Man Held in Boston Hotel Killing

BOSTON — The police here arrested a 22-year-old medical student on Monday and charged him with killing one woman and attacking another who had advertised massage services on Craigslist.

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David L. Ryan/Boston Globe
Philip Markoff at the Boston University School of Medicine's annual White Coat Day Ceremony in 2007.
Law enforcement officials identified the man as Philip Markoff of Quincy. He is a second-year student at the Boston University medical school, and is engaged to be married in August to a fellow student he met as an undergraduate at SUNY Albany, according to a Web site the couple created.

Mr. Markoff is charged with fatally shooting Julissa Brisman, 26, on April 14 in her room at the Boston Marriott Copley Place and with robbing another woman at gunpoint on April 10 in her room at the Westin Copley Place. Mr. Markoff’s arraignment in Boston Municipal Court, scheduled for Tuesday morning, was pushed back until noon to give Ms. Brisman’s relatives time to attend, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

The crimes, widely publicized after the police released photographs from security cameras showing a “person of interest” leaving the hotels shortly after the attacks, have riveted this city in recent days. Daniel F. Conley, the Suffolk district attorney, said that more than 150 people had called in with tips but that “high-tech leads” had been as important as “old-fashioned shoe leather” in the investigation.

“Our top priority is holding Philip Markoff accountable as a predator and strengthening the case against him,” Mr. Conley said.

Law enforcement officials were executing a search warrant at Mr. Markoff’s apartment on Tuesday morning, and police officials said they hoped other potential victims would come forward. Friends of Mr. Markoff’s said they were stunned that the clean-cut medical student they knew could have anything to do with the crimes. And on Tuesday morning, Mr. Markoff’s fiancee, Megan McAllister, told ABC’s Good Morning American that police had arrested the wrong man.

“Unfortunately, you were given wrong information as was the public,” she wrote, according to the network. “All I have to say to you is Philip is a beautiful person inside and out and could not hurt a fly!”

According to the couple’s Web site, the two met in 2005 while volunteering together at a medical center near SUNY Albany, and were engaged in May 2008. They had planned to marry on August 14 on a beach in Long Branch, N.J.

Edward Davis, the Boston police commissioner, said Mr. Markoff had come to Boston from upstate New York and did not have a criminal record. Mr. Davis said that the police had stopped Mr. Markoff on a highway in Walpole, and that he had voluntarily accompanied them back to police headquarters in Boston.

Mr. Conley said that the arrest was based on “a myriad of evidence,” and that the investigation involved connecting IP addresses — unique identifying numbers for computers and devices linked to the Internet — to physical locations. He would not elaborate, saying more details would emerge at the arraignment.

Law enforcement officials are continuing to investigate whether Mr. Markoff also tried to rob a woman at gunpoint on Thursday at the Holiday Inn Express in Warwick, R.I. That person fled when the woman’s husband returned to the room; she, too, had advertised massage services on Craigslist, the police said.

Mr. Markoff and his fiancée had a Web site detailing plans for an August wedding in Long Branch, N.J. The site said he went to the State University at Albany and had volunteered at a local hospital, where he met his fiancée.

Earlier on Monday, the police in Warwick released frames from a security camera that showed a man in a dark jacket and a baseball cap walking through that hotel on the night of the crime.

The man appeared to resemble one captured on security cameras at both the Marriott and the Westin hotels on the nights of the Boston crimes. In those videos, a tall, blond and clean-cut man calmly peered at his cellphone as he exited the hotels.link..