Paramedic saw death of Stephen Port’s first victim as suspicious, inquest told

Anthony Walgate, 23, found cross-legged in an unnatural position outside Barking flat, jury hears

A paramedic called to the first victim of the serial killer Stephen Port believed the death was suspicious after finding the body cross-legged and in an unnatural position, an inquest has heard.

The body of Anthony Walgate, 23, a fashion student from Hull, was found outside Port’s block of flats after the killer made an anonymous 999 call in the early hours of the morning.

Giving evidence to the inquests of four young men murdered by Port, Antony Neil said he was called at 4.05am on 19 June 2014 to a report that a man was suspected to have suffered a seizure or was drunk.

The paramedic said he could see the man was dead. There was postmortem pooling on the abdomen. The body was cold, which meant he had been dead for “quite some time”, Neil told the jury. He described the body as “positioned cross-legged, in an unnatural position”, not consistent with a possible seizure.

Believing the death to be suspicious, he covered the patient with a blanket to preserve any crime scene and requested the Metropolitan police attend, he said.

“The way it was positioned, it did not add up to the call I was given and because it was a young male, that’s why it appeared suspicious to me. If someone had a seizure they would not be sat upright with their legs crossed. I have never seen that in my career,” he told the jury.

Port murdered Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, 22, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25. He fatally drugged them with GHB before raping them and dumping their bodies near his flat in Barking, east London, between June 2014 and September 2015. Port, now 46, is serving a whole-life order after being convicted in 2016.

The coroner Sarah Munro, sitting at Barking town hall, has told jurors the inquests will focus on the “competence and adequacy” of the police investigation into the deaths, which were not linked until after Taylor’s murder.

Jurors will have to consider whether, had the investigations into the earlier deaths been conducted differently, the lives of those who died later might have been saved, she has said.

The 999 call made by Port regarding Walgate was played for the inquest. In it, he told the operator: “Looks like he’s collapsed or had a seizure or something, just drunk. I was just driving in my car and just saw him lying on the floor, just got out, had a look at him.”

Earlier, jurors visited the sites where Port dumped all four bodies. From outside Port’s former flat, where Walgate was found, they walked a few hundred yards to the nearby graveyard at St Margaret’s church, where the other three victims were discovered.

The bodies of Kovari and Whitworth were discovered three weeks and just a few feet apart, placed near a wall under a large maple tree in the graveyard. Taylor was found on the other side of the stone wall beneath the same tree.

Police believe Port, who is 1.98 metres (6ft 5in) tall, may have wrapped his victims in bedsheets and carried them to the sites.

Dr Mark Munro, a police forensic medical examiner who pronounced Walgate dead at the scene, noted on the official form that the death was “probably non- suspicious”, though he believed the body may have been moved.

Questioned about the positioning of the body, Munro told the jury he thought it “extraordinary” that it was propped up against a wall and it suggested it might have been placed there.

He had noted epilepsy as a possible cause of death – due to Walgate suffering a bitten lip. But he had not noted drugs as a possible cause of death on the official form at the time, he said.

The inquests continue and are expected to last up to 10 weeks.

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