LONDON: British police arrested a 37-year-old man yesterday on suspicion of murdering five prostitutes in one of Britain's most dramatic serial killings.

The naked bodies of five sex workers were found dumped in the countryside near Ipswich, eastern England, over a period of 11 days this month, dominating headlines and evoking memories of the 19th-century prostitute killer Jack the Ripper.

"He has been arrested on suspicion of murdering all five women Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls," Police Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull told a news conference.

Gull said the man lived in Felixstowe, a port town about 19 kilometres southeast of Ipswich. He was arrested at 7:20 am and is in police custody awaiting questioning.

British media said the arrested man was supermarket worker Tom Stephens, but police declined to confirm that name.

Stephens, 37, gave a lengthy interview to the Sunday Mirror newspaper at the weekend in which he said he feared he could be arrested as he had known all the prostitutes and had no alibis. But he strenuously denied any involvement in the deaths.

"From the police profiling it does look like me white male between 25 and 40, knows the area, works strange hours. The bodies have got close to my house," Stephens was quoted as saying.

"If new information, coincidental information, crops up, I could get arrested," Stephens was quoted as saying, but he added that he was confident he would not be charged.

In the Sunday Mirror Stephens who one police source said was also believed to have worked as a part-time cab driver described himself as "sad and lonely," and admitted he was "a friend of all the girls."

"I would have complete opportunity, the girls would have trusted me so much," he said.

'Tall, thin and strange'

Neighbours of the suspect described him as "tall, thin and strange."

"He was a bit of a weirdo," said Lesley-Anne Barber, 50, whose garden backs onto his in the quiet village of Trimley.

"He didn't seem the sort of person that would want to have anything to do with anyone," she said, adding that soon after he moved in three months ago, he put up a shed in his back garden.

"If he went to the back to the dustbins he would not acknowledge that we were there," she said.

Stephens has published pictures of himself on a personal website, where he calls himself "The Bishop" and lists his interests as "keeping fit" and "most types of day/night out."

The five killings have prompted a murder investigation on a scale unprecedented in recent British history.

The case evokes that of Jack the Ripper, who was never found, and Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, who killed 13 women, mainly prostitutes, in northern England between 1975 and 1980.

The investigation began on December 2 when 25-year-old Adams's body was found in a stream. Police discovered 19-year-old Nicol's body in the same stream on December 8.

Alderton, 24, who was three months pregnant, was asphyxiated and Clennell, 24, was killed by "compression to the neck," police said. Nicholls, 29, was the fifth victim.

None showed signs of having been subjected to significant trauma or serious sexual assault before dying, fuelling speculation that the killer might have been a drug dealer who doped them.

(China Daily 12/19/2006 page7)