Police Arrest Suspected Grindr Serial Killer

Police in the Spanish town of Irun in the Basque Country have arrested a man suspected of killing at least four men he met on the gay dating app Grindr.

Nelson David Morena Bolanos turned himself in Thursday to police in that city, although he says he is innocent, the U.K.'s Mirror reports. He is accused of posing as a gay man named Carlos to meet men on Grindr, then drugging and robbing them. He was being held pending a court appearance.

Police in the city of Bilbao had been investigating a series of suspicious deaths since a survivor of an attack came forward in December. "The man survived an attempt to strangle him and found his attacker had abandoned their rucksack behind them after a struggle, and it contained the knockout drug GHB and personal documents," the Mirror reports.

Police then theorized that four men who were thought to have died from natural causes had in fact been given a fatal dose of GHB, also known as liquid ecstasy. The killer then took money from their bank accounts, police said. The family of one of the dead men had reported such an action in October. There may have been other victims, perhaps as many as eight, Spanish News Today reports.

Bolanos contacted police after seeing himself mentioned in the media and on WhatsApp. A 25-year-old immigrant from Colombia, he was arrested on a fraud charge in 2019, according to the Mirror.

"I can confirm a man has handed himself in to police after seeing himself being alluded to in the media and WhatsApp groups. He was formally arrested after he handed himself in. We are not saying why or where he was arrested," a spokesperson from the Basque Country's police force told the outlet.