Headless bodies in N.J., suspect arrested

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HAMILTON, N.J., Feb. 12 (UPI) -- After two headless bodies were found buried in a shallow grave in rural New Jersey, police charged a man with murder, state authorities said.

Yusuf Ibrahim, 27, was arrested in a Bayonne, N.J., apartment Sunday after investigators pieced together a trail of clues that stretched across the state, State Police said at a news conference Monday at a police forensic laboratory in Hamilton, N.J.

Authorities said Ibrahim shot the two men, 25 and 27 and described by police as acquaintances of Ibrahim, while the three were inside a Mercedes-Benz owned by one of the victims, sometime last week in Jersey City. Thursday the victims were discovered in shallow graves, their heads and hands separately buried, in a wooded area near Buena Vista Township, N.J.

The two men killed were foreign nationals, police said, and their identities are being withheld because of the difficulty in notifying relatives.

Ibrahim drove the vehicle to Philadelphia, attempted to set it on fire but was interrupted by city police, then fled the city in another vehicle and was located in Bayonne, police said.

New Jersey Police Lt. Col. Matthew Wilson noted Ibrahim was wanted in Jersey City in connection to a 2012 armed robbery.

Ibrahim was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of desecration of human remains, and is being held on $3 million bail in Atlantic County, N.J., Jail, the (Newark, N.J.,) Star-Ledger reported.