A 68-year-old man has been arrested by French police on suspicion of murdering 18 people, most of them homosexuals, between 1980 and 2002, officials say.The suspect, Nicolas Panard, is alleged to have killed 11 people in the Alsace region, four others in neighbouring Franche-Comte, and three near Paris.
Mr Panard was detained on Tuesday in the eastern Alsace city of Mulhouse.
His alleged accomplice, Slim Fezzani, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for a separate murder.
Several other people are also wanted in connection with the case.
The officer also discovered several common features in the murders, including that the victims had all been killed by blows to the head followed by multiple knife wounds, it added. Each time the victims' bodies were found partly naked, but with their faces covered.
Judges had in the past dismissed several of the murder cases due to a lack of evidence.
Mr Panard, who already has a criminal record for burglary, is said to have long frequented the gay scene and worked as a female impersonator in the eastern France and Germany, the paper reported.
During the 1980s, there was a spate of unsolved murders of homosexuals across the border from Mulhouse in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.(Keep reading)
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