’ linking victim to alleged serial killer, court hears

Officers took a faked suicide note at face value despite a spate of similar cases in the area, a court has heard.

The note asked police not to blame a man who slept with the victim the night before his death.

Anthony Walgate, 23, was found dead outside the flat of alleged serial killer Stephen Port in June 2014, having seemingly overdosed on the party drug GHB.

Two months later, the body of Mr Port’s new flatmate, Gabriel Kovari, was found in a nearby graveyard, and Daniel Whitworth was found in the same location two weeks later with the ‘suicide note’.

All three victims had died of the same cause and were found in the same propped-up position.

However, the Old Bailey was told that the Metropolitan Police Service failed to link the three deaths and treated them as separate incidents.

The note found on the third victim even mentioned the second and read: “BTW (by the way) please do not blame the guy I was with last night, we only had sex and then I left, he knows nothing of what I have done.”

Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC said: “The police at that stage accepted the apparent suicide note at face value and did not investigate further.

“In particular, Daniel’s movements prior to his death were not checked and no attempt was made to trace the person referred to in the note as ‘the guy I was with last night’.”

Mr Port, 41, is accused of 29 separate offences against 12 men including four murders with four alternative charges of manslaughter, seven rapes, four sexual assaults and administering a substance with intent.

He denies all of the charges against him.

His first alleged victim, Mr Walgate, was a fashion student and male escort who Port met online and paid £800 for an “overnight”.

Mr Walgate passed details of the meeting onto a friend before attending, joking that it was in case he was going to be killed. He was found dead the next morning.

Mr Port gave conflicting statements about how Mr Walgate died, claiming first that he did not know the victim before admitting they had met for sex but Mr Walgate had accidentally overdosed.

He was jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice and released early in June 2015.

Mr Port is alleged to have killed his second victim two months after the first, describing Mr Kovari to his friends as his “new Slovakian Twink flatmate”.

A dog walker discovered Mr Kovari’s body propped up in the grounds of St Margaret’s Church – just streets away from Mr Port’s flat in Barking.

In what Mr Rees called “an extraordinary twist”, the same person also discovered the body of Mr Whitworth in the same location just two weeks later.

As with the other two victims, Mr Whitworth was found to have a bottle of GHB on him, which the court heard was planted by Mr Port.

In the note – allegedly written by Mr Port – Mr Whitworth also appeared to admit culpability for Mr Kovari’s death, blaming it on an accidental drug overdose administered during sex.

Mr Port has also been linked to the murder of 25-year-old Jack Taylor in 2015, as well as the drugging and rape of several other victims.

The trial continues.