Police send DNA samples of suspected killer to Atlanta

ST. LOUIS - St. Louis police have sent DNA samples of a suspected kidnapper and killer linked to the deaths of ten Missouri prostitutes to authorities in Atlanta. <br> <br> Detectives fear that Maury Troy Travis - who committed suicide in the Saint Louis County Jail Monday night - might have been responsible for a similar series of murders in the Georgia city, where he once lived. <br> <br> Travis, 36, was arrested last week and charged in a criminal complaint with kidnapping and having ``caused the death&#39;&#39; of prostitutes Alysia Greenwade and Betty James. He left a suicide note saying he did not want to spend the rest of his life in prison. <br> <br> St. Louis police said yTuesday they still hope to connect Travis to several bodies found on both sides of the Mississippi River since early last year. In all, authorities have found the bodies of ten black women since April 2001, four of whom remain unidentified. <br> <br> The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Wednesday that a similar pattern of deaths appeared in Atlanta in 1994, where the bodies of at least six prostitutes were dumped, most apparently strangled and some with rope marks on their wrists. <br> <br> Travis lived in Atlanta during the mid-1990s after he was released from prison in Missouri.