Man Arrested For Killing Woman And Stuffing Her Body In A Suitcase Before Dumping It On The Side Walk

Prosecutors charged an East Harlem man Monday night in the gruesome murder of Betty Williams, 28, whose dead body was found last week stuffed in a suitcase and left on the street. Police arrested Hassan Malik, 55, who lived on Pleasant Ave., just a blocks from where the suitcase crypt was found, police said. Malik, a military veteran, was brought into the NYPD's 23rd Precinct stationhouse for questioning after cops got a tip, sources said, and he confessed to the murder.

Williams', a resident of Harlem, bloody remains were dumped on E. 114th St. in East Harlem, near the famed Rao's restaurant, on Dec. 22. Williams, whose body was found strangled, had several run-ins with the law for 12 different arrests since 2007, half of them drug-related. Her body was discovered after a passerby found the suitcase minutes after it was dumped - and was terrified when a leg popped out after she opened it.

 Cops released a video shortly after the body was found showing a man abandoning the suitcase about midnight. Malik's neighbors told police that he was the man in their video and that he bragged about bringing women to hotels and robbing them of their credit cards. "He had a lot of girls," said one neighbor, who declined to give his name. "He could talk. Sometimes it's not the looks. He's a people person."

Neighbors said that police told them they found Malik's fingerprints on the suitcase. Police removed many of his possessions from his apartment Saturday, neighbors said.