Local Grindr Hookup Leads to Murder in Delco

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G Philly has learned that a 25-year-old Philly man was murdered last week after he drove to Chester, Pennsylvania, to meet a man he had connected with on Grindr.

The Delaware County District Attorney’s Office confirms the body of Dino Dizdarević was discovered in a lot on the 900 block of Parker Street in Chester early on Thursday, May 1st. He had been strangled and, according to DA Jack Whelan, sustained “multiple blunt-force trauma injuries to the face.”

On Wednesday, April 30th, Dizdarević told his boyfriend, Nick McBee, with whom he was in an open relationship, he was driving to Chester to meet a man he’d met on the app. McBee began to fear the worst when the night wore on and he hadn’t heard anything from him. “He was a responsible person. He always called to let me know where he was,” he says. “I knew something was wrong.”

McBee filed a missing person’s report with the Philadelphia Police Department on Thursday morning, and was called to identify a body in Chester that matched the description. It was Dizdarević, though, according to sources close to the couple, he had been beaten so severely that he was only able to be identified from his clothing.

So far no arrests have been made in the case, and it is not being investigated as a hate crime. DA Whelan tells me, however, that “we heard through the grapevine he may have been part of the gay community. We don’t know if he was targeted because of that, but we’re looking at any avenue necessary.”

Dizdarević and McBee moved to Philadelphia from Kentucky last year when Dizdarević got a job as a chemical engineer at the Stepan Company. The pair had been together since December of 2012. “I loved him so much,” McBee says. “We had so many big plans for the future.”

There has been a fund drive established in Dizdarević’s honor to help offset funeral costs for McBee and Dizdarević’s family. You can give here.

Anyone with leads that could lead to an arrest in this case should call Chester Detective Joseph McFate at 610-447-8428, or Delaware County Detective William Gordon at 610-891-4700.