Stephen Port is accused of drugging and murdering four young men he met on gay networking sites. Photo / Facebook
Stephen Port is accused of drugging and murdering four young men he met on gay networking sites. Photo / Facebook
A British chef went on trial on Wednesday accused of drugging and murdering four young men he met on gay networking sites, then dumping their bodies in or near a graveyard close to his home in London.
Stephen Port, 41, invited the men back to his flat and spiked theirdrinks or injected them with drugs so he could have sex with them while they were unconscious, a jury at the Old Bailey in London heard.
Four of his victims - Anthony Walgate, 23; Gabriel Kovari, 22; Daniel Whitworth, 21, and 25-year-old Jack Taylor - died of overdoses and Port is accused of dragging their bodies outside, planting bottles of the party drug GHB on some of them and writing a fake suicide note for another.
He is accused of sexually assaulting or raping another eight victims who survived. "In the pursuit of nothing more than his own sexual gratification, (Port) variously drugged, sexually assaulted and in four cases killed young gay men he had invited back to his flat," prosecuting lawyer Jonathan Rees said.
He said Port described himself as "70 per cent more gay than straight" with a preference for young, smaller, boyish-type men "often referred to as 'twinks'", who he met on social networking sites such as Grindr, the Daily Mirror reported.
His "appetite for penetrating drugged young men" was reflected in the "drug-rape" pornography he watched, and he occasionally filmed himself having sexual intercourse with unconscious males, Rees said.
Port faces 29 charges relating to 12 men between February 2012 and October 2015, including the murders of the four men.
All four died in "strikingly similar" circumstances, the court heard, and in each case, Port is accused of lying to police about his involvement with the victims.
