Detective admits mistakes during investigation into drug-rape serial killer

THE detective in charge of the investigation into serial killer Stephen Port’s first victim has admitted making “significant mistakes”, including not properly looking into the drug-rape predator’s history.

Detective Sergeant Martin O’donnell told inquest jurors how he did not share intelligence with colleagues about a previous allegation that Port plied a young man with drugs before raping him, nor did he instruct a search on the police national database to be carried out on Port.

This meant Mr O’donnell was unaware transport police files showed Port was found at Barking Station, near his London flat, with a man under the influence of drugs, in the same month he plied his first victim, Anthony Walgate, 23, with fatal doses of the substance GHB.

Giving evidence at the inquest into the deaths of Port’s four victims, Mr O’donnell, the officer in charge of the investigation for the first few months, said: “It’s just a huge failure not to have obtained that [information].”

Port was initially arrested on suspicion of raping a man in December 2012, but the case was dropped when the alleged victim said he did not support a prosecution, despite stating Port “forced” him to have sex after giving him drugs.

But Mr O’donnell did not update the Crime Reporting Information System that logs progress in an investigation for colleagues to see.

He told the hearing at Barking Town Hall: “It feels like a fairly significant mistake of mine not to include it in that document. It’s a terrible mistake that I did not put it in there.”

Jurors are being asked to assess whether victims could have been saved had police acted differently.

Mr Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, were all found dead near Port’s flat between June 2014 and September 2015.

Port was found guilty in 2016 of the four murders and sentenced to a whole life order.

The inquest continues.