Poliisit ampuivat tekijän murron yhteydessä.
A serial killer who stalked a rural South Carolina county claiming five victims was shot dead last night by police investigating a burglary at a home 30 miles away.
Ballistics tests on a gun and bullets found with the man in Gastonia, North Carolina, match those used during a weeklong killing spree in and around Gaffney, said deputy director of state law enforcement Neil Dolan.
"We have him. He's our serial killer," Dolan said last night.
Authorities did not release the man's name, but said he had had several encounters with the police over the years.
Dolan said the physical evidence left no doubt that the dead suspect was the person who had killed five people over six days. But investigators still have no idea why he started the killing spree on 27 June.
The killer had sent panicked residents scrambling for their guns and evoked painful memories of another killing spree more than four decades ago.
A team of more than 100 law enforcement officers scouring Cherokee County, looking for the killer. The case came to an end in Gastonia after a couple called police to report a suspicious sport utility vehicle in their neighbourhood.
It was thought the killer might have been targeting families: he bound and shot dead an elderly woman and her middle-aged daughter, and killed a teenaged girl and her father.
His apparent first victim was a 63-year-old peach farmer, found shot dead last week by his wife.
Police had been warning door-to-door salespeople to take a break from their routes while the investigation was going on, fearful that armed and nervous Cherokee County residents might have reacted with violence to the slightest threatening shadow.
Police had also asked people who suffer vehicle breakdowns on back roads to wait at the roadside instead of approaching strangers' houses for aid.
Murders are rare in Cherokee County, a community of about 54,000 people that is 45 minutes south of banking hub Charlotte, North Carolina.
The first victim, 63-year-old Kline Cash, was found shot dead a week last Saturday. Gena Linder Parker, 50, and her mother Hazel Linder, 83, were found bound and shot in Linder's home on Wednesday. Abby Tyler, 15, and her father Stephen Tyler were found dead on Thursday.
The killings since last week are more than double the number reported in 2007. But for residents of the modest community, they evoke old memories of a town paralysed with fear and of parents patrolling with shotguns.In 1967 and 1968, a man dubbed the Gaffney Strangler killed four females, including two teenagers, one of whom he kidnapped from a bus stop.
Lee Roy Martin, who was later convicted of the killings, taunted the community, sending a newspaper a list of names and locations of the victims' bodies. Martin was stabbed to death in prison in 1972.
Most US serial killers attack women. One of America's most prolific killers, Gary Leon Ridgway of Seattle, was convicted in 2003 of strangling 48 prostitutes over 21 years. Another, Ted Bundy, confessed to killing more than 30 women before he was executed in Florida in 1989.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ju ... ial-killer
Edit: suomeksi
Poliisi ampui sarjamurhaajaksi epäillyn Yhdysvalloissa
Poliisi ampui viiden ihmiset murhista epäillyn Miehen eilen Gaffneyssa, Etelä-Carolinassa. Patrick Tracy Burris, 41, surmasi poliisin mukaan viisi ihmistä eteläcarolinalaisen Cherokeen piirikunnan alueella viime viikolla.
Burris sai surmansa murtovarkauden yhteydessä. Luodit hänen aseessaan täsmäsivät surmissa käytettyihin luoteihin, kertoo BBC.
- Saimme hänet. Hän on sarjamurhaajamme, Neil Dolan osavaltion poliisista vahvisti lehdistölle.
Surmansa saaneella miehellä on poliisin mukaan pitkä rikosrekisteri ja hänen osuuttaan useissa selvittämättömissä rikoksissa tutkitaan.
IS kertoi Yhdysvalloissa riehuvasta "sarjamurhaajasta" maanantaina.
http://www.iltasanomat.fi/uutiset/ulkom ... id=1708157
