ASHEVILLE, N.C., April 4 -- Authorities at Asheville, N.C., and St. Augustine, Fla., say a north Florida man has confessed to the beating deaths of eight prostitutes. They say 61-year-old William Lindsey has been charged in North Carolina and will be charged in Florida in a week or more. St. Johns County, Fla., Sheriff Neil Perry says five of the bodies of women Lindsey says he has killed have been found and detectives are searching a swamp near St. Augustine for the other two.
Sheriff Bobby Medford of Buncombe County, N.C., said Friday that Lindsey will be tried in Asheville first in the death of Lucy Raymer, whose body was found Dec. 26. Medford said Lindsey could be involved in 12 to 20 killings in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virgina. Lindsey, who has lived in Oteen, N.C., since March 1996, has been held in the Buncombe County Jail since his arrest for the slaying of Raymer, who had a history of prostitution arrests. Kevin Kelshaw, spokesman for the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, says detectives believe Lindsey killed Diana Richardson and dumped her body into an alligator-infested pit outside St. Augustine, Fla. Richardson disappeared in 1995 -- the same year the body of Cheryl Lucas turned up in a marsh east of St. Augustine. Kelshaw says Lindsey led deputies to the three-acre, 30-foot deep pit where divers now are looking for Richardson's remains. 'Because of the gators and other wildlife there, we're not sure what we'll find,' he said. ---
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