NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — The five-year search for the person behind a grisly murder ended this week, even though the arrest has not resolved an older case with eerie similarities.

Yasin Abdu Sabur, 36, was indicted on a charge of second-degree murder and arraigned this past Tuesday. Police say he killed and dismembered Terri Lynn Bills, 46, whose torso was discovered in an abandoned house on Willow Avenue on June 13, 2015.

Two women passing by the house that evening noticed a terrible stench coming from inside. One went to investigate and found Bills’ torso in a stairwell that led to the basement.

Bills, 46, had not been seen for 10 days. Her head and limbs had been removed.

The discovery brought a sense of fear to the city. The case bore strong similarities to the murder of Loretto Jo Gates three years earlier. Some openly posited that a serial killer was responsible.

But cold case Detective Troy Earp never bought that theory, according to Niagara Falls Police Capt. Kelly Rizzo, head of the Criminal Investigations Division.

“Of course there was fear it was the same person. You have the fear, is this a pattern?” Rizzo said. “But Troy always stuck to the idea it wasn’t the same guy. I don’t know how he knew, but he knew.”

Police search

A task force of 90 officers and agents worked the Bills case, following 700 leads. The FBI later assisted. A forensic specialist who later studied the murder agreed with Earp that Bills’ and Gates’ killers were two different people.

Investigators had been following Abdu-Sabur, in part because of texts exchanged with Bills just before her murder, and eventually searched a home where he’d previously lived. Police say they found a trove of forensic evidence there that connected Abdu Sabur, by then serving time in a South Carolina jail, with the murder.

Police say Abdu Sabur dismembered Bills because the Gates case was unsolved and, Rizzo said, Abdy Sabur thought it gave him an alibi.

Despite the grim parallels, police have not connected the case to Gates’ unsolved murder.

Gates’ murder

Gates’ torso was recovered by Canadian police on Aug. 29, 2012, from the lower Niagara River. DNA testing led police to identify the missing mother of three from Niagara Falls.

A week later, police in Niagara Falls, Ontario, recovered an arm and leg that had been spotted by a fisherman. Those were also linked to Gates.

Two days after that, a passerby noticed a garbage bag floating in Hyde Park Lake, just off Duck Island, and pulled it to shore. Inside were Gates’ head and her other arm.

Gates, age 30, was last seen four days before her torso was recovered, when she left home to go to a convenience store across the street.

Investigators have said they believe she was murdered in the city, and her body was disposed of at the various locations.

Detectives have tried to determine exactly where she was killed, saying that finding a “crime scene” could yield key evidence.

So far, the location of that crime remains unknown.

Rick Pfeiffer writes for the Niagara Gazette. Reach him at rick.pfeiffer@niagara-gazette.com