Convicted serial killer Nelson David Moreno Bolaños spent more than €6,000 using a dead victim’s bank card in Cartagena and Torre Pacheco
The man branded Spain’s “gay app killer” left a chilling trail through Murcia after allegedly draining money from one of his victims’ bank cards while visiting the region.
Nelson David Moreno Bolaños, a Colombian national now convicted of murder, attempted murder and fraud, travelled to Murcia in late 2021 to see his then girlfriend, a student at the University of Murcia.
At the time, he was not yet a national name. His face had not appeared on television screens, police alerts or newspaper front pages. To people who met him in Murcia, he was simply a young man visiting his partner.
But investigators would later discover that the Murcia trip formed part of the wider trail left by the man who became known as the most prolific serial killer in Basque criminal history.
According to court findings and police investigations, Moreno Bolaños targeted gay men who lived alone, using dating apps including Grindr and Wapo to arrange meetings at their homes. Prosecutors said he would gain their trust before killing or attacking them, then stealing bank cards, mobile phones and other valuables.
One of those stolen cards was used during a trip that brought him to Cartagena and Torre Pacheco.
A judgment handed down by Criminal Court Number 5 in Bilbao found that between September 16 and 18, 2021, Moreno Bolaños used the bank card of a man who had already died. He made withdrawals and purchases in Bilbao before travelling south towards Murcia.
On the journey, he continued spending. Investigators traced payments at a vending machine, charges at a hotel in Teruel and online purchases.
Once in the Region of Murcia, the transactions continued.
He withdrew €500 from a Banco Sabadell ATM in Cartagena and another €500 from a bank in Torre Pacheco. The next day, he made further purchases at supermarkets, paid for taxi journeys and bought sportswear at a shop in the Espacio Mediterráneo shopping centre in Cartagena.
In total, the fraudulent spending exceeded €6,300.
Those transactions were later reconstructed by investigators and became part of the evidence that led to his 2024 conviction for continuing fraud.
But the financial trail was only one fragment of a far darker case.
In Bilbao, Moreno Bolaños was being linked to a series of deaths among older gay men who lived alone. Many of the deaths had initially been treated as natural, but detectives later began to identify disturbing similarities.
The victims had used gay dating apps. They lived alone. Their homes had been entered. Their bank accounts were accessed after death.
The case began to unravel after one intended victim survived.
In December 2021, a man who had met Moreno Bolaños through Grindr reported that he had been drugged and attacked. According to the Ertzaintza, the Basque regional police, the victim said the young man tried to strangle him.
During the escape, Moreno Bolaños left behind a backpack containing personal documents and his passport.
It was the mistake that brought the investigation crashing down around him.
Police began reviewing other deaths that had not previously been considered suspicious. A pattern emerged. Detectives believed they were looking at a killer who used dating apps to reach vulnerable victims, enter their homes and leave with access to their money.
His name became public in May 2022, when the Ertzaintza released his photograph and appealed for information. Moreno Bolaños later handed himself in at a police station in Irún.
The Murcia connection also surfaced after his image was circulated. His girlfriend’s mother publicly said her daughter had spent Christmas 2021 with him in Murcia, in an apparent attempt to challenge police suspicions about a December attempted murder.
Instead, investigators continued to close in.
Prosecutors alleged that Moreno Bolaños used a chokehold technique capable of causing unconsciousness and death without leaving immediately obvious marks, helping to conceal the true nature of some of the deaths for months.
He has since accumulated major convictions.
Now aged 29, he is serving a 25-year sentence for the murder of a music teacher, 10 years for the attempted murder of a survivor, and two years and three months for fraudulently using a dead victim’s bank card.
In May 2026, a jury unanimously found him guilty of the murder of a 73-year-old man and repeated computer fraud. Prosecutors are seeking a further prison term of up to 28 years in that case.
His legal battles are not over. Further trials are expected after the summer in relation to other killings allegedly committed in 2021, while another case has been reopened by order of the Constitutional Court.
Investigators have linked Moreno Bolaños to five murders and two attempted murders, although not every case has yet reached trial.
For Murcia, the case leaves a grim footnote: a short visit by a man not yet publicly known as a serial killer, spending thousands of euros from a dead man’s account while the full horror of the Bilbao murders remained hidden.
