Police thought they were dealing with 3 different killers.

FUKUOKA-A 35-year-old construction worker accused of murdering a woman in a park here in January has admitted to attacking two other women who were found dead in the area, police said Friday.

Yasunori Suzuki was found in possession of a cellphone belonging to Keiko Fukushima, 23, whose body was found early Jan. 18. She had been fatally stabbed.

On Thursday, Suzuki was arrested on suspicion of murdering Fukushima, a Fukuoka Airport employee.

He told police he killed the woman and stole her belongings because he was in ``financial trouble and was looking for someone to assault,'' police said.

A search of Suzuki's residence in Nogata city, Fukuoka Prefecture, uncovered the personal effects of two other women slain in separate cases in December.

Investigators said Suzuki said, ``I also attacked other women and took their belongings.''

Police said they suspected he was referring to cases in which Nana Kubota, an 18-year-old vocational student, and Toshiko Onaka, a 62-year-old part-time worker, were found murdered.

According to police, Kubota was robbed and strangled to death in a park in Iizuka city early on Dec. 13.

Onaka was stabbed to death in a robbery in Kokura-Minami Ward in Kita-Kyushu while she was on her way to work around 7 a.m. on Dec. 31.

Police said they will conduct tests to see if Suzuki's DNA matches evidence found at the scene of Kubota's murder.

They added that footprints found near Kubota's body corresponded with a pair of shoes seized from the suspect's home.

Suzuki, a former delivery driver with debts totaling several millions of yen, did not know his victims, police officials said.

Police had assumed the murders were carried out by different killers.(IHT/Asahi: March 12,2005)