Judy was boring.
Hello.
Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com.
It's my little escape.
Now Judy's the life of the party.
Oh baby mama is bringing home the bacon.
WHOA, Take it easy, Judy, Jump the chumba life is for everybody. So go to chumpacasino dot com and play over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices. Jump chumpacasino dot com. No PA's necessary, boid. We're prohibited by eighteen plus terms and conditioned to ply see web secret details. With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere, Really, beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen the bride and groom?
Sorry? Sorry, we're here.
We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost track of time. No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guess registered. But in that case, I pronounce you lucky. Play for free at Lucky Landslots dot com. Daily bonuses are waiting. No purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by lack eighteen plus terms and conditions APPLA see web secrety Downretta.
Versus I have a bag that I found that I think belongs to Rata Hda.
Oh you've been so good. If you like a cup of coffee, what chance encounter I've been so lowly?
Don't I cant help you a new connection?
I mean, Bredda is an old lady, a terrifying secret.
This Friday, there's something you need to know about Bretta's.
Don't take debate.
I just try to get rid of Greta.
Starring race moretts in theaters.
Friday Radio.
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gacy Bundy e k Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Mure with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening. Hiring can be pretty time consuming. You post a job to several online job boards only to get tons of the wrong resumes. Then you have to sort through all of those resumes just to find a few people with the right skills and experience those job sites that overwhelm you with the wrong resumes. They're not smart. That's why you should do the smart thing and go to ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. Unlike other job sites,
zip recruiter finds qualified candidates for you. It's powerful matching technology scans thousands of resumes to identify people with the right skills, education, and experience, and actively invites them to apply to your job. When you get qualified candidates fast, it's no wonder that ZipRecruiter is rated number one by employers in the US. This rating comes from hiring sites on trust Pilot with over one thousand reviews, and right now my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at this
exclusive web address ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. If you love the show, show your support to it and ZipRecruiter by going to ZipRecruiter dot com slash mur d er. That's ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. Zip recruiter the smartest way to hire. In today's world, where meeting people for the purpose of having sex with a simple click on your phone, a new type of gay sex called party and play or chem sex has become all the rage
in the mainstream. Several young gay men were being found dead, appearing to have overdosed on the favorite sex drugs used at these Kemp sex parties in a city churchyard in East London. Was this what the Metro Police claimed it was a sex drug overdose or was there something more
going on here? It would soon be discovered that a popular forty one year old Stephen Port, who had appeared on Celebrity Chef UK, would be arrested and charged with four of the young men's murders by overdosing them with GBH, the date rape drug, enough to kill them in and then raping them and leaving their bodies out in a churchyard.
Since the conviction of a Celebrity Chef UK Stephen Port, the police are now reviewing fifty eight other mysterious deaths by overdose where the body was found dead in the same area of London. There are now seventeen police officers under investigation for not investigating the crimes because of their homophobia.
Included are several of the personal letters convicted serial killer Stephen Port sent to his friend in penpal, Cody Lackey, which reveals what he claims happened to each of the victims and what really happened in these chem sex parties. You will also find out some of Port's personal details that you wouldn't expect to hear. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Grinder serial Killer Stephen Port, with my special guest journalist, author and co host of
the radio program House of Mystery, Alan R. Warren. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Alan R.
Warren, Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
It's always a pleasure to have you on. Ellen. You've always have something very very interesting in terms of the cases that you do cover in your books, and this is no exception with The Grinder serial Killer. Incredible story. Now this story you take us to a place called Barking, which is a small city in East London in the UK, population one hundred and eighty seven thousand. So let's talk about Anthony Patrick Wallgate, twenty three years old. He's a
student at the University of Middlesex. Tell us a little bit about Anthony Patrick Wallgate and how he comes to meet who we first he first believes is a person named Joe Dean. Tell us about the circumstances and how these people met Anthony Patrick Wallgate, and as I mentioned Joe Dean.
Well, you know Anthony Wallgate. He was a twenty three year old fashion design student and he was in his second year and you know, an average kid and he but what he was doing was to survive for money. He would go on the Sleepy Boys app, which a lot of escorts, male escorts will go on there and advertise their service, and he would work that way, So that's kind of what he was doing. He would do it once or twice a week, depending on money, and
that's how he met up with Joe Dene. Joe Dene approached him on the app and wanted to have him come spend the night and he was going to pay him for it. So so of course he took the job and all nighter would be eight hundred pounds. So that's that's a lot of money.
M h. Now you talk about that. Just before that, he said to his roommate, to his friend, he said, just in case, he took down all the details where he was going to go, who is going to be with. He even put the name Joe Dean down. So he and he said to his friend, just in case I get killed. So anyway you talk about you talk about Wallgate meeting was supposed to meet this person, this person that he was going to be an escort for at
ten pm at the Barking rail station. Now you talk about two days later, because this is June seventeenth, twenty fourteen. June nineteenth, early morning, police receive an emergency call. Tell us what was said in that emergency call.
Well, yeah, it was a it's a nine to nine nine call, which is their version of nine to one one, so it's for it's for ambulance as well as the police. And man was on there saying that he was on his way to work and when he got out in his car, he noticed a body, a male body, sitting slumped up in the front just the front way of the of the apartment building he lived in. So he wasn't at the door, he was just beside it on the building itself, and it looked like he was passed out.
So the caller was saying that he was worried that it might be a drug overdose or something like that because the area was known for that as well. It was a rough area. There was a lot of drug usage and and things close by, so that's how he reported it.
Now, the police usually and in this case, wanted to know who this person was that was calling or when they asked him what his name was, what he what did he do? And is a reaction What did the police in turn do afterwards?
Well, he he hung up, you know, and and so they would call him back, and he actually hung up twice on him. They had to call him back a couple of times because they wanted, you know, to know who he was and more about the circumstances, as they do, right if you've got a body, they want to know exactly what's going on. And so they just called him back two times. They stayed on him and to get his information. You know.
Now when the police arrive, they discover this Anthony Wallgate, you say, sitting with his back against this apartment building wall. His shirt is pulled up, his zipper is open, looks like he's sleeping. However, what did the police find in terms of the what do they find with at the crime scene in terms of the body, that's significant.
Well, you know, the significant part was that they found some They found a little bottle which GHB, which is the popular drug people take, and that was as well as they had a syringe in his pocket and he was overdosed. And one strange thing when you said the zipper was up, his underwear had been removed and put back on inside out, like backwards, and so that was another strange thing. And yeah, and the way his T shirt was pulled up around his chest, and so that
in itself was kind of unusual. But because of the drugs they found, I think in their mind when they found him, he was just another overdose.
You also include for the suspiciousness that police mightn't well, we'll talk about that later. What they overlooked was that there was fourteen bruises on the body and they just attributed this entirely, this the entire thing to an overdose of GHB. However, they the police did contact Stephen Port. They knew now that the person, this Joe Dean was actually a person named Stephen Port, because they had contacted
him back after his emergency calls. Now, with that Stephen Port, when they actually went to question him, what did they find out about his initial story? And as a result of that initial story being different, what do they do police do?
Well, you know, because the way he put it on the nine to nine to nine call was that he was just on his way out to work and he saw the body and he thought they might need help, and so he called them. So that was his, you know, initial story, But of course now they know when they when they called them back and brought them in, they had also checked the phone numbers and real life that the two had been in communication with each other. So the police knew that he had talked to Walgate and
so they knew he lied about knowing him. So that put Port on kind of like he didn't know what to do, and so he had to change his story again. But eventually they knew that he had actually met him on the app and offered money for services, so they knew the two of them were together.
Now it's one of the most incredible things I've read in any case, is this. And because we're not talking about the seventies, we're not talking about eighties. A lot of the books we're talking about the seventies, different attitude eighties still, the attitude that's not it was pervasive, and a different attitude today will say. We're talking about once they realized that they communicated for the purposes of sex, that they realized that he was in Stephen Port's apartment.
But Stephen Port didn't mention that till it was pride out of him the charges that he does not become a suspect in regards to this Walgate, Anthony Walgate whatsoever. Instead, though he is charged for something else, tell us what he is charged with and what kind of sentence in real terms he receives for it.
Yeah, you know, unfortunately, this is something happening in twenty fourteen. Just it's so close. Their attitude was just with just another overdose. It was maybe a gay sex thing or whatever. So they just sort of had this roll their eye, look at it attitude. And all they really did was charge him for really just lying to the police. You know, they have a different term for it, but in general, you lie to the police when they're gathering evidence, you
can be charged. It would be an equivalent to a misdemeanor in the States. So we're talking at a one year sentence, and of course he didn't serve that. I think they give him eight months and that was because of some time he had done in prison, and then they let him out at three months and just made him wear one of those you know, bracelets on the lake so they can keep an eye on him. For the rest of the year. So it was really a
slap on the wrist. But one thing that came from that, I will say was that he ended up losing his job because of that, and so he ended up having to when he got out go to work for a bus stop and he worked in like one of those little bus talk cafe canteen sort of places, you know when you're waiting for the greyhound bus. You know, they started little dishes. So he ended up doing that. So it changed his life in that way.
Now, an incredible character that you introduce in this story is Barbara Denham. She's sixty seven years old. She's lived in the area for twenty eight years, and she does a daily walk with her Border Collie and she goes through again this pathway that she normally goes and it's the property of the Saint Margaret's Church. So tell us what she finds on this daily walk. August twentieth, twenty fourteen.
Yeah, you know, in East Parking, it's a fairly busy, small little neighborhood, and so the Saint Margaret's Church and the churchyard and graveyard, it's kind of like the only park that you can kind of go to with your dog and let them loose, and she would like to let him off lead or leash, and so this was a perfect place to go, so that's why she went there all the time. So when she was there this time, she let her dog loose and he goes running as normal.
But she noticed a man sitting against a little brick fence that runs through the church grounds, like near the park. And she was just walking around, clapping her hands and talking to her dog as the dog was doing what it did, and she noticed the guy had no movement, nothing, you know, the clapping, So she went right over beside him and it clapped and kind of yelled loudly and stuff, and realized that he wasn't moving a tall like there
was no reaction. So she actually kind of tapped his toe with her toe her feet and noticed that the man he didn't respond, and he had blue sort of tint to his face, and so of course she had to call the police because it looked like he was dead or passed out or something that she couldn't figure out, and he was. He was dead. And so that was the first one.
And she read in the paper Barbara a couple days later that this young man was twenty one years old and he had overdosed. And of course, like you say, this East London, this area is known for drugs. Now, three weeks later, the same person, Barbara is again. She wasn't deterred about walking her dog in the same places that she would walk before all these twenty eight years. So three weeks later, Barbara Denham is walking her dog again. What does she find this time in almost the identical place.
He was the identical thing. It was another another young male, sitting in almost the exact same place. It was on the same side of the fence, not too far from where she had found the body. And it was the same thing, you know, and the same thing. He was dead, I mean, of course, of course her her initial thought was, oh God, not another one. It can't it can't be another one. And she went over to the body. The same thing the man had. He was dead and sitting
against the same sort of thing too. He had a pair of glasses. He had much the same look as the first one.
Yes, like very much posed after death.
Yeah, yeah, sost.
This person's name was Gabriel Kovari, twenty two year old, and he moved to London from Slovakia, of course, to escape homophobia and persecution and discrimination. Ironically tell us about Daniel Whitworth, though again this story just keeps getting more strange. Where was Daniel Whitworth's body found.
Well found? The thing is that they were both found pretty close to the same place. I think the biggest thing that was different was on Daniel Whitworth was from Kent, so he was English, and he was twenty one years old,
and he was working as a chef. And the difference with him compared to Kavary was he actually had a suicide note attached to his body on his left hand, and in the suicide note he said that he had been with Kavari three weeks before and they were partying and doing drugs and Kari and having sex, and Kavari had overdosed and he felt really guilty and he couldn't live with himself anymore because he felt responsible for the
young man's death. So he was basically committing suicide and saying sorry that I can't live with it anymore, sorry to his mother. All of this in it. But this is where it was really strange because in the note itself there was a ps or. By the way, and on it it said the guy I was with last night, don't worry what, he's not involved. He was just someone I met and had sex with.
Yeah.
Yeah. And the other part of this as well, again the horror flying aspect of is that the police took that suicide note and then contacted the parents and gave them a sample of that suicide note. Now, what did the parents say to the police once they looked at that suicide note and then what did the police do with that information from the parents.
Well, you know, they were just one hundred percent sure it was not their kids writing. This is not his handwriting, This was not him, and so they left it that they said that to him, this is it's not him. The police didn't they didn't believe it. They just thought, well, these parents don't you know whatever. He just didn't. It's just what happened. So they ruled it as an overdose,
just as they did with Kavari. And in the media, it's important that you know that they came out and they said there was absolutely no connection with the bodies that they had found in the park. They were all overdoses and none of them had any connection to each other. But just the note in itself on Daniel Whittwell and actually saying Kavari's name. Who's another body? There's a connection exactly, Yeah, you know it's you see, and that makes no sense at all why they would do that.
Step into the world of power, loyalty and luck.
I'm gonna make him an offer you can't refuse.
We're family, canoli's and spins mean everything?
Now you want to get mixed up in the family business.
Introducing the Godfather at Champa Casino dot com. Test your luck in the shadowy world of the Godfather slot.
Someday I will call upon you to do a service for me.
Play the Godfather now at Chumpa Casino dot Com. Welcome to the Family vdW group.
Nope's necessary.
If we were privateed by loss he terms and conditions eighteen plus.
Judy was boring Hello. Then Judy discovered Chumpa Casino dot Com.
It's my little escape.
Now Judy is the life of the party.
Oh baby Mama is bringing home the bacon.
WHOA, Take it easy, Judy. The Chumba life is for everybody. So go to Chumpacasino dot com and play over one hundred casino style games joined today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices. Jump chump a casino dot com necessary weight. We're promitted by mind he plus terms the condition to play every details.
This is something that was found out later, but I think it's interesting to talk right now about this. Uh, Gabriel had a boyfriend of Spanish boyfriend, you write, and his name was thery Amando. Now during this time when this case really is got so many aspects of it involved social media obviously that this is very interesting. Why Stephen Port would contact online using an alias John Luck, Gabriel's Spanish boyfriend. Why did he do that again aspect?
Yeah, he wanted to know everything that was go going on in the investigation. He wanted to know everything that Gabriel's boyfriend would find out or anything that he had heard. He was trying to stay in touch and involved and John Luck. He was pretending to be basically an American student that was living in London and that was kind of his alias. So he was very involved that way. He wanted to be keep an eye on everything that was going on around him and to make sure there was no suspicion.
You write also about Whitmore's Whitworth's stepmother and talking about the state of the investigation into her son's death, even after the coroner again with the suicide note and the suspicious suicide note. What did Whitworth's stepmother find in terms of investigation by the police after her son was dead.
Oh, she was shocked. She couldn't believe how they were just it was almost like ignoring it. They didn't have any compassion toward what had happened. And it's kind of it's really hard to explain. She puts it in a term of they were just nonchalant. They were just almost like, uh, you know, face it, he's overdosed. You know, that's just the way it is. And they just didn't want to hear anything about any sort of connection or any sort of foul play in any of this.
Now you introduce a very very instrumental character in here, Jack Taylor and his family, his sisters. But first Jack Taylor twenty five years old, and he's a forklift operator. And this guy's different because he doesn't do drugs. In fact, he's never done GHB. He doesn't do drugs, in fact, he's anti drug But yet he uses Grinder, the gay hookup app to meet Steven Port. Now tell us what
happens with Jack Taylor, how does he end up? And again then introduce two very very interesting characters, Jenny and Donna, his sisters.
Yeah. Well Jack Taylor, like you said, he's forklift operator, working kind of hardware. And he was twenty five, so he was not really Stephen Port's type. He was a little bit old and a little bit too masculine for him in general, so that was kind of a weird thing. But they had he had been out partying. Jack Taylor was with friends and he met Port on grinder and decided they would they would hook up, drink and have sex. Now this isn't for money. This was not a a
rent boy or anything commercial. It was just a meeting and a hook up. So and and like you said, and even in that messages that weren't going on between them. Uh. Port even asked him if he liked if he took tea, you know, like which is their code word. Are you into crystal? Do you do basically you know, drugs? And and he was, of course no. But they met up at the East Parking station at about ten pm and walked back to Port's place, and that that's how it.
That's how they met and got together. Now, on this particular one, he was found in the same park, on the same fence, but on the opposite side, so kind of on the other side of the little brick fence that the other two bodies were found in the same sort of position. Now again, they put him to an overdose almost immediately, and it was the same sort of scenario. Shirt pulled up and had little jars of GHB on him, a needle. There was just the same similarities to look
like an overdose. But there was two things that came up. One was the Pink Press, which was the London gay newspaper and website, had put out a warning to everybody that something is going on. These these men are turning up dead and be very careful and there's someone's killing gay men. And the police were denying it completely. And the two sisters that you mentioned, his two sisters were kind of not buying anything that was being said, and they complained and it took them for weeks to go in.
I think it was two weeks before they decided we'll look, we'll take you down and we'll go through the CC film. And that's how they actually found going through the camera. If a lot of people that don't know London is all under camera, the city itself has tons of cameras and they call it CCTV. And so they went through the East Barking one and they found Stephen Port walking with Jack Taylor just after ten o'clock going back to
Port's house. So that was how they made that connection with Port, and that was really kind of the turnaround where the police actually started to look at things from a different perspective, not just gay men out over sext and over dosing and dying in the park. That's the change the sisters is really what brought this case.
Out, absolutely, and it's their insistence too, because as you write in the book, they're trying to convince the police and they push for being able to look at that footage. And without looking at that footage, Stephen Port would not have been identified at that point whatsoever, would you right?
Right? And if it wasn't for them pushing because and the only reason that the police took them down, the only reason was because they wouldn't stop bugging them. They wouldn't stop coming in every day and calling them and bugging them. And so just for the sake of getting them off their back was their attitude is the reason they took them to go through the film. So again, that gives you a kind of an indication of where the police head was at. Whether it was anti gay, homophobic,
or if it was just laziness on the police. I don't know.
It's interesting too, because what lends credence to this discriminatory approach by police is that there was a coroner, Nadia person. These were open verdicts, which meant exactly you'd say, the open verdict means there's more questions need to be answered in able to conclude. And yet she says because of manual handling prior to deaths. This is incredible. We never mentioned this. One body was wrapped in a bed sheet and we're talking about suicide here. She also mentioned the
sunglasses and the GHB bottles nearby. But the thing that's even more shocking is they were never she says, they were never tested for PRINCE or DNA, and we're talking two thousand and four, team twenty fifteen. Incredible.
Yeah, it's really it's kind of depressing. You really think the police were out there looking after us, or out there to protect and serve, and in this particular case, even with the corner leaving open verdicts so they can't even officially rule them as overdoses. The police released the media they were just overdoses. So they made that decision even without getting the corner to jump on board, because
they couldn't because they needed other questions answered. They had too many questions in each one of these instead, and they would not give them an official ruling, so the police would just close it overdose, throw it on the closed file. So, like I said, if that was aimed at the homosexual community, or if that was aimed just because they were overworked and too many cases, or if they're lazy, you know, I sort of you know, I
don't know. I hate to say it, but I sort of think it was a little bit more of the homophobic point of view. They weren't really interested in helping are go any further because they were gay.
M hm. Now you write in the book and explain, and we haven't talked about it, and I was not aware of some of these things. Obviously, the chemsects and
party in play. Tell us what the role of these drugs are GHB you know, a date rape drug which is known as a date rape drug, but you talk about other drugs like methamphetamine, crystal meth amyl nitrate, which is another interesting point that Jenny and Donna Jack Taylor's sisters were really alerted to that this was not an overdose since they knew that their brother had not done any drugs, but also that there was amyal nitrate, the evidence of poppers there as well, and an unused syringe.
They thought, this is incredible, it's unused, and yet they're talking about an overdose. So what I'm asking is is that with that information and their efforts, the talk about the effects of these drugs and the relationship to this crime.
Well, yeah, and what you have to understand and what's first of all, grinder and is a very popular app in England and it's in certain regions in the States. But on Grinder what there is is party and play or chem sex parties, and so you can actually elect to do that. So let's say that's what you want to do, So you can throw a chem sex party and market it on on Grinder, and people that belong to grinder will get notified of the parties that are
close to where they live. If they're interested, they can, you know, sign up for it, so they'll get a notification there's a chem sex party or a P and P going on here, and you have to be there by a certain time because the doors close. They all get there the doors closed, they all get naked and they do a lot of combinations of these drugs and they have sex and it's a sex party. It's kind of taken the place of the old bath houses from the seventies and eighties in the gay community in England.
It's huge and so and actually what Port was doing just so you know, he was actually going to these and he was known as a as a drug boy. He would be one or one of two or three people that would be at a party that would supply the drugs for everyone. So that's why he had so many drugs back in his apartment. It because he was actually doing these parties on the side. And and the main drugs like you mentioned amy nitrate or that was
paupers and paupers. It's it's it's really meant for heart patients. It just it opens everything up, all the vessels and so it's it's popular for for anal sects because it relaxes everything and so what people do is they mix things like GHB to kind of you you were you.
Were sorry, you were cut off after gh B. You mentioned the drugs that you included were GHB and other drugs they combined.
Sorry, yeah, okay, So they mixed the drugs for different effects. So methodrone is one crystal meth g h B and Pauper's amy nitrate and they all do different things. You know, they either slow down or the crystal myth stops people from actually going to completion, so they can have sex for hours. So people would do different mixtures depending on what they were looking at. And that's why I said, and Port was supplying them with the drugs at these parties,
and that's why he had so many drugs. He was kind of a party boy. M hm.
Now it's very interesting you include obviously now they have Stephen Port. Now they have and you provide the questioning of Stephen Port. How do they go about approaching that and in this interview what does he deny? Does he confess? What is his approach to this interview from police?
Well, he has different different approaches. He kind of was all over the place his general like, for instance, with even the first one he would he would mention that he would go out or that he wasn't doing drugs. They would do drugs and he would go into the shower and come back and the person would be and convulsing and having some sort of bad effect with the drugs,
or did too many drugs. So in every case he was trying to point to he was just having sex or meeting up with these people and they were into the drugs, and they would get really into it and they would overdose, and he had nothing to do with it.
He was just trying to get involved in it. And even in the letters I include later, you can see how in one of them he talks about each one of these deaths and he considers it at most he should have been convicted of manslaughter because you know, it wasn't his fault, and he should never been convicted of murder.
And he's appealed in that direction as well. So that's kind of his point of His point of view is he never murdered anyone, right, He was just there with them, and they they chose to do the drugs, they chose to overdose, and it was it was all about their fault, and he was just there.
He also blames the drug like you mentioned that instead of him being responsible for the distribution of the drugs or giving these people the drugs, that he blames it again on Daniel Whitworth's So just to add some again horror for the family. Now in this you mentioned in this questioning by police, he's denied, deny, deny, and not assume any kind of responsibility at all. Yet he goes to trial. At trial though you talk about other charges
being added or other crimes related. So there's not only he is he up for first degree murder on the four murders, but also tell us about the other charges that he has included in that trial.
Yeah, what happened was a lot of he was actually meeting up with other people. And I know in the trial there was a Muslim that came out and was taken home and drugged, but he escaped alive, and you know, he woke up he wasn't administered enough drugs, so he woke up during port assaulting him. And so there was there was quite a few people that had the same encounter but were not overdosed. They were basically given GHB and some of them were shot up with paupers and
he would have sex with them. But some of them didn't, you know, they didn't they didn't die, And a lot of people didn't want to come out because, like even the Muslim, it's against its religion. So there was a lot of difficulties in that m You.
Also talk about that there was witnesses you write that were never spoken to, like John Pape that he had contacted police. This has come out afterwards obviously, that he had contacted police about Kovari and he wanted to give them details before the murder, and he had volunteered. Police ignored his offer of help with anything like that. So there was people that they that they did not speak to that they could have in this case, and that came out as.
Well, Oh yeah, yeah, you know, and once it hit the press and we we knew what was really going on, a lot of things came out that way. And so again, was it because the police were just being lazy and kind of going yeah, okay, you know, people would say something to them and they'd go yeah okay, and they just didn't want to bother with it. And was that because they were lazy or is it because they just didn't care about the gay community it's kind of a huge question.
Now we talk about the trial October ninth, twenty fifteen in a famous courthouse, the Old Bailey, and the prosecutor is Jonathan Reese. And so he does a good job in this of outlining why Stephen Port is guilty, because this is not a slam dunk because of his denial, and it's a complex case because of the overdose nature itself. And this is why this has led to this entire
story being quite twisted. Us about the prosecution of him, and where Peter makes the points to prove that Stephen Port is the murderer and of also the perpetrator in these other sexual assaults and as ministering drugs all of these charges, how does he approach that prosecution the points.
I think the biggest thing was he really he really brought out all the other victims who were still alive and had been drugged and sexually assaulted by by Port.
And.
You know, it just it just was it was in common sense, it was right in the same alley, and you know, there was just too much in common in
the placings where he was. And then the very first body that he had that he put outside of his house that he only got perting police justice from not telling the tr So when you laid it all out and all the evidence of the escorting and the communications and the video between them, it was just it was I think it was pretty pretty obvious and just laying it out, and they convicted them.
M hmm.
You say it was a seventh week trial November twenty third, twenty sixteen. He was convicted ten counts of administering drugs, four sexual assaults, three rapes, and the murder of these
four men. And of course then comes the appeals. Tell us though, after this, with the media now being informed where they weren't informed before, and the victim's families outraged, tell us first about the appeals and whether they were successful, and then the other things that happen as a result of the truth coming out.
Well, you know, the the appeal, of course, didn't happen until the eighteen to August of twenty eighteen. You know, he's forty six by then, and again, you know, he's trying to put it that he didn't do it and that it just didn't pass his documentation and all of the proof that they had, and you know, he was just saying that you know, he was too high and they were on drugs, and that it should have been
manslaughter and it was self inflicted. But that, of course, the court didn't buy it, so his appeal was not granted.
And later in the fall of twenty eighteen is when they decided to do an inquest and go through all of the deaths and start to write a report about what happened in the case and so, and like you were saying that seventeen members of the Metro Police Force had been reprimanded for not doing a job, they've also apparently given them more sensitive training on crimes and how they should be handled with the gay community and other minorities.
And the other big thing was that you know, that park first of all, and the church ground was known as a cruising area for gays. It was also known as a place that a lot of people would go and buy drugs and even do drugs. And so there are fifty eight other cases that they've had to reopen go back in of deaths that were just ruled as an overdose in that park, in that area during those
two years. That leads to another set of investigations. It looks like April of this year they're supposed to come out. Apparently the investigation is complete and will be released in sometime in April, so we'll see what happens from that and if anything gets changed or if anything really happens to anybody for letting such crimes go.
Absolutely, And it's really interesting too because there was ironically something called the Equality Act of twenty ten. And this is something that on May twelfth, twenty seventeen, as you write, seventeen family members associated with the four victims, will the other victims, but four primary murder victims filed the lawsuit against Scotland Yard discrimination because of their sexual orientation because they were gay, and especially breaching this Equality Act of
twenty ten and accusing them of gross negligence. And they say it started when then he was convicted only of perverting the course of justice. I thought that was a very ironic term as well. So tell us about this lawsuit against Scotland Yard by seventeen family members.
Well, they're looking for compensation, you know, of over two hundred thousand pounds and they feel like the victims were failed and right from the beginning, and I don't have
any doubt in their claims. You know, if they would have been looking out from the very first one on some of the other ones could have been saved, you know, And what are they going to find in this commission with these other cases that were bodies left in the park, you know, was he responsible for any others we found out about I think twelve in total that got away from him that he had drugged and sexually assaulted. So
you know, at least that's a wide open door. And you know, it's interesting in some of the letters that I've got from Cody, who was his pen pal in Manchester, there's quite a bit in there about he still thinks he's going to get out. Really, he still thinks he'll be released. And when you look through it, he's still talking about being an escort, and he was actually explaining to Cody as Penfell how to go about doing it
and what he should and shouldn't do. And I put one in there that was really ironic, right about don't let anybody. Don't take a drink from anybody, So any of your gowns or anybody you pick up, never drink anything that they give you. Always bring your own drinks because you can't trust them. They could put drugs in it was really ironic because that's how he was. He was he was committing his murders and crimes. M HM.
Tell us about Cody Lackey and how you met him, and how it came to be that he corresponded with him, and why Cody.
Cody's an unusual guy. He's very interesting. He met him through in the making of a documentary in the UK about a different case, and when we talked about these sort of cases and how he knew different things and different serial killers, and and he had been in prison.
He's been part of the gang world for years, was in Wakefield, was in with a lot of really infamous serial killers, and he knew a lot of them and kept in communication and he still does and he still communicates with a lot of other people and anybody that's interesting to him. He knows how to write, he knows how to get a whole of people in prison. He knows people in prison and he connects with them and he communicates with him. So he's an interesting, interesting character.
That's the least I can say. Very he's a he's a really different, different kind of way about him. He seems to be very involved with I think he feels at home with these serial killers, and he feels very much at peace with them, and for him, that's his family. And he's outside of the prison now, but that's he doesn't I don't think he feels comfortable being in general population.
Mm hmm. You talk about to the well, you include some of the letters and so tell us this sort of the for for people that will read this, Well, what kind of correspondence? What what what is characterized by the correspondence? What do they discuss basically.
Well, Cody's pretty upfront, you know. He asked him all sorts of questions, and he sends some things. He'll send them DVDs and uh and different things that they ask for. Gives the money for the commissary so they can buy things, and and and Stephen's Port Stephen Port's case. He would talk about the different foods he likes, different things he likes to do, talk about his prison life, how he's treated, what people are like in prison, the relationship that he
developed with another prisoner, he's uh. He talks about the the murders themselves, and he still is convinced that he shouldn't be put away from murder, that they did it to themselves. And and he gives quite like I said, he gives quite the description on how to be a rent boy or a male prostitute, and tells Cody how to go about doing it and how to do it right, and the different steps and things you should and shouldn't do, and including take a drink. And you know, it's quite interesting.
And if this book does as well, which is doing really well, it's part of that series of a twenty book series, so it's a limited size and I think I've included five letters or something like that, And if it does as well as it's doing, we'll put out a full book and include probably about fifteen or twenty of them, so that you have even a better kind of a view of what kind of a character is. He's quite childlike. He's almost like a twelve year old.
He's really into comics and kitty sort of stuff. And if you look at the letters and the way he writes and draws little pictures and stuff like that, he's very, very childlike. Still, he doesn't seem like he's in his forties. And that's probably the biggest surprise people will get out of that.
When you talk about that. He refers to the murders. It's not like a confessional. But Cody was surprised that he would speak while he was still on remand about any particulars of the crime at all, So and tell us a couple of the things that he did actually mention that again, Cody thought was surprising and not so wise.
Well like yeah, like Cody said, you know, when you're still in trial, and you're still before you've even been convicted, and even after in your appealing, everything is being watched. So the letters are being read, the phone calls are being listened to, your visitors are being listened to when they're with you, Like, it's not there's nothing private. So, like you said, during those times, you never talk about the details of the crime. You just don't because anything
can be used. And he was just like wide open. He would just talk about the cases. He would talk about going meeting them, going home with them. But he has a very innocent side to him. It's in the sense that he's like it really wasn't his fault. He was just going along with the guy, whoever it was, and it was all the guys. He was always the more innocent of them. And it's just not it's just
not believable. It just isn't, especially if you see you know, his Facebook, his his fights, you see his grinder account and what he did. He used to wear a wig. Like the cover of the book, you see a picture of him when he's being interrogated without the wig and all that. But then I've also put a picture of him with his blonde wig on that he would put on Grinder in different and all sorts of apps, not just Grinder, So he had a completely different image, very very very unusual.
And with this as well, even though he was disingenuous and untruthful in the police interview, and it provides for the reader as well, he does give an education of sorts of this sordid, secretive lifestyle of chem sex and party and play, doesn't.
He Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He explained it to the dues and the don'ts and what happens in them and and and it's really surprising because I think most people in mainstream society have no idea these things are going on. I think they'll be shocked. And every time I've talked about this or people read the book, there there seem to be more in shock about chem sacks, parties and that this is going on and going on to a large degree. This isn't just like some little one one
one timer. This is a very very big thing going on, and it's really popular in England and it's really caught on on certain cities and the States as well.
Right right, Yeah, it's an interesting phenomena that you're chronicle in this book. It's incredible in terms of the families and their lawsuit as well. What about the media, what was in the end how did the media present this? What was the tone of it in terms of outrage over the police treatment? How did they treat this in the media in the end?
Yeah, in general in the UK it is BBC and the major media are pretty have taken a really hard stance against the police and even Scotland Yard for its own self. People don't realize how it operates in England, so they've been pretty hard on the Metro Police. So I think in essence, people were shocked, outraged and it all went one way and so there's really no defense.
There's very little backlash for the police. I think that if anything, a lot of the Metro Police in London are just getting thrown under the bus by Scotland yard as an out and I guess that's just sort of
the way politics goes. But with that being said, hopefully things are better in the future and they're handled better in the future, and they'll be watched for the next little while because it's very fresh in the minds over there, and this is something that's going on in the media and BBC and ITV to a large degree, it's being talked about, so it's not it's not being forgotten so quickly as a lot of other stories have been.
And you and like you say, the expected date for the results of that results of that inquest into these deaths will happen this year. So again sustaining the story in the press this year, again, keeping the story in media and in the public eye.
Oh yeah, because people are going to heads are going to roll when it comes out in April. There's going to be you know, some people are going to pay the price for it, and it's going to make a lot of media. It'll make huge splash over there. Not so much in the States because of the political world and everything going on captivating the news in the US, but in the UK it's a very big story and it's very important to them. Over there.
And it's interesting too. You talked about that the police introduced new guidance for them to deal with chem sex allegations, and that's also you talked about the fifty eight cases of the GHB overdose during Steven Port's three year active time. So it's not like this a review of all the cases historically. It's specifically trying to connect it to possibly Stephen Port eight cases in that three year period where he was active and in and around the area. So
they're not it's not a wild assertion or assumption. It's what they think that out of those fifty eight cases, they think there may be something, don't they.
Oh for sure, and there was periods of months and areas that we don't know, you know, he was active and there's no nobody has come forward. Perhaps they're people that were murdered as well that didn't escape. So and with that many bodies being found of overdose, I think that they're there. They have to be responsible now, they have to come back and they have to show some initiative to doing something for the people that that actually died from from this awful killer.
Absolutely well, it's been an incredible interview with you, Alan talking about the Grinder serial killer Stephen Port. For those that might not know about your podcast, tell us about House of Mystery and a website or Facebook page where they might look for your other work or contact you if they feel necessary.
Well, I have my website, alanar Warren dot com, which is just about my books, and then I have the Something Weird Media website, and that's for the radio show House of Mystery. It's on a lot of the West Coast stations and podcasts, just on five days a week, and you can play it right from most sites or right from our website.
Absolutely well, thank you very much, Alan, It's been a pleasure. I hope to speak to you again soon. You have a great evening.
Good night you too, Thank you.
Good night, Gretta.
I have a bag that I found that I think belongs to gottahdag Oh.
You've been so kind. You like a cup of coffee?
What chance encounter I've been so lowly? I like can help you a new connection?
I mean, Trent, where is an old lady a terrifying secret?
This Friday?
There's something you need to know about.
Don't take the debate, just try to get rid of Greta starring Chloe Grace Monratts.
In theater's Friday, Dta, I have a bag that I found that I think belongs to gotahdag.
Oh, you've been so kind, you like a cup of coffee.
What chance encounter?
I've been so lowly?
Like can help you a new connection?
I mean, Trent, where is an old lady.
A terrifying secret?
This Friday?
There's something you need to know about Brad.
Don't take debate, just try to get rid of Greta, starring Ploeque Race Moratsda in theater's Friday. Gretta versus.
I have a bag that I found that I think belongs to Greta hadag.
Oh, you've been so kind, You're like a cup of coffee, A chance encounter.
I've been so lowly.
I I can help you a new connection?
I mean, is an old lady a terrifying Secrett this Friday?
There's something you need to know about Bretta.
Don't take the bate, Just try to get rid of Greta, starring Ploeque Race Morats in theaters Friday,