Families of the victims of serial killer Stephen Port have been assured that everything possible will be done to ensure the long-awaited inquests into their deaths go ahead in the new year despite the coronavirus pandemic. Port, 44, a chef, drugged and raped four young gay men. He lured them to his flat through dating apps including Grindr, and dumped their bodies near his home in Barking, east London, between 2014 and 2015. Following a trial at the Old Bailey, he was handed a whole life sentence in November 2016 for the murders of fashion student Anthony Walgate, 23, Gabriel Kovari, 22, chef Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, a bonded warehouse supervisor. An inquest hearing into the deaths of the four is due to open in January. At a pre-inquest review at the Old Bailey, Andrew O’Connor, counsel to the inquest, told judge Sarah Munro QC, appointed assistant coroner for east London: “You have already set a date of January 2021 for the substantive hearing to take place. We are quite confident we will be ready for this hearing for that time. Families have waited a long time for these hearings to take place. “Everyone is aware of the uncertainties that have been created by the coronavirus pandemic, and well aware of the difficulties that pandemic has caused and continues to cause for court hearings.” Some 8,000 pages of documents had already been disclosed, including from the original police investigations, police watchdog statements and statements from family members, he said. An inquest jury will examined whether prejudice played a part in how police initially responded to the deaths of the four men, the coroner has already ruled. The four were drugged with lethal doses of the “date rape” drug GHB, and their bodies dumped along with planted drug paraphernalia and, in one case, a fake suicide note. The eight-week inquest will examine why the police did not more quickly link four deaths with such striking similarities. The body of Walgate, Port’s first victim, was found outside the communal entrance to Port’s flat in June 2014. Those of Kovari and Whitworth were discovered in a churchyard near Port’s home in August and September 2014, and Taylor’s at the same churchyard in September 2015. Port’s trial highlighted many missed opportunities and potential vulnerabilities in the police investigation. Lawyers for the families have called for more information to be disclosed about the original inquest into the deaths of Kovari and Whitworth, which reached an open conclusion, that was subsequently quashed. Among the questions the inquest will examine is why Port was not treated as a murder suspect over Walgate’s death, though he served two months for lying about the circumstances of the death, and why an unsophisticated fake suicide note, found on Whitworth’s body and blaming himself for Kovari’s death, was seemingly taken at face value by investigating officers. Another pre-inquest review is set to be held in the autumn.