Police in Britain arrested a 37-year-old man on Monday in connection with the murder of five prostitutes in the eastern part of the country, a senior police officer said.

Tom Stephens has admitted he knew the women who died and that he had no alibi. But even if he was arrested, he told the Sunday Mirror, he was confident he would not be charged. Tom Stephens has admitted he knew the women who died and that he had no alibi. But even if he was arrested, he told the Sunday Mirror, he was confident he would not be charged.
(Coburn-Leon/ Sunday Mirror)
The man was arrested at about 7:20 a.m. local time at his home in Trimley, which is 13 kilometres southeast of Ipswich, Det. Chief Supt. Stewart Gull of Suffolk Police told reporters.

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

"The man is currently in custody at a police station in Suffolk where he will be questioned about the deaths later today," he said.

According to media reports, Tom Stephens, who works in a supermarket in Trimley and drives a cab part-time, has been questioned on multiple occasions since the discovery of Nicol's body.

Stephens admitted to the Sunday Mirror newspaper that there was a possibility he would be arrested. He said he knew the women who died and that he had no alibi.

"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 told the newspaper. But he added that he was confident he would not be charged.

Residents on alert

All five victims were known to work as prostitutes in the Ipswich area. Their deaths had put residents of the town of about 140,000 on the estuary of the River Orwell on high alert.

City authorities and local businesses had organized shuttle services to transport women home from work, and the council's monthly newsletter has been publishing a safety message advising women not to walk the streets alone.

Officials had suggested the deaths were the work of a serial killer, saying similarities among the deaths are "strikingly obvious."

(CBC)(CBC)

Police had received more than 6,000 telephone and e-mail tips.

The women's naked bodies were found dumped in rural areas near Ipswich beginning Dec. 2.

Clennell, 24, died of compression to her neck, and Alderton, 24, was strangled, a senior pathologist determined. Post-mortem examinations of the bodies of Nicol, 19, and Nicholls reached no conclusion on the cause of death.

In the Mirror interview, as well as one done with BBC last week but not broadcast until Monday, Stephens described himself as a friend to the girls and would often drive them around to help them with errands.

Earlier in the morning, police announced that coroner's inquests into four of the women's deaths had been postponed.

An inquest into the death of Gemma Adams, 25, was opened and adjourned last week.

With files from the Associated Press