Suspect arrested for 2001 murder of gay man

A man who viciously beat, robbed, and ultimately killed the patron of a bar in Queens, N.Y., five years ago has finally been taken into custody and charged with murder, the Associated Press reports. John McGhee, 38, who had been living in London, was taken into custody on his arrival at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Thursday. He has been charged with second-degree murder for the August 2001 killing of Edgar Garzon, police said.

Garzon, 35, a native of Colombia who worked as a theater set designer, was attacked on a Queens street by a man who beat him over the head with an object or slammed his head into a hard surface, police said. He was robbed of a $10 bill.

Witness accounts led to the arrest, police said. The Queens district attorney's office had begun a new round of witness questioning in the death and was considering prosecuting the killing as a hate crime, a spokesman said Thursday. The venom of the attack, which left Garzon in a coma with multiple skull fractures, had led to speculation that he was targeted because he was gay. But police said investigators who worked on the case in 2001 had been unable to determine whether the attack was motivated by bias. (The Advocate)

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