‘We knew our son had been murdered, but police treated it like a joke’
PARENTS GIVE EVIDENCE AT INQUEST
A MUM from Hull, whose son was serial killer Stephen Port’s first victim, has described the police investigation following her son’s death as a “travesty”.
Hull fashion student Anthony Walgate, 23, was found dead on June 19, 2014, in East London outside Port’s flat. He had been given a fatal dose of “date-rape” drug GHB.
Port was charged with perverting the course of justice over Anthony’s death, but before he was stopped, he killed three other young men.
Anthony’s parents, Sarah Sak and Thomas Walgate, both believed their son was murdered, but said police insisted his death was not suspicious, an inquest was told.
On Friday, Mr Walgate described officers in the case as like “Keystone Cops”, saying: “It’s a travesty what’s gone on here.
“I know my son couldn’t be saved, but the other three could have been if they’d done their jobs better.”
Describing the moment he found out his only son had died, he said: “I was at home watching the World Cup. There was a knock at the door and it was a WPC. She said ‘you’d better sit down, I’ve got some bad news for you.’ She said ‘your brother Anthony has died.’
“I said ‘I haven’t got a brother called Anthony.’ She said ‘it must be your son.’
He said the meeting took only a few minutes, adding: “The shock is unbelievable.”
A few days later, family liaison officer Detective Constable Paul Slaymaker made contact, but he did not have any answers to his questions, Mr Walgate said.
He went on to describe to the court a meeting with Mr Slaymaker and another officer in March 2015 at which Ms Sak was also present.
He told jurors: “DS Slaymaker did all the talking. They were smiling, almost joking, like it was almost some sort of a joke. My lad is on a slab in the morgue.
“It felt like Keystone Cops. I just thought they’d be a bit more serious.
“They could not find it suspicious (that Port) dragged the body out, called an ambulance and went back to bed. Just put the trash out.”
Mr Walgate said police informed him that Port would lose his home and job as a result of lying to police, as if “they had done their job well”.
But Mr Walgate said: “It just did not sit right with me.”
Ms Sak described how she rushed home from a holiday in Turkey to be told her son had died in “unusual” but “non-suspicious” circumstances.
Mr Slaymaker had noted that Ms Sak told him the victim “likes to drink” and would “dabble in drugs – she thinks cocaine”.
Ms Sak told jurors: “That’s an absolute lie. I never said that. I did say he liked to drink – because he did.”
Ms Sak said: “I said to him, how come it’s not suspicious? People don’t just drop down in the street. And he said it was probably drugs.
“That’s when I just lost it. I said you can’t say that, it could be anything.”
From that moment the relationship went downhill, she said. “It was as though he had written it off there and then – it was probably drugs. He just wouldn’t listen to anything.
“I said Anthony was murdered. He said he wasn’t murdered, it was unexplained.”
Ms Sak told jurors she was “furious” she found out Port had been arrested from the media and not police.
She went on: “The fact Anthony’s phone had not been found, that was a significant thing, that somebody had obviously been involved and taken his phone.
“I said you have got to find his phone. I said to him ‘I’m not going away. I’m not going to shut up. Anthony was murdered. Something is not right about this.’”
She went on to complain to Mr Slaymaker that she felt her son was being treated as just “a number”.
She told jurors: “I had said it would be quicker in Hull. I said he’s just become a number there.
“His exact words: ‘We get more
deaths in a week here than you get in Hull in a year.’
“That was the thing that made me cry. It didn’t matter what I did, what I said. They were not going to do anything.”
After going to her local MP, she said Mr Slaymaker was “really annoyed”.
“He said ‘how many times do I need to tell you, Anthony was not murdered.’ I said how many times do I have to say he was.”
Ms Sak said the deaths of Mr Kovari and Mr Whitworth could have been avoided if police had treated her son’s death differently.
Clair Dobbin QC, representing Mr Slaymaker and other officers, said: “I suggest to you he was not the angry, dismissive, even homophobic person you have suggested in your evidence today.”
Ms Sak replied: “I do not agree.” Over 16 months, Port killed a total of four young men in similar circumstances.
In 2016, Port was handed a wholelife order at the Old Bailey after being found guilty of the murders.