http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38671977...ime_and_courts
FLINT, Mich. ? Authorities in Atlanta have arrested a man in connection with a three-state serial stabbing spree that resulted in at least 20 attacks and five deaths, many in Michigan.
Police in Leesburg, Va., said Thursday the man was arrested late Wednesday afternoon and was being held on unrelated charges.
Leesburg Police Chief Joseph Price said that over the past week, investigators from the Michigan Task Force and several other law enforcement agencies chased down countless leads as they poured in from the public, NBC News reported.
Late Wednesday, he said, one tip led to a lead in Atlanta.
Officer Chris Jones said authorities believed the man could be the suspect and has ties to Leesburg.
Police "have information that he was trying to leave the country," Jones said.
Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV said on its website that police there had store surveillance video showing that the man worked at a party store in the community of Beecher, north of Flint.
Racially motivated?
The first of 16 attacks in and around the working-class city of Flint happened on May 24. The city is predominantly black, and even though all but two of the Michigan victims were black men, detectives there have been hesitant to say the attacks were motivated by racial hatred. Survivors said their assailant said little during the attacks ? and nothing about race.
Police had been focusing on that area until Leesburg police reported three similar attacks last week. Toledo, Ohio, authorities also say a stabbing in that city Saturday appears to be linked to the Michigan cases.
But authorities in Leesburg, a predominantly white city, believe the three victims there were chosen because they are black.
"I believe his motivation is pure hatred," Leesburg Police Chief Joseph Price said at a Tuesday news conference in which he released a short video clip of the vehicle the suspect drove after attacking a 19-year-old man with a hammer. He said police also have footage of that attack but won't be releasing it.
Story: Flint man says he's 17th victim of serial knifer
Federal and state law enforcement agencies trying to track down the killer have been reluctant to disclose details of what they've found out, and they haven't released most of the names of those targeted.
State Police First Lt. Patrick McGreevy, who heads the Michigan task force investigating the attacks, declined to say much about the case on Tuesday but said investigators were poring over state prison records and past cases that are similar in nature.
"A nationwide intelligence broadcast has gone out, and we're monitoring any incoming information from any state," McGreevy said. "We don't know what is in his head. What we do know is there has been a string of very, very violent and deadly attacks in Genesee County, and attacks in Leesburg that are similar."
N. G. Berrill, the executive director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology & Forensic Behavior Science, who has studied serial killer behavior but who is not involved in the current case, said authorities are working against the clock to try to prevent further attacks because the suspect is unlikely to stop on his own.