A 32-year-old man surnamed Tse, being dubbed as the copycat killer of a prostitute in North Point on Monday, was arrested by police in Chai Wan yesterday.

The police at first believed that all the four prostitute murders committed between last Friday and Monday had been committed by the same person.

A van takes the second prostitute-murder suspect from Yau Ma Tei police station to the police headquarters in Wan Chai for interrogation yesterday. The 32-year-old man was dubbed as a copycat killer. Wen Wei Po

But when the 23-year-old Pakistani man Nadeem Razaq was arrested on Tuesday, police realized he was not responsible for the fourth killing, and said more arrests might be made.

Finally the second killer was arrested early yesterday morning in Fung Wah Estate, Chai Wan.

Sources said the suspect lived in an upper-floor apartment in the estate's Hiu Fung House.

Detectives from the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau monitored the apartment since 1:00pm on Wednesday and stormed into the premises at around 1:00am yesterday morning to arrest Tse.

He was taken into custody at Yau Ma Tei police station.

Sources said the suspect is an ex-lover of the victim.

It was reported that the police had approached mainland police for help to look for the man.

The prostitute murder in North Point was exposed on Monday morning.

The 27-year-old prostitute Tam Siu-fong was found dead in the bathroom of an apartment in a building on Electric Road.

There is no sign that the apartment has been searched.

Forensic tests confirmed that the victim was suffocated to death on Sunday afternoon, and the victim had had sex with the suspect before her death.

According to media reports, the victim was from Hunan province.

She was married in Shenzhen and came to Hong Kong in 2005.

It was also reported that the police have contacted the victim's husband, who has an alibi and denied murdering his wife.

Since Monday the apartment in North Point has been cordoned off. A notice has been put on the door to ask the apartment's owner to contact the police as soon as possible.

The police handed out questionnaires to residents of the building as part of the investigation.

The Organized Crime and Triad Bureau will continue its investigation.

Criminologist Wong Sing-wing from the City University estimated that the suspect was trying to frame the killer of the three murders for the North Point murder.

A prostitute killer was on the loose and the suspect took the chance and killed the fourth victim, he said.

He wanted to make people believe she was killed by the same killer, he said.

But the suspect did not expect the police to catch the killer of the three murders so soon, he said.

He noted that although the suspect was trying to be a copycat, he did not copy everything, which aroused their suspicion.

For example, the apartment in North Point has not been ransacked as in the other murders, he said.

The police are also trying to verify if the victim was strangled in bed before her body was moved to the bathroom, he said.

Wong added there could be irresolvable disputes such as whether the crime was committed over love or money.

(HK Edition 03/21/2008 page1)