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Episode One: GRINDRRRR KILLLLER
137 Plays4 months ago
The boys discuss Stephen Port the Grindr killer and ponder the age old question, why does everyone want to kill twinks?
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Transcript
Vaping Culture: Europe vs America
00:00:37
Speaker
Why you vaping? um I have blueberry ice next bar. I mean nice i must say that that um when I was in Europe, the European brands weren't as strong as these, so I was happy to... Oh, really? ah Yeah, I was happy to get back to a strong, a stronger vape. Oh, I didn't know that. I have the refillable ones, so like I had just buy like the separate juice and like fill them up.
00:01:09
Speaker
I'm into America's disposable ones, which I know are wasteful. Yeah. All of the kids at school use the disposable ones. It's really bad. They're like sneaking, they like sneak into the toilet and they come out. I'm like, are you vaping in there? And they're like, yeah. Okay.
Introduction to 'Twink Death' Podcast
00:01:27
Speaker
Well, welcome to Twink Death. Um, I'm Q. And I'm Bicky.
00:01:34
Speaker
And we're going to talk to you guys about some spooky ah gay stuff. I would say that we're um two aging gay Goths.
00:01:47
Speaker
we'll we'll We'll work on helping everyone understand the brand as as time goes on. So Bicky, why don't you take it away with our opening topic? Yeah, so for like our first episode, we're going to be talking about the Grind-A-Killer, Stephen Port.
The Grindr Killer: Stephen Port
00:02:06
Speaker
And I can't even remember what the book is called. We're going to be talking about, for our second segment, The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who famously writes books solely about um raping and murdering twinks. So that's why we're were starting with Stephen Port.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, hence the and name Twink Death. and and Yeah, so we're going to go back sort of like 10 years. So this was sort of around like 2014.
00:02:40
Speaker
um Stephen Port was described sort of in the media as like the Grindr killer um because he found a lot of the guys that he called on Grindr and like other like gay dating apps.
00:02:53
Speaker
um He was born in 1975 and he lived in Barking, East London. and and According to his Wikipedia, it says he worked as a chef at a bus depot, which I found really funny. um I don't know, like the idea of like being a chef that works at a bus depot doesn't make
Stephen Port's Deceptive Online Presence
00:03:16
Speaker
any sense to me. I feel like, especially in like London, like a bus depot would be sort of like a greasy spoon. I don't know if you know what that means.
00:03:23
Speaker
I do, that's an American term, like a diner. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. Like but our version of like a greasy spoon would be like, I don't know, you'd be able to get like a cup of tea and some chips or something, but it wouldn't really be so oh cuisine. So I find it funny they describe him as a chef. um Yeah, so he was a serial killer who targeted young gay men, luring them through dating up sickly grinder where he presented himself as much younger than he was. um I'm looking at a picture of him right now and he is, yeah, he was not cute. I don't know what you think. Well, I was, I thought a lot about it when I was watching the documentary. um I think he would have, I think he would have gotten me as a young gay guy with his like catfish pictures, but obviously he's very, um,
00:04:18
Speaker
i would I would describe him as having a meth look about him. um And he wore ah quite a bit of, he wore a lot of wigs. So he tried to make himself look younger, but a very thin sort of emaciated body with kind of like an AIDS-y meth, meth look. Yeah, he was in good shape though. Like he's not like, I think it's, it's obvious that he like worked out and stuff. if He looks like he's got like a bit of a bo eye Yeah, I mean, he he looks terrifying but I guess I just and we we texted about this a bit. I remember like meeting guys like this on the internet like who looked terrifying but seemed like they might they might be a good time that you wouldn't yeah ah you wouldn't feel great about the next day but you might you might go for in the moment.
00:05:12
Speaker
I actually think he looks because obviously the pictures and stuff that he had on his um on his like online profiles, you can you can look them up. That's like shirtless pictures of him like posing in the mirror and stuff. And like I actually think he looks better in his mugshot with like no hair than he does in the like and they're like profile pictures of the Wacom and stuff. But um but yeah, he was he wasn't the most attractive guy and um By all accounts, he was kind of weird when he was a kid. um He wasn't very popular at school. He got bullied. Apparently, a lot of people described him as having a sort of like a very child-like personality, um even as
Port's Modus Operandi: Drugs and Deception
00:05:56
Speaker
an adult. So he was interested in like playing with like kids toys and stuff. I mean, you could say that about so many gays. Like anyway, I feel like um I feel like we're all sort of like
00:06:09
Speaker
relatively juvenile compared to like the rest of society but um but yeah that was that was one of the things that people like noted about him was that he had this sort of childlike personality um so getting on to like sort of the the murders um i don't even i don't even know if i feel like comfy calling them murders because i feel like this guy is so retarded that I don't even know whether he intended to kill them but we'll we'll get to that anyway. um So basically he would find these guys on like online websites or on Grindr, invite them around for sex.
00:06:50
Speaker
And then he'd spike their drink with GHB, which is known in the UK and probably in the US, it's like the date rape drug. Yeah, but gay guys do take it recreationally. Like I was with a bunch of gay guys yesterday at lunch and we were talking about how if you take it in small amounts, it can give you like a fun high, but obviously in large amounts it makes you just pass the fuck out.
00:07:16
Speaker
um But yeah, he he clearly, whether he intended to kill them or not, he certainly intended to rape and sexually assault them, I would say. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you wouldn't stick it in someone's drink if you were just planning to have a wholesome time with them. But but yeah, so like the the first victim was a guy named Anthony Wargate, who was a 23-year-old fashion students slash Remboy. Before we, wrote real quick, before we get into the breakdown, I just want to say that he lived, I mean, I don't know London, but he lived, I saw a lot of like aerial shots of his neighborhood and he lived in sort of like a shitty
00:07:59
Speaker
seemingly like not very nice part of London in a ah small apartment near a churchyard or a graveyard. I think I think that's worth mentioning. So he had kind of a creepy existence, sort of a loner existence. OK, now we can get the victims, but I just want to say. No, no. Yeah, he lived in he lived in Barking, which is not um not the nicest part of London. It's not like super rough either.
00:08:26
Speaker
um But aesthetically, it's got very like so a of rundown look to it. But yeah, so his first victim, Anthony Wargate, was a fashion student um who also worked as a ram boy or like a male escort. And he found him on a website. I think the website was called Sleepy Boys or Sleepy Boy.
00:08:48
Speaker
um which is like given what happened to him is like a little ironic but um yeah um so he offers to pay Anthony £800 to spend the night with him and he's not like a wealthy guy so he probably doesn't really have like £800 to be spending on escorts um that's more of just a sort of ploy I think to to get the boy over. but I have a question about the website because I know hes he was a somnophiliac is what they called him.
00:09:25
Speaker
um which means his like fetish was for sleeping with ah people you know like fucking people who were asleep or passed out. when Was the website my like catering to people that were looking for that or like is that what Sleepy Boys is? I am going to go on Sleepy Boy right now and have a look and I will tell you. Because that was something the profiler talked about a lot in the documentary was his like somnophilia. Yeah.
00:09:54
Speaker
looking at the website oh my god it's very explicit even on the front page um yeah i i think it's just a coincidence that it's called sleepy boy it just kind of seems like you're a generic um like male escort website those wow um yeah i'm gonna come off this all right let me look i'm gonna look too but you keep going i just want to see what's What's on there? Lots of penises, Jesus. Yeah. If you're listening, like, don't go on SleepyBoy dot.com.
Cover-Ups and Police Failures
00:10:28
Speaker
and You don't need to save your yourself. But yeah, so he finds this guy on Sleepy Boy. The guy himself as well isn't like the best looking sort of guy, but he's kind of young and twinkish, which was a Stephen Potts type. So he invites him over.
00:10:48
Speaker
um after sort of agreeing to pay him 800 pounds to spend the night with him. He drugs him with a fatal dose of GHB. It's not clear whether this was like an accident, because this is the first one that he's killed. And it's it's not really clear to us whether this was something that he'd done on purpose or by accident. I kind of get the impression that he probably just gave him too much um and he ended up overdosing.
00:11:19
Speaker
And then he was sort of like, oh shit, what am I going to do with this body? Yeah, sorry. I'm still on sleepy boy. Okay. I'm going to get off. Stop, stop looking at the penises. No, I just wanted to see like what you had to do to like get one of these boys over. I guess you just, they have their numbers, which I'm sure are burner phones on there and you could call them and yeah.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, the initial murder is is unclear. what he yeah like if he because i do think that they that Well, I know that gay guys do take GHB recreationally. so It's unclear if he meant specifically to kill this guy or if he drugged him um in order to you know have his way with him, um but he dies. he yeah And the scariest part is Stephen Port goes to work that day and leaves the body. Yeah, he just leaves leaves the body and is flat all day long, um acts like everything is normal. And then eventually when he comes home from work,
00:12:21
Speaker
The next day he decides that he's going to leave the body outside of his flat, basically, just slumped against the door, which um obviously isn't the smartest move. but So he he picks the body up, he takes it outside of the apartment building, he leaves it like slumped in the doorway, and then he phones the police and tells the police that he's seen a guy that he thinks is drunk.
00:12:51
Speaker
um outside of the apartment building. The police obviously go to investigate, they discover the body, and it doesn't take them too long to sort of figure out that um the story doesn't really add up. um But he doesn't actually get arrested until about a year later for this.
00:13:15
Speaker
um Yeah, and he he only gets arrested for what I guess in the UK they call perverting the course of justice. he's Yeah, which is basically like lying to the police. So his story kind of changes a little bit over time, um which the police find quite like suspect. So he's yeah, so he's arrested for preventing the cost of justice, which is basically lying to the police or sort of acting in a way that would hinder them in their investigation.
00:13:43
Speaker
um But he isn't arrested for murdering this guy, it's sort of treated as ah like accidental overdose. And the next guy was a 22-year-old Slovakian man called Gabriel Kovari. I hope I'm pronouncing his name right, I don't know.
00:14:02
Speaker
um And to be clear, like Vicki said, his arrest doesn't happen. He is under suspicion, but he's like out and just about. He's ah yeah and he's not. He's not been arrested. He's he's not been charged with anything. um He's just casually sort of going about his his life as normal. um the next one The very day, you can actually see him in the background of a top chef.
00:14:28
Speaker
um MasterChef. Yeah. that's ah Yeah. MasterChef. So he like literally like gets questioned a little bit ah and you know, which eventually leads to this charge of perverting the course of justice. But the very literal next day after this happens, he's um he's in the background of like a I guess this MasterChef reality TV show. I think MasterChef is like the UK version of Top Chef. I think you call it Top Chef in the US.
00:14:59
Speaker
But yeah, he's he's just one of like the background chefs in then an episode with this little gay blonde wig on and his little chef outfit. The next guy is a little bit different um in the sense that he actually like moves in with Port for a while and stays with him. So Gabriel is a 22-year-old Slovakian guy. He's new to the UK. He's only just moved to London. And he doesn't really have anywhere to stay.
00:15:27
Speaker
He gets in touch with Port through a dating site and Port basically says, oh, you can you can come and stay at my flat. um He's not like romantically interested in Port. I don't think he was really his type, um but he's sort of desperate for a place to live. This guy seems nice enough. so um So yeah, he stays with him for a little while. After he's been staying with him for a few weeks, I think, Steven, again, decides to Spike his drink drugs and multih there's I think there's a I don't mean to interrupt your timeline, but I don't know go on into in between this. i found I found it interesting that so he lives in an apartment building. There's another gay man also living in the apartment building. And I do feel like I guess I don't know how London is, but in New York, there are places like this where just like a lot of gay guys live.
00:16:20
Speaker
And a friend of like a kind of casual friend, seemingly, Stephen Portes, not ah maybe a close friend, um comes over to like hang out um at one point. And Kavari, when Stephen Portes in the bathroom says, Stephen Porte, like says to his friend, like, Stephen's not the guy you think he is, he's really dangerous. um And this friend, who knows what this friend's motivations were, but this friend kind of says,
00:16:48
Speaker
you know, if you're scared with him, you can come stay with me. yeah And I'm sort of a little bit like, you know, I i don't quite believe the friends like total like benevolent story just because I'm so suspicious of all men um and gay men. But yeah, there's this like element of like, whatever was going on, Kavari was already ah freaked out. So. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Where is he up to?
00:17:15
Speaker
So, yeah, eventually, Kavari's death. kavari yeah So eventually um Kavari is also drugged one night.
Port's Arrest and Victims' Stories
00:17:23
Speaker
Um, he slips some GHP into his drink too much. Um, he's sexually assaulted and he dies. Um, it's kind of, it's never really sort of specified, like in the documentary that we both watched or in sort of reports and things that I've read, whether or not he's sleeping with these guys, like after they've died or before.
00:17:45
Speaker
Um, he wasn't charged with like necrophilia. I don't even know if that's like, I presume it as a crime in the UK, but, um, But yeah, it's never really made clear whether or not he's like sleeping with these guys after they're dead or they're just dying as a result of the drugs that he's giving them like after he's like assaulted them. But yeah, but it's incredibly ghoulish either way. Yeah, it is definitely. um Either way, they're not they're not present and accounted for at the time when he's assaulting them. They're like unconscious. With this guy, slightly different plan when he's
00:18:21
Speaker
sort of getting rid of the body, he decides to leave it in a church yard that is like, he's about 100 feet from his flat, it's not very far away at all. He leaves him slumped up against a wall in a flat and he's found the next day by a little old lady who's like walking her dog. she sees She's walking through the church yard, she sees this this guy that she thinks is drunk initially, sort of sat against a wall.
00:18:50
Speaker
um And it turns out that he's dead. He's got a bottle of GHB in his pocket that Stephen Port has planted there. And the police just don't treat it as suspicious. They just think, oh, it's ah a gay guy who's overdosed. So they don't they don't link it to the first death, despite the fact that they were both found with a bottle of GHB on them.
00:19:16
Speaker
um like within a hundred what I mean, like, and again, this this church, which in the US we would call a a graveyard it is within like 100 feet of his apartment. um And it's like a really like sort of macabre like ah image to think of this just like young boy, like just sort of slumped in this graveyard. It's yeah, I find it very chilling to kind of imagine um what it was like to find that Yeah. And this was, this was like two months after the first one. So it's, it's not been very long at all. Um, it's, it's funny. I like, you would think, I don't know, obviously I've never been in a situation where I've had to dispose of a body, but like my instinct would tell me that like, if I was in that situation, like I would want to get that body light as far away from where I live or where the crime was committed as possible. Um,
00:20:13
Speaker
So which which makes me sort of doubt his like intelligence as like a ah human being. I don't know. He seems like he's, i you'll know this when, as we go through like the crimes, but he does, he just makes mistake after mistake after mistake. And the only reason that he sort of gets away with it for so long is because the police are so incompetent, but like,
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. My instinct would be like get these bodies like far away, like drive them to like the middle of nowhere. that's point here I thought about that, but i I had a few theories. I mean, one, I don't think he has a car. ah Probably not. A lot of gays don't drive. I don't drive. ah Yeah, he's a gay guy in a big city. Like the odds that he has a car are pretty slim.
00:21:04
Speaker
But I did think about it, and I was like, if he's not deliberately killing them, like let's just say they're you know just drugged to the point of um extreme intoxic intoxication, or even if they're like just immediately dead, you kind of think he could theoretically call a cab.
00:21:22
Speaker
helped this guy to the car and just tell the cab driver he's passed out drunk. I'm just taking him to like his apartment or something. I mean, and like probably a cab driver has seen that level of intoxication many, many times. So it's like he could have done something like that. um It's also i I do find it weird because I i think about like that 100 feet he had to like get this body to this this churchyard and I'm like what exactly was he doing was he like pretending to sort of hold him up and like make it seem like he was walking which is super ghoulish or is he just because these guys are so small just like kind of carrying them like
00:22:05
Speaker
like you would carry a your bride over a, over like the door. Yeah, like a fireman's left. Yeah, is he doing that? And then like, just no one sees him, I guess, which I, you know, is possible. Like I kept having to remember that London is not New York in the sense that like it's really spread out and like it is possible there's like no one on the street. um Whereas in New York, there'd be like nowhere like that. You know, there would always be people on the street, so.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, i I lived in London for a couple of years when I was in my like late teens, early twenties. And um we lived kind of and outside of the sort of main city center, like in the suburbs. And I don't know, it is always busy. Like there are always people sort of milling around, but like people really don't pay attention to each other. ah So it it doesn't seem It doesn't seem like impossible to me that you could sort of get away with like carrying a guy like away from your apartment to the park and people just wouldn't notice because people are so interested in themselves and where they're going. They're not really paying attention to what's going on around them. I find a lot of the time, like if. Even if you're like in a situation in London where you're in trouble, like people won't help you, they will just like walk past it and ignore it because it's too much bother. um yeah Yeah, I don't know.
00:23:30
Speaker
But um yeah, so this guy's found um the police do not treat it as suspicious. they They sort of decide that it was an accidental overdose. and Which is a very weird, I mean, again, a very weird thing to assume because it's like he this this kid went to this group graveyard to just take some G and die. It's not a very common way to party, I would say. No, definitely not.
00:23:59
Speaker
and So before we move on to the next victim, there was some detail, I guess, in the documentary about kind of what happens in the meantime. um So the friend that you mentioned earlier, obviously, he's kind of curious about where this guy's gone. And Stephen basically just tells him that he's like moved out and like, I think, gone back to his own country or something, or he's like moved to like Spain or somewhere. I can't really remember.
00:24:28
Speaker
um But he comes up with this excuse basically as to why this guy who's been living with him is suddenly absent. And I think the friend is like a little bit suspicious about it, but he doesn't he doesn't sort of act on his suspicions. But the and next guy, Daniel Whitworth, this is about a month later, so we're in September now. um He's a 21-year-old chef and he, again, meets Paul on a dating website, um goes back to his,
00:24:59
Speaker
flat and he's drugged in a similar fashion. um With this one, things get a little bit weirder in terms of the sort of disposal of the body. So he he leaves the body in exactly the same place that he left the last one.
00:25:25
Speaker
So 100 meters from his apartment in this churchyard slumped up against the wall. um With a note that he's written, like ah a fake suicide note, basically linking um Whitworth, the current victim, to the previous victim, Kavari. So he writes this note basically saying that um Whitworth is responsible for Kavari overdosing and he can't live with the guilt anymore so he's like decided to take his own life and he sort of shoved this note in his pocket while he slumped up against the wall and he injects him in the arm a few times to make it look like he's sort of self injected himself with GHB and the this victim is actually found by the exact same woman who found
00:26:18
Speaker
the first one a month earlier, sorry, the second one a month earlier. um Again, the... Poor grandma. No, i felt I felt so bad for her. She seems like a very sweet old lady as well. And I i can't even imagine, like, I mean, just finding a body would be so traumatizing. Like, I think about it all the time. Like, I know this is like a, ah you know, whatever. I have like a lot of macabre thoughts, but like when I'm like walking alone at night in the city and like I'm near the water, I like kind of do like look over and think like, what would I do if I ah like saw a body floating in the... you know, floating in the river. And it's like it it it's it has to be an incredibly traumatizing. We don't hear from her in the documentary, but it has to be a traumatizing thing to find a body. Yeah, it's always like a dog walker or a jogger as well. Like it's always these people who are out like super early in the morning. um I've definitely had those sorts of I've always thought it'd be kind of exciting to find a body like um rather than sort of chilling. But
00:27:21
Speaker
I mean, I think it would be exciting. Like, it'd be something you'd talk about, like, kind of for the rest of your life. But I do think I would like, it would get, like, the image of the body would kind of be, like, stuck in my head. Like, I feel like when I, like, closed my eyes at night, like, I would, like, get these, like, flashes of this, like, incident that, you know, I don't know. Yeah, for sure. I've only ever seen, I've only ever seen one body, like, obviously in a, you know, in a funeral situation. And it was disturbing.
00:27:50
Speaker
even in that setting where they like do everything possible to like set the person up to look like they're sleeping, you know? Yeah. I'm kind of similar. I mean, we, we don't tend to do, um, like open casket funerals are not really a thing in the UK, but ah you do, you do tend to get the opportunity to like visit like your loved ones, like in the funeral home, like before the funeral. Um, so I've only seen my grandma,
00:28:19
Speaker
I saw, I went to see after she had died. And yeah, it was, it was, uh, obviously they put loads of makeup on them. They tried to make them look as sort of nice as possible. But like you do get that, um,
00:28:34
Speaker
that immediate sense when you're in the room with them, that the life is gone, that the person isn't present anymore. I don't know that you're, that you're not really like,
00:28:47
Speaker
I don't know, just that the life has gone. like and know so It's a body that you're dealing with. It's not it's not the person that they used to be. As much as they saw try and dress it up to seem like it is. um But yeah, I don't know. Discovering like two in the space of like a month, I might think, must be pretty harrowing.
00:29:08
Speaker
um In terms of the the note itself, so the police contact the parents of this boy, Daniel, and send a sample of the suicide note. And the parents, they ask the parents basically, is this the handwriting of your son? And they just say that they're unsure, but the police decide to take that as confirmation that it is his handwriting.
00:29:37
Speaker
So they don't investigate any further. They treat it as like not suspicious. um It's not considered related to the other deaths apart from sort of the link between sort of Kavari and Whitworth. um But yeah, they they don't link it to Port. They don't link it to the first murder. They're they're just viewing it as sort of another accidental, well, in this case, a suicidal overdose.
00:30:04
Speaker
The final victim, well, I think it's, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't he actually get arrested and spend a small amount of time in jail before the final victim? Am I wrong? so Yes, no, you're you are right. So he's arrested in the final victim is killed in September of 2015, the following year, but he is arrested in, I think around June.
00:30:33
Speaker
for perverting the course of justice with the first murder and he does he I think he's sentenced to about four months in jail but he doesn't spend that long there he's he's out a lot quicker than that um the the final one Jack Taylor he's a 25 year old forklift truck driver and again he meets him through a dating gap And this time he doesn't leave them in the churchyard, but he leaves them sort of nearby. There's like a park, I think just opposite from the churchyard where he leaves the body. um Again, despite the clear pattern, the police initially failed to link Taylor's death with the previous one, again attributing it to an overdose. the The only real reason I think that he gets caught
00:31:29
Speaker
is that the families are kind of kicking up a bit of a stink about this because they feel like the situation isn't being dealt with properly by the police. There's a big like gay news website in the UK called Pink News. I don't know if you have that in the US as well. Yeah, we do. We do. Yeah. um But they were reporting that they suspected that there was like a ah gay serial killer um in London before even the police were sort of reporting on it. but Yeah, and i think I think it's worth mentioning the last two victims seemingly have more like, I don't know what what they would call it in British, but like like more like middle class like or working class like families that are like pushing for a ah bigger investigation. Yeah, for sure. the Particularly the family of the final victim, i Jack Taylor,
00:32:21
Speaker
his sisters were extremely frustrated that sort of nothing was being done about this. They they were convinced that um ah something had happened and they decided to conduct their own investigation and managed to come across CCTV footage that shows Taylor with Paul on the night that he disappeared. Um, it was finding this that kind of pushes the police to investigate further. So,
00:32:50
Speaker
they kind of argue with the police that they need to release the footage to the public and let them see it. And eventually the police sort of agree and they release it to the media. And in the following month in October, they finally arrest Port on suspicion of murder. Yeah. And they show some of his like interrogation tapes and he's like, he's an incredibly like creepy guy. Like I couldn't think of a more like sort of
00:33:22
Speaker
he's He's kind of just like, I mean, I know he's in shape, but he gives me this like tall sort of like skeletal sort of, I don't know. Anyway, he's very, he's not very forthcoming in the inner, in the interviews, but they, um and he does a lot of evasive tactics. I'm not even a hundred percent sure we watched the same documentary because I, there was, ah there was a couple, but the one I watched, and maybe this is the same one you watched, they, um, they had a lot of like, you know, whatever body language experts talk about how evasive he's being in the, um, you know, like the interrogation room, kind of kind of giving like monosyllabic like answers like, yes, no, yes, no. Um, but yeah, so he's, ah he's caught and arrested and charged and he's, he's currently in prison. I, I first came across this story, like in a vice news article, um,
00:34:15
Speaker
And I remember thinking it would be a good, like, short story of some kind just because of the, like, details around it. Like, I kind of imagined, like, a foggy, like, London churchyard where all these, like, young boys are getting, you know, found. and um But i don't know if you I don't know if you felt this way, but I kind of felt left with, like,
00:34:38
Speaker
this feeling that there was just like more to the story. And I do know at his trial that a lot of other victims of just like having been sexually assaulted came forward, which is part of how they got him. Yeah, I think in total, um there were like 11 victims. So there were like, aside from the three that got killed, there were like eight more people maybe that testified at the trial that he had um
00:35:09
Speaker
drugged and sexually assaulted or attempted to sexually assault. Some of them he didn't give enough drugs to and they sort of managed to escape. um One of them was saying that he had like, um he'd made in fact, that there were a couple that said that they'd specifically made it clear to him that they weren't interested in doing drugs and he had told them that he was going to inject lubricant into their assholes, but he would, he would use like a, like a syringe and he would just fill it with like GHB and just inject the GHB into their butts. And I sort of think how like gullible do you have to be to believe that someone's going to be like lubing your asshole up with a syringe, but, um, but yeah, I don't know. This was, um,
00:36:03
Speaker
This was a few years after I lived in London. So I lived in London around sort of 2010, 2011. This is like 2014, but I still had a couple of friends who lived there. And this was kind of the, the peak of the whole like chem sex sort of thing. I know that that still goes on. I know that there are a lot of guys who still like get together in groups and take drugs and have sex, but it was, it was really at like a peak in the UK during the sort of 2014 period, which is,
00:36:33
Speaker
um why I think a lot of the the guys that he didn't murder but assaulted like were quite adamant that they they weren't interested in doing drugs with him because that was that was something that was very prevalent at the time.
Vulnerabilities of Young Gay Men
00:36:48
Speaker
um But yeah, we we were talking a little bit the other day about like why why do guys like sleep with guys like this? I don't know like what's the impetus. and I don't know. you said You said a little bit earlier that like you could kind of maybe see yourself being lured in by someone like this when you were younger. like What is it about like somebody like that that you think?
00:37:12
Speaker
I mean, I think that like when you're young, and like i was I was talking with another friend about this the other day, it's like, you do want to experiment and have sex. And especially back in 2011, 12, pre, um you know like maybe prep and pre, like a lot of you know a lot of the way you met people was through sort of these shady apps. I know he found these guys on Grindr, which Still exists, but I think that like once you know, it's kind of hard What if you get to someone's apartment and they are creepy or scary it can be very difficult to just like walk out yes Yeah, i would I would agree with that i definitely
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah, you just feel like the expectation for sex is there and you, you know, like consent to the sex, like you agree to have the sex, even though you're sort of like creeped out by the situation because, you know, it's just, yeah, you're just young and you like Yeah, you've gone all this way. tol I don't know. that's That's kind of what I, but that's how I perceived it because I couldn't imagine these like young, good looking guys like showing up and being like, this is going to be the funnest night of my life. But I could see them showing up and being like, well, I'm here. I i i might as well, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I get that.
00:38:45
Speaker
But I do think anyone getting a syringe near my ass would ah be, a I think I would, I actually do think even my 20 year old self would be like, i' am I'm leaving. Yeah, i yeah i I can't, I mean, and to that credit, like, um and both of the guys I heard who discussed that, I think they both like ah managed to escape, like,
00:39:10
Speaker
just as the GHB was like starting to kick in, they managed to like get themselves out of the apartment um and they were okay. But like I don't know, it's weird to think, like okay so ah okay, so there are 11 known victims that like came forward or were killed by this guy. But like how many guys do you think he did this to that were too embarrassed to say anything about it? It's probably nearer, like I don't know,
00:39:39
Speaker
like 50 or 100s? Well, there's probably, yeah, probably a lot. And my guess would be there were also guys that just like were into doing the drug thing. You know, there was probably a lot of people who did that, like who just were open to the drug experience or whatever. um But I did think about the friend and i I did think about hit this like very particular fetish. And I i do feel like there was a ton of unanswered questions for me because I just I kind of just don't think that he would have never like confided this and someone and I wouldn't be surprised if he had done something like this with other people, you know. um It kind of seemed unlikely to me that a guy like this could be
00:40:28
Speaker
active in this one very particular neighborhood and there's no one else who knows about it, you know? So I don't know. I think I was a little bit suspicious about the yeah that. Yeah, that's interesting you mentioned that because I do think that um I do think he has that kind of like
00:40:50
Speaker
what's the word, like kind of like voyeuristic sort of tendency to him because one of the guys that managed to get away from him um said that he drugged him and then he was taking too much GHB so he was unconscious, he was raped by him and he videotaped it and then when the guy woke up he showed him the video which I find like really creepy. um So he definitely does have the capacity to sort of like want to like share the ah experience with someone, whether whether that's the victim or somebody outside of this the experience, I don't know. But but yeah, that that to me is like, I don't know, I can't even imagine what I would do if I was if i was in that situation.
00:41:36
Speaker
I think the police were so lazy because to me like it was worth it would have been worth like a much wide, wide ranging, you know, like ah investigation of like, you know, yeah, if he's taking videos, he's likely sharing them with people.
00:41:53
Speaker
Who's getting these videos? Is he uploading them to like porn sites? There's actually a big case right now. um This guy is suing because Pornhub like refused to take down this video of him and getting raped when he was 12 years old. um And he's an adult now. And the video is until like this lawsuit happened was still up on Pornhub.
Media Influence: Porn and Violence
00:42:15
Speaker
That was crazy. So I just think kind of in like the you know that these sites, and like this is like a big opinion I have, which is like controversial in the gay community, but like I just think that like these sites aren't doing enough to um protect especially like young, vulnerable people. like There definitely should be age verification on things like Grindr. And there definitely, you know all these porn sites should absolutely be um Like, I read in this lawsuit that like Pornhub only has one single person employed to vet videos. So that means this person's just imagine this person's job. They have to watch something like 1,000 videos a day. And they have to they have to vet whether the videos are depicting assault or underage sex or like all sorts of things.
00:43:09
Speaker
And it's just one person. So it's like, how could they you know possibly catch you know even a fraction of what's likely on there? um So I don't know. i think I think porn is sort of a rot on society. But I also think that like these sites bear some responsibility for ah you know yeah looking into that. like i think that like I don't know if there is. i'm not i'm not I don't know if you use Grindr anymore. but like Is there a way to like, like, could one of these guys, even if they didn't want to go to the police, like report what happened to them and get this guy like banned from Grindr? Is that even a function that you have? I don't know. I haven't got a clue. Um, I'm not on like, to me, I'm like, that should exist. Like bare minimum, you should be able to like sort of,
00:44:03
Speaker
like put on Grindr, like send to Grindr, like this guy is, you know, yeah, like yeah this person should be banned from Grindr, you know. Yeah, it's interesting, like just kind of going back to the case, like a little bit, like one of the obviously there were like massive police failings in their inability to connect these situations that are so similar.
00:44:30
Speaker
Um, but like a lot of the, the kind of arguments surrounding that after his conviction was that the incompetence of the police kind of stemmed from homophobia. And I don't really think that that's true. I think, I think the police in Britain in general are extremely incompetent and there are, there are,
00:44:59
Speaker
countless examples of like things like this going on. I definitely don't think that it stems from some kind of like prejudice on their behalf. i think I think they're just that dumb. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, they are probably that dumb. And the fact that like you have to imagine like in a city like London, like how many overdoses are there in and like a given year? i would Surely thousands. you know Yeah, that's true. But they do have like The Buras do have their own like individual police forces. So like barking where he was from, like they would have their own um police force who would be dealing with it. So I don't know. I definitely can't excuse their incompetence in this sort of scenario.
Understanding Port's Psychology
00:45:44
Speaker
i think the What more interests me, and this is maybe a good segue to the book, is like the psychology of like what leads
00:45:53
Speaker
um someone like Steven Port to like eventually get to the point he got to because So the book we read is called The Sluts by
Dennis Cooper's 'The Sluts'
00:46:03
Speaker
Dennis Cooper. Dennis Cooper is a famous American writer. He ah lives in Paris, and he writes these incredibly violent novels about, essentially, like, Stephen Port-type characters, like older men who want to ah rape and kill twinks.
00:46:23
Speaker
who are the that's like the and it like It's interesting to read his books because he definitely, I think, finds this topic erotic. um And I was thinking about like, like there's something about twinks that like, and I'm not sure if it's from porn or what, but there's something about just like, there's like a through line and like gay pornography and stuff of like wanting to like,
00:46:55
Speaker
just like annihilate twings. Yeah. Even, I mean, you even see it in like the language that people use in real life. Like and when you're, when you're talking about sort of like sexual encounters with guys, like they use words like ruin and stuff like, Oh, I want to ruin you. And yeah, I don't know. Like obviously the sluts kind of takes it to the extremes. Um,
00:47:23
Speaker
But it's just interesting because like in a heterosexual ah situation, like a guy on like whatever Tinder could not say to a woman, like I want to like blow open your pussy and like ruin you and like actually get laid. But that is language that is used. And it like made me question if there was like something inherently like violent and gay male sexuality.
00:47:50
Speaker
um like not that I think that means that all gay men are violent. I don't. But just something about that ah like kind of like brutality of two men having sex, you know. um And I think that like the mainstream media has tried to portray like, you know, a lot of like really loving sexuality between men in recent years. But I think back to like the first time I saw gay sex in a movie, I was a teenager and I saw Brokeback Mountain.
00:48:21
Speaker
And I would say that that that sex scene is is pretty brutal, you know what I mean? Like, it's pretty like, you know, imagining the guy, like imagining the director being like, okay, spit in your hand, okay, like shove, you know what I mean? Like, it's just this like kind of like element of like,
00:48:39
Speaker
there's not like a soft like love-making element to that movie. So I don't know. So The Sluts basically follows, um it's told it's a really like well done novel. It's very experimental. It follows, it's basically done with exclusively ah through, it tells the story through exclusively gay chat rooms. So it was released in 2000 and I found it or I think some somewhere around there and I found it interesting that Vicki had trouble finding it in the UK because recently like in New York um and this is like a recent development I've been seeing it on a lot of like best of shelves and just regular bookstores like not even gay bookstores um and I think people like it's like like it's it's like the the nit the way it experiments with like how a novel could be written because you're basically just reading
00:49:33
Speaker
a bunch of gay guys with anonymous screen names chatting about this one. like magic twink that like they all want to fuck and he's like an escort um and they all want to like and the the twink has like a death drive so the twink the the the the twink himself like in the novel like one is like kind of inviting this like brutality um onto himself and sort of like begging to be uh like degraded and humiliated so it's like
00:50:06
Speaker
it it Anyway, so it's told through these like message boards. um And i like as disgusting as the novel is, and it is pretty disgusting, um you know there's parts of it that like I kind of understood. Because like I do remember, at least me as a young gay guy, wanting like this very like rough sex. And I think that's what the novel kind of plays with. Yeah. so it they kind it kind of takes the form of that kind of almost like prostitute reviews on this like forum, aren't they? So they're like, um, the, I mean, the main prostitute that most of them are reviewing is this guy, Brad, um, who you don't like, sort of, you don't really hear from like directly until like very like late on in the novel. And you never really know whether you have a room directly at all because that's kind of, that's,
00:51:05
Speaker
confusion about whether there's like one or two of them or like the stories of the guys kind of conflict each other. Like, um, but yeah, I found, uh, I don't know. I've spoken to other people about it who've read it and they said that they kind of found the, the extreme, the extreme sort of language, almost like funny in a way. And I found it like,
00:51:33
Speaker
this really uncomfortable for the vast majority of the novel. like It was easy to read in the sense that it's it's definitely compelling and engaging, and I think the format the that it takes is makes it very quick to read. like It's not a long novel anyway, it's like 200 pages or something, but I think the idea that you're kind of reading these forum posts um it feels very familiar. Like you probably read that many words on Twitter when you're scrolling your phone mindlessly anyway. So it doesn't, it doesn't feel like a chore to read it, but some of the depictions of sex I found, like I could feel myself like recoiling as I was like reading. Cause I was so uncomfortable, but I don't know. They're very disgusting and they're very violent and like, um,
00:52:25
Speaker
I'm trying to think of a good like if you've seen Fight Club, there's like that scene where he like ah beats up that like really beautiful man. And he's like, I just wanted to ruin something beautiful. There's a lot of like comments like that in the in the novel. And at the end, you're like not sure whether Brad's like even real.
00:52:43
Speaker
or if this was just like a fantasy sort of conjured up like a kind of mass psychosis sort of like fantasy kind of conjured up by these um gay men. I mean, I think it's really brave what Dennis Cooper does because I, you know, I read i read a bunch of his books when I was in Switzerland, including the sluts and it's like, and it was in the middle of winter. So it was like very dark outside. It was kind of a good,
00:53:07
Speaker
a good way to read them. um And he's definitely like not invested. it's like it's very I find them refreshing because he's like not invested in making gay men look good. In fact, he's like, let's explore the most like depraved um kind of um aspects of gay male sexuality and his books remind me of like there are books by actually written by women that are sort of similar like I read this book called the incest diaries recently that's written by a anonymous woman and it's about her
00:53:42
Speaker
basically fucking her dad um and how she like keeps fucking her dad even after she's like an adult. um And it's written completely anonymously for obvious reasons. um And it's it's sort of touted as like a true story. um It got a New York Times review. So none of this is like you know none of this is like a underground or secret, this type of writing.
Parallels Between Fiction and Reality
00:54:09
Speaker
But yeah, I could just see like Stephen Port being a Dennis Cooper character, which is why I was interested in like kind of placing them together. Yeah, for sure. Like you can kind of even so the the way that every like post in this novel takes places like it kind of begins with almost like a little questionnaire where they like
00:54:30
Speaker
will mention like the name of the the rent boy that they're reviewing and their screen name, and then some of their own like stats and things. And I could kind of like imagine Steven Potts stats on this like chart. what he would write Yeah, he definitely he definitely fits into that kind of mold. And you're right as well to say that it is quite brave in the sense that it exposes sort of the worst elements of game or sexuality,
00:55:00
Speaker
Because it does so in an honest way, like as horrified as I was when I was reading it. And I don't know, it kind of veers into so fantasy territory towards the end with what happens to Brad. butughh But a lot of the descriptions, like even the really violent and aggressive ones, like I've definitely come across guys like that. Like it's not, it it feels honest. And I don't know that that I think is probably one of the things I found unsettling about it. I also, there's like, I have, I have like a really, I'm a bit of a hypochondriac in general, and I have like a massive irrational fear of AIDS, like, or like HIV, like, I don't know. So, and there's a lot of like mention of,
00:55:49
Speaker
like AIDS and HIV and like so like pause guys like fucking people like and all of that stuff just makes me like oh I can't even think about it without wanting to be sick but yeah but i I I mean I thought of like just thinking now like I can remember one experience I had when I was young where like a guy was fucking me and like the whole thing was supposed to be very like you know whatever rough sex. That was what had been set up and like agreed upon like before he came over. And like I said something and he was like, you don't even know what like you're you aren't even near you don't even know what like real depravity is. And I said, what is real depravity? And he said,
00:56:33
Speaker
i want ah I want to cut you open and fuck your wound." Oh my God. He just said that to me. And he left shortly after that, and I never heard from him again. He's probably cutting guys up in his basement somewhere. like Thankfully, I never heard from him again. But these people kind of like do exist, and I think it's just something about like male sexuality that's like has the feminine completely removed from it because one thing I've talked about with a lot of like straight friends is that like women are like a tempering force on um
00:57:09
Speaker
like male sexuality, right? Like you can't just like, like you have to, women, you have to like, you know, take out to dinner and like date and like, whether you really feel this way or not, like convince them that you care for them in some way, like before you're going to have sex with them. And I've had a lot of straight men tell me that like, once the sex is happening, women do kind of want this like sort of dominating you know, like there's this joke from the comedian, Ali Wong, and she's like, for me to get off during sex, I needed to be like really sensual for about 20 minutes and then like really rapey for about five, um you know, like at the very ah like the very end. And I've had a lot of straight guys tell me that, like like women are like,
00:58:00
Speaker
that's you know at at a certain point they want this like aggressive kind of they want to be like taken you know or whatever. yeah um Which makes sense but i I think when you remove the like kind of tapestries of femininity that require this kind of dance to get to the actual sex and you're just meeting with a total stranger like some of that um some of that ah that violent energy can be like much more present, you know? Yeah, I thought as well it was interesting that like kind of, I mean, the novel isn't like super old, I think, is it like 2004 or something like that? It's not like a crazy old novel. um So it predates Grindr, but like a lot of the same like tropes and things that you would see on like an app like Grindr are present in terms of the way that the the guy has behaved. And it made me think as I was reading it, like,
00:58:55
Speaker
I don't know, have gays like always been like this? Because obviously we can't, you can't, you can't go back to like the 80s or the 70s or the 60s and sort of see what gays were like then. But like, I kind of got the impression reading reading the novel that this is just like, this is just what they've always been like. And it's just kind of like, as technology is sort of advanced, like, it's a lot easier to kind of expose yourself to it.
00:59:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I want to be clear, like, I know plenty of gay guys who are in, like, long-term, like, loving relationships. even Yeah, same. Even, like, mono monogamous ones. So, I don't think that this is, like, all gay men, but I think there's, like, a streak in, like, the gay male sexuality that, like, this novel really um speaks to. And, like, a Stephen Port is, like, the kind of extreme um end of it. I also think that, like,
00:59:54
Speaker
it's worth mentioning that like pornography itself has gotten increasingly more violent. yeah And like a lot of like the porn that exists now um is does have these like, you know, kind of domination themes or these sort of like rape fantasy themes. um And I think that that's fucking people's brains of like I think that that's actually like melting people's brains. The issue that I i kind of find um with a lot of guys, like just in terms of like trying to date and things like that is that um I do think the number of guys who are into that kind of stuff has definitely increased.
Impact of Violent Porn on Relationships
01:00:42
Speaker
um And I find that
01:00:46
Speaker
a lot of guys really don't know where the line is. And I find that a lot of that kind of like sort of dominating force can quite easily like bleed over outside of the bedroom in terms of like the way that they engage with you. Um, and I, and I don't know that that's one thing that I think is I noticed more now than I used to notice when I was younger. I feel like that's something that's definitely gotten worse. I'm not saying that all guys are like that. You're right. I know plenty of guys who are in like committed relationships, but I do think that the number of guys who are not interested in that and are just interested in sex and a lot of the time, like very like aggressive sex is definitely like on the ups. And whether that's to do with porn or whatever, I don't really know. But
01:01:41
Speaker
But it's interesting because at the exact same time that that's true, there's like this, like almost like if you think about it, like every mainstream depiction of gay male sexuality has been like totally neutered of that. And I also yeah sure and also think like that's bad. like Because now it's like there's these shows like Heartstopper and like all that you know all this all this stuff like Netflix content that's clearly made for women. you know It's not even actually made for gay guys. And it's like the whole thing is like, you know oh, these like
01:02:17
Speaker
you know adorable teen boys who aren't actually teenagers they're adults but you know like the actors themselves but like these ah adorable teen boys falling in love or like I'm Bridgerton there's like you know like what gay love stories it's like ah the the So it's like I wish there was something more um in between and like we could talk about this movie like on another episode But I watched this this lesbian movie called bound Which I did feel like was much more in between like it showed sort of like maybe the seedy underbelly of get of like lesbian gay culture But also like how to like kind of loving through line and I think that there's like
01:03:00
Speaker
there's a there's a different like So like you know before, like if you're talking in like the 70s and 80s, Al Pacino and um cruising, it's like those movies were all about this dark underbelly of like gay sexuality. But now we have these like completely like almost desexed portrayals of gay men, where they're just like,
01:03:24
Speaker
I don't know, like the Will and Grace version of gay men where there's like, you know, ah just this totally like de-sexualized like ah sort of element to it. And it's like, there has to be like a a middle ground. Yeah. it's It's funny because I like you when you were saying about how a lot of those like shows like Heartstopper and things like they, they're clearly sort of made for women. um It reminded me of, cause I know that you were trying to sort of get into like boy love manga and anime cause like that's something that I've been, I don't really like like gay media in general. Like I don't tend to watch like game movies. I hate like RuPaul's Drag Race and all of that kind of stuff. Um, but like, like boy love anime is like always been something that I like and it is, and it is.
01:04:19
Speaker
for as long as it's been like a genre in Japan, it's it's primarily being for women, like it's primarily women that read it and enjoy it. But it does kind of strike that balance a lot better than a lot of Western media does between sort of um like romance and sexuality. Like the like the the sex, you can find extreme examples of sex, but um but there are plenty where the the balance between sort of the the sex and the romance is kind of pleasant. I feel like Western media could like learn a lot if it borrowed a few elements from the jams. Yeah, like what like like red, white, and royal blue is like the, you know, um I was thinking about how that, I don't think the movie did that well, but like the book was sold like an insane amount. And I i work part time in a bookstore and it's like every single, um
01:05:18
Speaker
person who bought that book was ah was a woman, you know. So I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah, it's weird because I like. I don't know, I wonder whether that is like a new thing, like women sort of finding that kind of stuff appealing ah in the West, at least anyway, because I. I don't have a lot of like female friends, but when I have had female friends when I was younger, like As much as they were sort of comfortable with having like a gay guy as a friend, um they never really liked the kind of sexual aspect of it or found it like attractive or appealing. And i i've ive a lot of women that I've known like would never date a bisexual guy because they find the idea of that guy like having sex with ah another guy uncomfortable. I don't know. A lot of the bisexuals that I've known
01:06:14
Speaker
um generally only date like other the guys unless the girl doesn't know that they're bisexual. And I don't know, maybe that's like changing over time as we're sort of progressing, but I don't know when women suddenly started finding like gay relationships sort of appealing. I don't know.
01:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, it could be a, there's some psycho Freudian explanation, but, um, maybe that's probably the birth control, like, cause it makes them look like soy boys. It makes them look like gay media. So the birth control and the microplastics. Um, well, I think that's what we have for you guys ah today, but we'll be back.
01:07:00
Speaker
ah next week with then with another another um spooky gay and gay story. so Yeah, that was fun. Bye everyone. Bye.