Police: Suspect admits 3 N.Y. killings

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MOUNT VERNON, N.Y., Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Police in New York say they found a woman dead of stab wounds when they went to the home of a man they wanted to question in two cold case homicides.

New York City police accompanied police from Yonkers, N.Y., to the Mount Vernon home of Lucius Crawford -- a parolee with an extensive record of violence against women. They wanted to question him in the 1993 slayings of Nell West in New York City and Laronda Shealy in Yonkers.

DNA analysis has linked Crawford, 60, to West's death, ABC News reported.

When police arrived at Crawford's apartment Tuesday, they found the body of a 41-year-old woman, who had been stabbed to death hours before they arrived. Her name had not been released.

Mount Vernon Police Commissioner Carl Bell told reporters Crawford, who was captured within about 3 hours of the discovery, confessed to stabbing the woman at his home, and then confessed he killed West and Shealy.

"He admitted that he has an anger issue," Bell said. "That he did in fact murder this young lady and he has in fact done this in the past."

Crawford, who has lived at the Mount Vernon address for a year, has spent about half his life in prison in New York and South Carolina for crimes of violence against women, ABC News said.

He has been accused of stalking, slashing and stabbing women -- including five women during a five-day span in 1977. He said at a parole hearing in 2006 he attacked women because of "the way they act" and said he believed they had "provoked" him.