A veteran crime correspondent from the Balkans has been arrested for a series of murders on which he himself reported.

Vlado Tanesvski, from Macedonia, is accused of raping and torturing four elderly women before strangling them with a telephone cable, wrapping their mutilated naked bodies in plastic bags and dumping them at various waste disposal sites. He then visited the victims’ homes to interview their families for his reports and kept close contacts with detectives and prosecutors working on the case.

The 56-year-old was arrested only after revealing in his reports details only known to investigators and launching a theory about a serial killer before police announced that the murders could have been connected. Tests found traces of his DNA tests found traces of his sperm on two of the victims.

Mr Tanevski is accused of the murder of four women, aged between 56 and 79,

“The victims were killed with a monstrous brutally. Their bodies were butchered with knives and their skulls were shattered. He would insert blunt objects in their genitalia, in once case it was a bottle of after-shave,” Ivo Kotevski, a police spokesman in the former Yugoslav republic , told The Times.

“Traces of his sperm and DNA were found on two of the victims, while the third one was killed in the same way. The body of the fourth suspected victim has not yet been found. The ribs of the last victim were fractured as he sat on her back pressing with his knees while strangling her with a telephone cable.”

Police also found weapons in Mr Tanevski’s home, as well as large amounts of various pornographic material. Police experts suggested that the possible motive for the murders was Mr Tanevski’s troubled relationship with his late mother, who was a cleaner in a hospital and is said to have been in constant conflict with her son because of her alleged promiscuity.

“All the victims appear to have fitted the profile of his mother and they all were working as cleaners in hospitals,” Mr Kotevski said.

Mr Tanevski, a married father of two and a respectable journalist who last worked for the local broadsheet Utrinski Vesnik, lived in the same neighbourhood as his victims.

Traces of his sperm were found in the bodies of Zhivana Temelkovska, 65, who was killed last month, and Mitra Siljanovska, 61, who was killed in 2004. He is also suspected of killing Ljubica Lichoska, 56, whose body was found in February, and Gorica Pavlevska, 79, who was reported missing in 2003 but whose body has not yet been found.

Two people were convicted to a lifetime imprisonment in 2005 for the murder of Mitra Siljanovska, one of Mr Tanevski’s victims, and he reported from their trial. The judicial authorities will now review their decision following the new revelations.

Zoran Temelkovski, the son of the last victim, Zhivana Temelkovska, said. “He came to our house and asked many questions and some of them were so detailed that we did not want to answer. Later, when we would meet on the street, he would express his condolences and ask me how I was and how the family was doing. “

And Cvetanka Licovska, a sister of one of the victims, said: “He came to my home to interview me about the murder of my sister and he asked for her picture.”

Mr Tanevski is now on remand awaiting charges and has so far refused to speak to authorities or to be represented by a lawyer and only agreed to speak to his wife, but reportedly did not confess to any of the murders.

Ljupco Popovski, Mr Tanevski’s former editor at Utrinski Vesnik, said that the suspected serial killer had “exceptional merits” in journalism. “We are all shocked at the news. He was a very quiet man and I would never believe he would be capable of doing such a thing.”

The case is reminiscent to that of the Polish author Krystian Bala, who was jailed for 25 years in 2007 after describing in his novel called Amok how he murdered and tortured a young woman.

But Mr Kotevski, the Macedonian police spokesman, said that Mr Tanevski “exceeded” his Polish counterpart in his “mindless brutality and daring”.

“He tortured his victims in most horrible ways and then visited their homes and kept close ties with detectives, prosecutors and judges working on the case. He even covered the court trial of people who were convicted for his crimes. It simply beggars belief.”

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• How to get Madonna’s Thighs