Gay serial killer Stephen Port, 41, has been found guilty at the Old Bailey of the murder of Gabriel Kovari, who lived in Lewisham and Daniel Whitworth from Gravesend.

He has also been found guilty of the murder of Jack Taylor from Dagenham and  Anthony Walgate from Hull, who was studying at Middlesex University.

The 41-year-old chef stalked his victims on dating websites, including Grindr, and plied them with drinks spiked with fatal amounts of date-rape drug GHB to rape them while they were unconscious, the Old Bailey heard.

Port dumped their bodies in or near a graveyard within 500 metres of his flat in Barking, east London, and embarked on an elaborate cover-up.

He disposed of their mobile phones, repeatedly lied to police and planted a fake suicide note in the hand of one of his victims, taking the blame for the death of another.

The murder victim was Anthony Walgate, 23. He was originally from Hull but was renting a room in Golders Green, north-west London, while studying fashion at Middlesex University.

He occasionally worked as a male escort which is how he came into contact with Port through a website called Sleepyboys.

The student was cautious about the men he met through the site and always told his friends where he was going and showed them a photo of who he was meeting.

He agreed to Port's offer of £800 for an overnight date and told his friend Ellie Green about it "in case I get killed". As an extra precaution, he told her he had a small knife but was going to take scissors with him.

He was found dead outside the communal entrance to Port's block of flats in the early hours of June 19, 2014.

The second man to die was 22-year-old Slovakian Mr Kovari, who was staying on Port's sofa as a temporary flatmate.

After killing him, Port spoke to his older sister Sharon on the phone and confessed he had a body in his bed.

But rather than going to police, he dragged the body to Barking Abbey graveyard where it was discovered by a dog walker.

Port constructed a complex web of deceit, telling his neighbour that Mr Kovari died of an infection in Spain.

Over months, he posed on Facebook as an American student to probe Mr Kovari's grief-stricken Spanish boyfriend and divert suspicion by suggesting the victim had gone off to a sex party with "Dan".

Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC told jurors that the misinformation was to "lay the groundwork" for implicating his third victim, Daniel Whitworth.

Three weeks after the Slovakian was found dead, the same dog walker stumbled across the body of Mr Whitworth, 21, from Gravesend, on September 20, 2014.

In his hand, was a suicide note taking the blame for Mr Kovari's death, saying: "We was having some fun at a mate's place and I got carried away and gave him another shot of G."

It added a plea not to "blame the guy I was with last night".

Police treated Mr Whitworth's death "at face value" and no efforts were made to verify the sham note which turned out to be in Port's handwriting.

Mr Taylor, 25, died within hours of hooking up with Port on Grindr in the early hours of September 13, 2015.

After murdering him, Port got rid of his mobile and deleted their communication on the dating app.

Just after 1pm the next day, Mr Taylor's body was found by a refuse collector with a needle and syringe in his pocket.

Initially, his death was treated as "non-suspicious".

But CCTV footage from Barking Station emerged linking him to Port, whose DNA was found on a bottle of GHB also planted in Mr Taylor's pocket.

Giving evidence, Port denied all the charges and claimed he had left Mr Taylor "very much" alive after having "rampant" sex outside.

On why he lied to police, Port said: "The truth sounded like a lie, so I lied to make it sound like the truth."

However, the prosecution rejected his explanations as absurd, ridiculous and cruel to the families who deserved to know the truth.

Port denied all the charges against him but was found guilty of the murders of the four men as well as a range of sexual offences against more men.