The four young murder victims of serial killer Stephen Port

Killer Stephen Port had a murderous obsession with young men which emerged at a time in his life when his looks, and his hair, had receded.

After coming out as gay when he was 26, he had a series of boyfriends, all boyish and in their 20s and slim, described in the gay community as 'Twinks'.

In his youth, he had made pocket money as a male escort commanding £165 a session, the court heard but as he approached middle age his looks and hair receded.

By the age of 41, to maintain his confidence and sexual prowess, Port started wearing a floppy blond wig glued to his bald crown.

And he clung to his boyish interests, including cars and his collection of Transformer figures, which he would buy from Toys R Us.

He would routinely take decades off his age and use out-of-date profile pictures on the dating websites he used, jurors were told.

It was his desire for possessing and overpowering Twinks that drove Port to embark on his extreme behaviour.

He trawled the internet for pornography showing Twinks being "raped" by groups of older men, images that he copied in his own disturbing home-made videos.

His sick fetish led him to target young, attractive men, luring them to his home so he could drug them and fulfil his rape fantasy, the trial heard.

His four murder victims were:

• Anthony Walgate

Fashion student Anthony Walgate, 23, was originally from Hull but was renting a room in Golders Green, London, while studying at Middlesex University.

He occasionally worked as a male escort via a website called Sleepyboys which is how he came into contact with Stephen Port, who offered him £800 for an overnight date.

Mr Walgate was cautious about the offer and told his friend Ellie Green details "in case I get killed", he told her.

He told her as an extra precaution 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.

• Gabriel Kovari

Gabriel Kovari, 22, came to London from Slovakia for a new life and by mid-July was living temporarily with a man called John Pape, who he met on a dating website called Bender.

On around August 23, 2014, he moved into Port's Barking flat after he agreed to put him up on the sofa rent-free.

Mr Kovari told a friend that he did not want to sleep with Port, who he described as "kinda different" but said the place was worth it.

Port told a neighbour about his "new Slovakian twink flat mate". But within days, Mr Kovari said he wanted to move on.

On August 27, Port told his sister Sharon on the phone that there was a dead body in the bed at his flat and she advised him to go to the police.

But the following day, Mr Kovari's body was found dumped 500 metres away in Barking Abbey graveyard by a dog walker. He was propped up wearing sunglasses next to a bag of his belongings.

In an extraordinary twist, Port struck up an intense Facebook friendship with Gabriel Kovari's Spanish partner, Thierry Amodio.

For months he pretended he was a 21-year-old Californian student living in London called Jon Luck as he pumped the young man for information about the police investigation.

• Daniel Whitworth

Daniel Whitworth, 21, had been living with his partner Ricky Waumsley in Gravesend in Kent, after meeting through LadsLads dating website.

He loved his work as a chef at One Moorgate Place and later Canary Wharf and was "passionate" about cooking, according to his partner.

He liked a drink but never took drugs, aside from cannabis during a trip to Amsterdam, the court heard.

Mr Whitworth met Port through Fitlads dating website on August 18 2014 - before the death of Mr Kovari - but they did not meet up until the evening of Thursday, September 18, 2014.

When he failed to turn up for work the next day, Mr Waumsley reported him missing to Kent Police. Meanwhile, Port deleted his Fitlads account.

On September 20, his body was found by the same dog walker in the same spot as Mr Kovari.

His mobile was missing and a fake suicide note was in his hand implicating him in the death of the young Slovakian the month before. It was written by Port as part of his elaborate cover-up.

• Jack Taylor

25-year-old Jack Taylor lived with his parents in Dagenham, east London, and worked as a forklift truck driver for London City Bond.

He was described by his sisters Donna and Jenny Taylor as a bubbly, caring and popular young man who loved his job and would not have taken drugs for fear of losing it.

Just under a year after Mr Whitworth's death, Mr Taylor had been drinking beer and a couple of whiskies at the Trading Club in Dagenham.

When he returned home at 1.10am on September 13, 2015, his father Colin was still up. But in the morning, his parents found him missing as he had hooked up on Grindr with Port and taken a minicab to Barking.

CCTV picked up the pair meeting at Barking Station and heading to Port's flat where he died soon after. Within four and a half hours of meeting, Port had blocked his Grindr account, erasing their online connection.

Just after 1pm on September 15, his body was discovered near the graveyard without his mobile phone, in the same circumstances at Mr Whitworth and Mr Kovari.

His family said that police initially treated Mr Taylor's death as an overdose but they refused to accept it and put pressure on officers to treat his death as suspicious.