NEW YORK (AP) – New York Police Detective James Osorio was struck by the details of two cases mentioned at a training session he attended at FBI headquarters last year. The dismemberment killings of two women in Albania, he noted, echoed the 1990 beating and dismemberment of a Bronx widow.

Mr. Osorio’s observation has now led to the arrest of a man in Montenegro who is a suspect in similar slayings throughout Europe, officials said.

The suspect, identified in Montenegro as Smail Tulja, 67, was arrested in his home in the tiny Balkan country’s capital, Podgorica, on an FBI warrant, officials said. An FBI affidavit filed in America identified the suspect as Smajo Djurlric; the NYPD said his name was Smajo Dzurlic.

American officials said Mr. Tulja was wanted in the unsolved slaying of Mary Beal, 61, of the Bronx, and may be involved in up to seven other killings of women in Belgium and Albania.

“It’s gratifying that after 17 years, this guy’s in custody for the terrible thing that was done to her,” said Mr. Osorio, a member of the NYPD’s Cold Case and Apprehension Squad.

After TMr. ulja appeared in court in Montenegro on Thursday, his lawyer there, Dusan Luksic, told The Associated Press: “My client is not guilty of the murder of Mary Beal.”

Beal’s decapitated, dismembered body was found in two bags near the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the fall of 1990. Mr. Tulja, then a cab driver living in New York, had met Beal during an appearance in a courthouse when she was an interpreter, said Sergeant Dennis Singleton, who investigated the case.

The pair began dating before getting into a dispute over money, police said. After Beal’s killing, detectives discovered bloodstains in Mr. Tulja’s Bronx apartment, but he left the country before they could question him, they said.

Mr. Singleton said that in the mid-1990s, while working with Belgium authorities, investigators received information that Mr. Tulja was living in that country and was a possible suspect in killings and dismemberments of five women there. He again eluded authorities by moving to Montenegro, the sergeant said.

The Beal case regained momentum when Mr. Osorio learned about the Albanian cases last year. His squad eventually sought the assistance of federal and international authorities, providing them with Mr. Tulja’s fingerprints from a prior arrest in 1974.

Court papers said that in January, Interpol notified the FBI that it had matched the 1974 fingerprints to those “of an individual who had applied for a government identification card in Montenegro” – Mr. Tulja.

Tamara Popovic, national police spokeswoman in Montenegro, confirmed that police in Belgium and Albania investigating the killings of several women in those countries consider Mr. Tulja a suspect in the cases. Mr. Tulja, who was born in Montenegro, lived alone on the outskirts of Podgorica, where his home was searched.

“Several pieces of evidence and some documents have been seized in his home that may be connected to the alleged crimes committed in the foreign countries,” Mr. Popovic added.

The daily newspaper Republika in Podgorica reported that FBI agents were there working on the case.

Police suspect that a woman whose body was discovered in Albania shortly after Mr. Tulja’s return to the region, and who has never been identified, may have been his wife – and his last victim, the newspaper said. Mr. Tulja’s wife was an Albanian woman who had disappeared under unclear circumstances, it added.

Mr. Tulja’s attorney said that he had no information about the other killings and that Mr. Tulja will “exercise his right to remain silent.”

The suspect has to be tried in Montenegro because local laws do not allow extradition of Montenegrin citizens, his lawyer said. The maximum sentence Mr. Tulja could get if tried and convicted is 20 years under Montenegro law, the lawyer added.

Some of the suspect’s neighbors told local reporters that he was quiet and polite. Others said they found his behavior suspicious because he never left his house or socialized.
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Associated Press writer Verena Dobnik contributed to this report.