Central Park Beating Suspect Is Linked to Other Attacks

Police said Thursday that an emotionally disturbed man has confessed to a series of vicious attacks on women--including the daylight beating of a piano teacher in Central Park.

Along with the park beating, John Royster, 22, will be charged in the killing of the owner of a dry cleaner on Park Avenue and the beating of a woman in Yonkers, officials said at a City Hall news conference.

Royster also is a suspect in a less-publicized June 5 attack in which he allegedly bashed a woman’s head against the pavement on the East Side of Manhattan. That woman wasn’t seriously injured.

Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau said the list of charges includes first-degree murder, which carries the death penalty. Royster was to be arraigned today.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said the arrest in the eight-day spree “brought a sense of order and justice to crimes that shocked all of us.”

Fingerprints from the Park Avenue killing matched those on record from Royster’s arrest in December for subway fare evasion, leading detectives to his Bronx address, police said.

A police source said that after detectives picked him up Wednesday night, Royster recalled details about all four crimes that “only we would know.”

The man also resembled the first of two police sketches depicting witnesses’ descriptions of a slender man seen arguing with the Central Park victim before the assault, the source said.

Investigators were conducting DNA tests, which could link him with traces of semen found on the park victim’s clothing, he added.

The motive for the attacks was unclear, although the suspect appeared to be “extremely emotionally disturbed,” the source said.

The suspect’s brick row house was blocked off with police tape and guarded by two police officers on Thursday afternoon.

Investigators have been under immense public pressure to solve the Central Park and Park Avenue cases. Evelyn Alvarez, 62, known as the “Lollipop Lady” for the sweets she doled out to children, was the most recent victim. She was beaten to death before dawn Tuesday as she opened her dry cleaning store on Park Avenue.