Arrest Reported Near in New Florida Slayings

Authorities have detained a carpet cleaner in the slayings of two University of Florida students, a local newspaper reported in today’s editions.

The killings had renewed fear in a community still edgy over a series of student killings last summer.

Lt. Spencer Mann, a spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff’s office, said a news conference was scheduled for early today to announce an arrest in the case.

The Gainesville Sun reported the suspect was a carpet cleaner from Newberry, a small town about 10 miles west of Gainesville.

Authorities previously said the latest slayings were unrelated to the five last August. Two men police called suspects in the earlier killings are in custody.

Deputies were questioning the man at headquarters, said the newspaper, which quoted anonymous sources. The carpet cleaner allegedly entered the victims’ apartment on Thursday, the same day they were killed, sources told the newspaper.

The latest killings revived memories of five killings in neighborhoods near the campus last summer. Though police have named the two suspects in the earlier killings, no one has ever been charged.

The bodies of Eleanor Anne Grace, 20, and Carla Marie McKishnie, 22, were discovered Friday morning in the condominium they shared. Police said they were killed between Wednesday morning and Thursday morning.

“The condition of the victims’ bodies were certainly a lot different than what we had in the serial homicides,” Mann said. “Also, the crime scene itself, the apartment, certainly does not have the same aura that the other apartments had.”

The Medical Examiner’s Office determined the victims were strangled and there was no evidence of sexual assault. Mann said there was no evidence of robbery or burglary.

Authorities are still trying to solve five student killings last August when a serial killer or killers entered three apartments and stabbed and mutilated four women and a man.

The slayings of Sonya Larsen, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Tracy Paules and Manual Taboada set off one of the most intensive investigations in state history after their bodies were found Aug. 26-28.

Police have not filed charges in the earlier slayings, but they have named Danny Rolling, who is jailed on unrelated charges and implicated in a string of robberies and burglaries, as the leading suspect.

Police also say former UF student Edward Humphrey, locked up on a charge of beating his grandmother, remains on the suspect list, and may have helped Rolling.

Evidence against Rolling and Humphrey will be presented to a grand jury later this year, prosecutors said last week.