Arrest made in N.Y. state killings

A 48-year-old married man was arrested Monday after police said DNA linked him to a jogger's strangling death last fall, two rape-murders in the early 1990s and a series of rapes dating to the 1980s.

Altemio Sanchez, a father of two, was arrested as he left work, more than a week after being placed under surveillance. Authorities said they expect to charge him with all three killings.

"Old-fashioned police work brought everything together, and DNA evidence sealed the deal," Erie County prosecutor Frank Clark said at a news conference.

Joan Diver, 45, was found strangled along a bike path in Newstead on Oct. 1. There was no evidence that she was sexually assaulted, but DNA evidence linked her death to two similar killings in 1990 and 1992 and at least six unsolved sex attacks between 1986 and 1994.

University at Buffalo student Linda Yalem, 22, was raped and strangled on a bike path in Amherst in 1990. May Jane Mazur, 32, was found raped and strangled on a Buffalo street in November 1992.

Several other rapes occurred in Buffalo's Delaware Park and the suburb of Hamburg.

Sanchez was being held in the Erie County sheriff's lockup in Buffalo pending his arraignment, expected Tuesday or Wednesday. He does not have a lawyer and has not requested one, sheriff's Lt. Ron Kenyon said.