Police in Seattle have arrested a man they have linked to some of the murders of up to 49 women and girls, many of them prostitutes and runaways, in the Green River killings that haunted Washington state in the 1980s.
King County Sheriff Dave Reichert said Mr Gary Leon Ridgway, 52, a trucking company painter from Auburn, Washington, and a longtime suspect in the case, was directly linked by DNA to four murders and by other evidence to other bodies found around the Pacific Northwest.
Police said Mr Ridgway unwittingly provided a DNA sample 17 years ago by agreeing to chew on a piece of gauze handed to him by Mr Reichert, then the lead investigator in the case, after he had been arrested on solicitation charges.
As DNA analysis improved over the years, police were able to confirm Mr Ridgway's involvement, Mr Reichert said.
The case had gone unsolved for so long that some law enforcement officials came to believe the killer was either dead or in prison.
Mr Ridgway has not yet been formally charged, and police cautioned reporters that as he was only specifically connected with four killings he could not say conclusively they had caught the man responsible for all the 49 murders.
Several of the bodies were found in or near the Green River, giving the case its name. The killings are believed to be related to the killings of more than 30 other women in Vancouver and other murders in Oregon.