San Diego Murder Suspect Captured : Crime: Man is arrested in Alabama and charged with 5 serial killings. Police say DNA evidence was a factor.

The largest homicide investigation in this city’s history came to an end Sunday with police announcing an arrest in the serial stabbing deaths of five women since Jan. 12 of last year.

Cleophus Prince Jr., a 23-year-old construction worker, was apprehended by police in his hometown of Birmingham, Ala., three hours after he had been released from the City Jail on an unrelated theft charge.

At an afternoon press conference, investigators here were unusually guarded about the case. Deputy Police Chief Cal Krosch--part of a 34-person team that worked on the 13-month manhunt--said genetic DNA evidence was a major factor in linking Prince to the crimes.

Police declined to say how long Prince had been in San Diego, or how the evidence led to him.

City Councilman Bruce Henderson, whose district includes the Clairemont neighborhood where three of the murders occurred, said police have told him they have “an extremely strong case.”

Prince is being held without bail on five murder counts in the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham, awaiting extradition. Two San Diego police detectives have traveled to Birmingham to question Prince, but authorities declined to give details.

Prince, who is 5-feet, 7-inches tall and weighs 175 pounds, matches “almost exactly,” one investigator said, a widely circulated composite drawing released in San Diego after the stabbing death last April 3 of Holly Suzanne Tarr.

Tarr, 18, an aspiring actress from Okemos, Mich., who was visiting her brother on spring break, was the third victim. Hers was the only murder in which the killer was spotted by eyewitnesses--one an apartment maintenance man who briefly confronted the man moments after the slaying, and a painter who said he got “a good look” as the man ran away.

Police on Sunday asked the news media not to release a photograph of Prince until those witnesses can try to identify him in a lineup.

The killer last struck Sept. 13, when Pamela Gail Clark, 42, and her 18-year-old daughter, Amber, were slain in their University City home.

The first victims were Tiffany Paige Schultz, 20, a student at San Diego State University, who moonlighted as a nude dancer, slain on Jan. 12, 1990, and Janene Marie Weinhold, 21, killed Feb. 16, 1990.

The first three victims lived in apartments within two blocks of one another in the Clairemont area. In each of the five cases, police say the killer entered through unlocked or open doors in the middle of the day. He apparently arrived without a weapon and killed each victim with a knife obtained in the home.

Some of the victims had just finished showering or were undressing when attacked, police said. With the exception of Pamela Clark, who police believe may have been killed because she was home when her daughter was attacked, the victims were attractive young women in their late teens or early 20s who bore an eerie resemblance to each other.

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston and the co-author of “Mass Murder: America’s Growing Menace,” said using DNA as evidence is problematic in that “several states have made rulings in their appellate courts that has limited or thrown out DNA evidence.” He said the problem stems from “the scientific community not being of one mind concerning the reliability of DNA testing.”

Fox said the laboratory where the evidence was studied also is a key factor. San Diego police have declined to say where their evidence has been, or will be, analyzed.

“Generally, you need more than that to make a case,” he said. “But at this point, I would share their enthusiasm and confidence based on the evidence they do have.”