Dating App Murder Stories: How Tinder and Grindr Dates Can Go Fatally Wrong

Everyone wants someone to match with in a couple’s costume this Halloween as we are planning Halloween house parties galore. Our immediate response to find someone now-a-days is usually to look on a dating app, swipe right on our soulmate, and easily find our happily ever after. However, this isn’t always the case as people don’t always have the best intentions when swiping left or right on dating apps. In fact, some of these people’s intentions are quite murderous as they search on Tinder and Grindr, preying on their next victim. Here are 5 dating app murder stories that took place on Grindr and Tinder to beware of when searching for a date this Halloween.

Dating App Murder Story #5: Utah Woman Stabbed to Death on Tinder Date

The first of the dating app murder stories we will cover is the story of Ashlyn Black, who was a 25-year-old woman who resided in Layton, Utah. She was swiping on Tinder one night, when she matched with 24-year-old Ethan Robert Hunsaker. They both agreed to go on a date, so he picked her up and went to a local bar, sharing a few drinks while getting to know one another.

They then went back to Ethan’s place, which barely had any furniture. They engaged in intimate activities, then cuddled afterwards on the floor. Ethan woke up and started choking Ashlyn as hard as he could for approximately one-minute, according to what he told police officers. She tried fighting him off the whole time, but failed as he stood up to get a spring-assisted pocket knife with a four-inch blade.

He then stabbed the girl multiple times in the sides, chest, and back. He watched her for 10-minutes as she was bleeding out, then called 911 at around 3:20 a.m. to turn himself in. He told dispatch on the phone that he didn’t know Ashlyn and would like the officers that arrived at the scene to kill him. Layton Police Officers showed up to the scene and found multiple stab wounds in her torso.

The Layton Fire Department tried to save her life, but it was already too late. Once police officers and the fire department showed up, she was pronounced dead at the scene. Ethan had confessed to police officers that he had mental health issues and struggled with thoughts of murderous actions and suicide.

Dating App Murder Story #4: Nebraska Couple Murder a Woman Found on Tinder

Sydney Loofe matched with Bailey Boswell on Tinder and went on a date on November 14, 2017. They both had planned a second date the next night. Then on November 16th, two days after their first date, Sydney’s mom reported her missing.

Aubrey Trail was Bailey Boswell’s boyfriend, and they both assisted with murdering Sydney Loofe. Aubrey told the investigators that he strangled Sydney with an extension cord. Then Bailey helped Aubrey dismember her body and put the remains in garbage bags. They threw the bags in a field and left her body there.

One month after her disappearance in December, her dismembered body was found in garbage bags at a field near Edgar, Nebraska. There was also security camera footage of them shopping at Home Depot in Lincoln, Nebraska buying tools that assisted in Sydney’s murder.

All Aubrey has told news outlets was that her death was an accident, but didn’t go into more detail as to how it was accidental. Nebraska is considering the death penalty for this murderous couple.

Dating App Murder Story #3: Suspect Shoots Three Men He Swiped Right With on Grindr

On August 17, 2020 there were three shootings that night at Fort Worth, with one thing in common: all the victims were found on the dating site Grindr. Damarion T. Degrate, a resident from Waco, Texas, met all of these victims on Grindr and messaged them, making plans to meet all three guys that night.

The first shooting took place at 12:30 am where the first victim took cover at a convenient store. He then met 23-year-old, Jonathan Breeding, right after the first shooting, and shot him in his car. Jonathan was found at 2:15 a.m. in his car that was crashed near an intersection, and was pronounced dead at the scene. The third and final shooting was reported when police found a man walking down the street with a gunshot wound. Degrate has been listed as a suspect on all three shooting charges. There is a warrant out for his arrest, issued on October 8th.

Dating App Murder Story #2: Stephen Port, the Grindr Serial Killer

Stephen Port was a trained chef who was featured in an episode of Celebrity MasterChef and also reported to work as a rent boy. He helped celebrities make spaghetti and meatballs on MasterChef. He also claimed to be a door-to-door salesman, stocktaker, a special needs teacher, and a member of the Royal Navy. Even though Port seemed to be a successful man with his future ahead of him, he, unfortunately, had a dark side.

Port was also Grindr’s serial killer who met with his victims, overdosed them with date rape drug GHB, and continued to sexually assault them. He would meet men on there within a span of three-and-a-half years, then meet up with them at a park where he gave them drugs and assaulted them. He was into drug rape pornography, which is what pushed him into wanting to do this to other men.

When he was arrested, his parents have admitted that the claims with his job titles were false and that teachers always thought he was deaf in school since he never spoke to them. He received £136,383 in taxpayers’ legal aid to fund an attempt to prove his innocence. Instead of admitting to killing them, he’s going to say that they caused their own deaths. His family has admitted that the Grindr killer shows no remorse.

The victims that he murdered were Anthony Walgate, Jack Taylor, Daniel Whitworth, and Gabriel Kovari. After killing Walgate, he pled guilty to perverting the course of justice and was sentenced to eight months in prison. Before his sentence, he managed to kill two more people, Kovari and Whitworth. The police found a forged suicide note from Whitworth, stating that he accidentally killed Kovari with the date rape drug and took his own life because he felt bad. However, this was soon proven to be false once they figured out Port really killed him. After he was released in prison, he killed Taylor three months later.

The families of the victims have threatened to sue the police responsible for letting these deaths slide by, claiming that their homophobic tendencies kept them away from deeming this case important. They have said that if a girl were left in the same condition, they would be right on the case and find out who did it immediately. But since it was four gay guys, they assumed that they did drugs and did that to themselves rather than investigate further if someone else was behind it.

John Pape, friend of Kovari, investigated his friend’s death before the police ever got to it. He read that someone else died in an unexplained way near where Kovari had died. Kovari’s ex-boyfriend also confirmed that yet another man had died in the cemetery, totaling up to three men killed.

He heard that drug parties were happening in this cemetery and when he went to tell the police, they told him there was nothing they could do. When the police wouldn’t help him, he contacted Pink News and Galop, LGBT Support Group pages with links to the police. They contacted police saying that Pape had more information but yet still did not want to speak to him, since they thought that the deaths weren’t suspicious.

He was a key witness to their case, and so when he spoke out about what he thought, they were barely listening to him flipping through the case and said that they couldn’t find any information while dismissing him. After 4 months, they contacted him saying that another man had died and they have a suspect in custody for the deaths of the 3 other men. This is when they found Port guilty of all these deaths and proved that he had also faked the suicide note. In total, 12 men were assaulted by Port in the course of three years.

Dating App Murder Story #1: Cannibal Grindr Date Kills and Eats His Date

This is definitely the worst of the five dating app murder stories covered in this article, so prepare to read some gory detail. 25-year-old Kevin Bacon was chatting with a man twice his age on Grindr during Christmas Eve of 2019, and thought that he was super attractive. He told his friend Michelle Meyers that he was going to meet with his Grindr date in person, but didn’t tell her where he was going. He drove 30-minutes to Morrice, Michigan to hopefully meet the man of his dreams.

Once Kevin stepped foot in his Grindr date’s home, he texted Michelle at 6:12 p.m. that he was having fun and she didn’t have to wait for him anymore. However, that ended up being a giant mistake. Because not long after he stepped foot in his date’s home, he disappeared.

When Kevin didn’t appear at his family’s house for Christmas brunch, his dad called Michelle to see what was going on. She checked his bed, but it showed no signs that Kevin came home to sleep in it. She looked for his car, but it wasn’t where it usually was. She tried calling him, but he didn’t answer his phone. She became suspicious that something was very wrong and reported that back to Kevin’s father. Right after that, his parents called the Clayton Township Police.

The police were able to track and locate Kevin’s phone, along with his wallet and some articles of clothing in Kevin’s car left at Clayton Township car park. However, they were unable to find Kevin or his car keys. Police were able to get his car unlocked and look through his phone to find Grindr messages between him and his Grindr date, Mark Latunski.

In a prior police report a month before this incident, it was reported that Mark chained up a Grindr date with his consent, and started performing disturbing sexual acts on him. The date became disturbed and ran out of the home, telling police he ran because he was uncomfortable but didn’t want to press charges.

On December 28, police asked Mark if they could search his home and found a hidden room in the basement. As they walked inside this room, they found Kevin hanging upside down with his testicles cut off, lifeless. That’s when Mark admitted to stabbing Kevin in the back of his neck, slitting his throat, and then cooking his testicles so that he could eat them.

Before Meeting Your Date In-Person, Social Catfish Can Help Verify Their Identity

As you’ve read these dating app murder stories, you have probably come to the realization that it is not as safe as one might think to meet your Tinder or Grindr dates in person. However, with Social Catfish we can help verify someone’s identity with just a little bit of information so that you know who you are meeting before-hand. All you need to perform a reverse search is their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image to see who it is you’ve really been talking to this Halloween since you now know the dangers of dating app murder stories.