Alleged Spanish serial killer reports himself to the police
Photo AFP, Pau Barrena
Southern Europe
A Columbian male in his twenties suspected of murdering at least four gay people in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao has reported himself to the police. The man has been wanted by police since December 2021 but denies any links to the murders.
The accused may have committed at least four murders. All victims are said to have contacted the man through the dating app Grindr, which is especially popular with gay men. They invited the suspect to their home and were drugged there. In all cases, the victims' bank accounts were looted.
The authorities had been looking for the suspect since December last year. Then, a victim managed to escape the man who allegedly tried to strangle him. The four murders happened in Bilbao in September and October. The police do not rule out the possibility that the perpetrator committed more murders than currently is known.
According to the Spanish daily El Pais, the suspect moved to Spain three years ago and applied for asylum.
Violent
The Spanish daily El Mundo reports on the first victim of the murders. It was not immediately clear that the 43-year-old man called A. was killed. The man, a music teacher, was found dead in his home without any signs of violent death. An autopsy concluded that it was 'just' a sudden death. However, when the victim's brother checked the bank accounts of the deceased man, he found out that significant amounts of money were extracted after the death of A.
"Although JMA was cremated, tissue samples from the corpse are kept whenever an autopsy is performed in case the forensic examination needs to be repeated. After the brother's complaint, a more exhaustive analysis of the samples was requested, in which traces of GHB, better known as liquid ecstasy, were detected", El Mundo reports. According to scientific literature, GHB is one of the so-called submission drugs used by criminals to override the will of the victims and obtain credit card or bank account keys from them, for example.
This revelation was followed by the discovery that JMA had met a person through a gay dating app: a 26-year-old Colombian boy. This opened the door to review other deaths of middle-aged men who, like A., had suddenly died after agreeing to meet through apps for homosexual contacts.
In an interview, the mayor of Bilbao said that there is a "tense calm" in his city due to media reports of the serial killer.
Related Articles
