Police indict man they say killed woman he met on Craigslist

BOSTON — A former medical student who police say killed a woman he met on Craigslist has been indicted on a first-degree murder charge and six other counts, law enforcement officials said Sunday.

Philip Markoff, 23, faces arraignment on Monday. He has been held at a county jail since his arrest on April 20.

According to the police, Markoff killed a woman and held another at gunpoint at upscale hotels in Boston after answering their advertisements for massage services on Craigslist.

Markoff has pleaded not guilty. A defense lawyer said Markoff would maintain his innocence, The Associated Press reported.

The indictment — which a Suffolk County grand jury returned Thursday and the district attorney, Daniel Conley, announced Sunday — also charges Markoff with armed assault with the intent to rob, two counts of armed kidnapping, armed robbery and two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm.

Jake Wark, a spokesman for Conley, said Markoff bought the gun used in the death of the woman, Julissa Brisman, 26, at a shop in Mason, N.H. He used someone else's name and identification to make the purchase, Wark said.

In a statement, Conley's office said Markoff used TracFones, prepaid cell phones that do not require the user to provide identifying information, to make appointments with Brisman and the other victim.

Markoff, the statement said, robbed the first victim in a hotel room on April 10 after forcing her to the ground at gunpoint and binding her wrists with plastic zip ties. The statement accuses him of hitting Brisman in the head with the butt of a semiautomatic handgun and then fatally shooting her after meeting her in her hotel room on April 14.

A search of Markoff's home in Quincy, Mass., produced a 9-mm semiautomatic handgun, ammunition and zip ties consistent with those used in the attacks, the statement said. Investigators also recovered several TracFones, laptop computers and four pairs of women's underwear bundled into socks and hidden inside a box spring.

The Rhode Island authorities have filed an arrest warrant for Markoff in connection with the robbery of a third woman he is believed to have met on Craigslist. But he is not likely to be prosecuted in that state until the case against him here has ended.