New York police arrest Briton after gay alert over head found in park
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Your support makes all the difference.Police in New York said last night that they had arrested Richard Markham, the Briton suspected of decapitating his gay lover and cooking his arm.
The suspect was stopped by two officers before he left Central Park. He lifted his shirt to reveal an unmistakable feature, a tattoo around his belly-button that read: "Made in England". He told the officers: "You've got me."
Mr Markham had been looking at a newspaper report about himself when he was arrested and made no attempt to resist the officers. The furniture dealer, who flew to New York on Friday, had spent his time visiting the city's natural history museum and watching the new Spider-Man movie.
The New York police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said the suspect had checked into a New York hotel under his own name. "He was relaxed. He gave himself up immediately. There was no struggle. He was sitting on a bench looking at pictures of himself in the newspaper," Mr Kelly said.
Mr Markham had been seen at the JFK airport customs section at 2.33pm on Friday. New York police put out an appeal after a British tourist spotted Mr Markham in Central Park on Sunday. After the NYPD issued photos of him to American papers on Tuesday, two other tourists spotted him in the park yesterday and alerted the officers. They told police they had seen him sitting on a bench reading the New York Post, one of the dailies carrying his photograph.
He is expected to appear before a federal court today but will probably return to Britain in the next few days.
Before his capture, gays in New York had been warned by the civic authorities to be on the look out for Mr Markham.
Officials, led by Christine Quinn, a councillor for the Chelsea district of Manhattan, had spent the morning distributing leaflets to gay bars and community centres saying: "Be on alert, possibly dangerous criminal" and had a black-and-white image of his face."Police told me this was a dangerous person and they asked me to get the word out in my district and to the gay community," Ms Quinn said last night.
The killing was discovered when a man walking his dog found the severed head of Mr Lovelock, 25, in a park in the South Ham neighbourhood of Basingstoke, Hampshire, on Friday. Detectives followed a trail of blood to Mr Lovelock's home where they found one of his arms roasted in an oven pan and other body parts. His legs had also been cut off.
Robert Giannelli, New York's deputy police chief, who issued the warning about Mr Markham, said: "There is no indication that any part of the body was consumed."
Investigators had been trying to discover the whereabouts of Mr Markham by checking details of messages he had sent to various friends before his departure sometimes by text message and his conversations with the cab driver who had driven him to Heathrow early on Friday.
Mr Giannelli was briefed on the case by British police and detectives from Hampshire had forwarded a warrant for Mr Markham's arrest through Interpol to the FBI in Washington.
Mr Giannelli called the suspect "someone who is obviously in a distorted mental state and is possibly now walking the streets of New York. If you see this person, do not approach him. Call police."
Richard Ketteringham, the driver who took Mr Markham to the airport, said: "He asked what was the best airport to get a cheap flight to somewhere in the sun. He said he was thinking of going to Las Vegas. He said he had just been paid and fancied a bit of a flutter in Vegas." Mr Ketteringham added: "He said that had been out for a few drinks and had gone back home and had had an argument with his missus. He told me he had just left his missus sleeping in bed and that she would wake up in the morning and he wouldn't be there and she would have to pay the mortgage on her own."
Mr Markham, who is separated from the mother of his daughter, is suspected of killing Mr Lovelock after they left a friend's house in Basingstoke at about 8pm on Thursday. They had both been drinking.