When his date pulled out handcuffs, the person thought it was for consensual intercourse.
He submitted to having his wrists cuffed and ankles sure collectively. Then the opposite man pulled out a baseball bat.
The Feb. 22 incident, recounted in a detective’s affidavit, started on Grindr, a hookup app for homosexual males. It ended with the handcuffed man badly injured — however alive.
Together with his cooperation, detectives from the Los Angeles Police Division stated, they recognized his alleged assailant as Rockim Prowell, 34, and suspected it wasn’t the primary time he’d lured a sufferer utilizing Grindr.
Prowell was charged in September with killing two males whose deaths had gone unsolved for years, authorities stated.
“We wanted to attach the dots,” stated Det. Ray Lugo of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division.
Prowell has but to enter a plea to fees of homicide, tried homicide, carjacking, theft, housebreaking and assault. His lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Carlos Bido, didn’t return a request for remark.
The path of proof that led detectives to Prowell started in 2021, authorities say, when a married father of 5 left house at 1 a.m. for a date with a person he’d met on-line.
Inglewood law enforcement officials discovered Miguel Angel King’s white Toyota CHR parked on Queen Avenue the afternoon of July 22, 2021. The automobile’s hatchback space, Lugo stated, was coated in blood.
King, 51, had been reported lacking by his spouse and kids days earlier, Lugo stated.
A local of Tijuana who got here to Los Angeles as a baby, King raised 5 kids, together with three women he adopted from foster care, stated his daughter, Angela King. He labored laborious, working a child-care enterprise and serving to his sister with a burger restaurant, she stated.
Because the household waited for information, Angela King stated she tried to persuade herself that her father was simply taking an unannounced trip.
“I didn’t know what to suppose,” she recalled. “I used to be scared. My father was house each single night time, each single day.”
Lugo and his associate, Det. Leo Sanchez, reviewed King’s cellphone knowledge and discovered it was final lively close to a lagoon in Playa del Rey. Sheriff’s divers searched the water however discovered nothing.
On Aug. 14, 2021, police found a decomposed physique within the Angeles Nationwide Forest above Glendora, Lugo stated. Two weeks later, the Los Angeles County Division of Medical Examiner recognized the stays as King’s. The reason for loss of life was a single gunshot to the pinnacle.
Then the case went chilly.
Robert Gutierrez left house in South Los Angeles the night of Aug. 21, 2023, an LAPD detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit. He advised his nephew he was assembly somebody he’d encountered on Grindr.
Launched in 2009, Grindr is now a publicly traded firm that claims greater than 14 million customers in 190 international locations and territories.
In a written assertion, a Grindr spokesperson stated the corporate cooperates with legislation enforcement and encourages folks to make use of its video calling characteristic to confirm connections for security earlier than assembly in individual.
“We take our position as a connector for the queer group severely and work diligently to supply a secure surroundings for our customers,” the spokesperson stated.
Police world wide have investigated homicides the place killers met their victims on Grindr. In London, authorities investigated the deaths of 4 males in 2014 and 2015 who have been drugged, raped and killed by a suspect they’d met on Grindr, the BBC reported.
In 2023, a Scottish father of two was killed by a 19-year-old he’d met on Grindr. Solely after Paul Taylor’s loss of life did his household study of his double life.
“I’ll by no means have the chance to listen to from Paul about his way of life selections,” his widow advised a courtroom, based on the BBC, “however I don’t choose him.”
Two days after Gutierrez left house, his nephew reported him lacking.
In response to a search warrant affidavit, LAPD detectives searched impound logs and metropolis license plate readers for Gutierrez’s black Infiniti FX35, discovering nothing. His financial institution data confirmed somebody had used his bank card to pay the $132.60 month-to-month hire for a storage unit in San Bernardino.
When detectives received a courtroom order to go looking Gutierrez’s Grindr account, they noticed he’d made plans to satisfy somebody at an house constructing on Imperial Freeway in Inglewood, based on the affidavit.
The person’s title: Rockim Lee Prowell.
Prowell had a modest prison file, however nothing to point violence. Detectives from the Beverly Hills Police Division arrested him in 2021 for housebreaking and theft, based on a probation report.
The earlier 12 months, police have been alerted to an intruder at a vacant five-bedroom home. They discovered a shattered sliding glass door and two televisions lacking, the probation report stated. In April 2021, a actual property agent exhibiting a $19-million, 7,500-square-foot house arrived to search out the property burglarized and three televisions stolen, based on the report.
From surveillance footage, detectives recognized the suspect’s automotive as a black Toyota Prius. Within the video, the suspect gave the impression to be a white man with lengthy curly brown hair, based on a legislation enforcement supply who wasn’t approved to debate the case publicly and requested anonymity.
Two weeks later, Beverly Hills officers noticed the Prius at Lexington Street and Beverly Drive, the probation report stated. The automotive was outfitted with a stolen license plate.
Prowell was behind the wheel. Contained in the automotive, detectives discovered a brunette wig and a rubber masks resembling a white male that the legislation enforcement supply stated regarded life like sufficient to be “film high quality.”
In response to the probation report, Prowell, who’s Black, admitted burglarizing the homes in Beverly Hills. He was homeless and had “fallen on robust instances,” he stated.
He regarded up properties that have been listed on the market, figuring out they’d be vacant, and burglarized them for televisions that he bought on-line, Prowell advised police. Together with his background in development, he stated he knew that turning off the properties’ circuit breakers would disable their surveillance methods.
The legislation enforcement official stated Prowell was linked to burglaries in North Hollywood, Van Nuys, West L.A., Santa Monica, South Pasadena and Newport Seashore, however there isn’t a file of him being charged for these alleged crimes.
Charged with housebreaking, grand theft and vandalism for the Beverly Hills break-ins, Prowell was launched on bail Might 6, 2021. He pleaded no contest 4 months later to 2 counts of housebreaking and one rely of grand theft.
When it got here to the sentence that Prowell would obtain, a probation officer wrote that his “callous and premeditated” crimes would have continued if he hadn’t been caught. However with no prior prison historical past, Prowell was eligible for probation.
The choose agreed with the officer’s suggestion of no jail time, sentencing Prowell to 2 years’ probation.
By then, authorities allege, Prowell had already killed.
Round 3 a.m. on Feb. 22, 2025, LAPD officers raced to 59th Place in South L.A., the place they’d been dispatched by a report of “unknown hassle,” a detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit.
They discovered a 40-year-old man with a damaged leg, based on the affidavit and an announcement by the L.A. County district lawyer. The person, who shouldn’t be named within the affidavit, advised the officers a harrowing story.
After messaging for months on Grindr, he and a person made plans to satisfy for the primary time. His date, whose title he didn’t know, despatched him an tackle. When he arrived, the person stated he allowed himself to be handcuffed and have his ankles sure, considering they have been going to have consensual intercourse.
As an alternative, his date pepper-sprayed him, beat him with a metallic bat and demanded the PIN to his financial institution playing cards, he advised police. After overlaying his eyes with a blindfold, gagging him with a sock and taping his mouth shut, the suspect dragged the person to a automotive, threatening to place him within the trunk.
The person stated he managed to get his legs free and ran out the storage door, screaming.
The suspect — recognized by police as Prowell — began the automotive and crashed into the person, breaking his leg. He received out of the automotive and tried to influence the sufferer to come back again inside, even eradicating {the handcuffs}, the affidavit stated.
As an alternative, the sufferer took off working and requested a neighbor to name the police. By the point the officers arrived, the suspect alleged to be Prowell had vanished.
The sufferer recalled his date’s Grindr username, and detectives served a search warrant on the corporate, courtroom data present.
It’s unclear how detectives recognized Prowell because the suspect, however Lugo stated the surviving sufferer’s account was the break authorities wanted.
“Our case was a variety of circumstantial proof,” Lugo stated.
When detectives searched a house related to Prowell in Inglewood, they discovered Gutierrez’s Infiniti within the storage, based on an announcement from the L.A. County district lawyer’s workplace. His physique has nonetheless not been discovered.
Final month, prosecutors charged Prowell with murdering King and Gutierrez and making an attempt to kill the third sufferer who described being sure, assaulted and hit with a automotive.
If convicted, Prowell faces life in jail with out parole or the loss of life penalty, prosecutors stated in an announcement. The district lawyer’s workplace has but to decide whether or not to hunt capital punishment.
Angela King stated she needed her father to be identified for greater than how he died.
She cited the Gospel of Matthew: “Choose not, that you simply be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you may be judged, and with the measure you employ it will likely be measured to you.”
