Suspect investigated on killings in US, Belgium and Albania

TIRANA, Feb. 23 – Albanian police have closely cooperated with FBI and Montenegrin counterparts in discovering and then arrest of a man wanted for allegedly mutilating and murdering women in United States, Belgium and Albania. Montenegrin authorities said Smail Tulja, 67, was arrested earlier this month in his home in Podgorica on an FBI warrant forwarded to Interpol. Tulja was wanted in the slaying of Mary Beal, a 61-year-old Yugoslav immigrant who was reported missing in New York on Sept. 15, 1990, said Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department. Three weeks later, Beal’s decapitated, dismembered body was found in two bags near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Tulja was also under investigation for the murder of five women near or in the Belgian city of Mons in the mid-1990s, and at least one woman in Albania. The case of Beal’s killing regained momentum last year after a member of the NYPD’s Cold Case and Apprehension Squad learned about the dismemberment killings of two women in Albania. Police suspect that a woman whose body was discovered in Albania shortly after Tulja’s return to the region, and who has never been identified, may have been his wife _ and his last victim. Tulja’s wife was an Albanian woman who had disappeared under unclear circumstances. Albanian police said they had collaborated with the FBI and their Montenegrin counterparts to determine whether Tulja was linked to the death of a victim whose body was found in October in Zall Herr commune near the capital, Tirana. Police said the U.S. Embassy’s security office assisted in the identification, while FBI agents joined in November. The victim’s body was taken to a lab in the United States in November for more detailed investigation, the police statement said.