Friday, March 29

The suspect of killing several men in Bilbao with whom he contacted on dating apps is handed over to the Ertzaintza


NDMB, 25, turned himself in this Thursday afternoon at an Ertzaintza police station to “collaborate” after having seen his image broadcast in the media, according to official sources. This is the suspect whose whereabouts are unknown since December, when a double search and arrest warrant was issued against him for his alleged involvement in an undetermined number of crimes involving middle-aged men with whom he contacted through the mobile application Wapo ya those who drugged with inhibitory substances for an economic motive began when two apparently unconnected and very different ones crossed paths.

The LGTBI collective of Bizkaia calls to avoid stigmatization for the Bilbao murders

Know more

“A person has appeared at police stations to collaborate after seeing himself in the media,” they tell this newspaper from the Basque Police. Agents of this body have proceeded to arrest him to continue the investigation, which is kept under summary secrecy.

The case had a double origin. On the one hand, after the supposed natural death of a forty-year-old, his family detected that there were still movements in his bank accounts by an unauthorized third party. On the other hand, another person managed to get away from an attempted attack and was able to provide some key information for the identification of the suspect, whose whereabouts are unknown.

With the elements provided by this survivor -‘modus operandi’, the use of toxins, the application he used to meet the victims and even personal objects that had been left at home – it was decided to carry out an analysis of the corpse and remains were located of the same drug. The Basque Institute of Legal Medicine is in charge of this work. These events occurred in the autumn and, as this is a highly mobile suspect who is not originally from Bilbao, in December an alert was sent to the National Police, the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Navarre Provincial Police, which it is extensive at an international level, at least in the Schengen area of ​​free European circulation. This search and arrest warrant was issued in December, five months ago, and the person under investigation was still “whereabouts unknown” until Thursday afternoon. From this coordination work with bodies from outside the Basque Country, some economic background would have appeared in the Levante area and in Madrid.

The official information has been administered with a dropper. Judicial sources had confirmed to this newspaper that there are two criminal cases open in the Bilbao courts for “homicide” and that the suspect in both, who is the same person, was “whereabouts unknown”, for which they had issued search and arrest warrants. Officially, the possibility of providing more data remains there due to the secrecy that weighs on the proceedings, they insist from the Palace of Justice. In the case of the Ertzaintza, whose Bizkaia Investigation Unit (known by its acronym SITCB) is leading the investigations, the deliberate decision was not to provide any information. The case was under lock and key: neither confirm any data nor have many threads that are not verified been denied. In fact, even Bilbao patrols state that they have not received any guidance in this regard in the ‘briefings’ of recent weeks.

Thus, at noon this Thursday, two public media outlets offered two calculations of alleged murdered victims that were very different from each other. The sources consulted emphasize that it is very difficult to reopen an ‘exitus letalis’ considered natural since in very exceptional cases the necessary samples are kept to determine, for example, the presence of toxic substances in the body. Formally, there is no estimate of the number of possible homicides beyond the fact that there are two criminal proceedings underway.

The case has generated great social controversy in Bilbao and beyond, largely motivated by sensational information. Some LGTBI groups such as Bilbao Bizkaia Harro have asked for “responsibility” so as not to increase the “social alarm”. Aratz Castro, spokesperson for the platform, adds: “It is a mistake to link the cases to the alleged sexual orientation of the victims because that is how they fall into the error of stigmatizing them and making them guilty of what happened.” Neighbors without any information about the investigation have appeared on television denouncing the insecurity of a specific area of ​​the city more than half a year after the events occurred and experts detailing how the poisonings were. And there have been written stories that have turned the Biscayan capital into the setting of a noir novel.

follow us on Telegram





www.eldiario.es