Metro

Mt. Vernon man charged with murdering woman found fatally stabbed

A Mount Vernon man with a decades-long history of violence against women has admitted to three murders — one Tuesday and two nearly 20 years ago, authorities said today.

Lucius Crawford, 60, appeared today in Mount Vernon City Court, wearing a hospital gown and a pair of jeans. He was ordered held without bail on a second-degree murder charge for killing a woman cops found stabbed to death in his home.

Crawford is to be charged separately with killing two women in 1993, one in the Bronx and the other in Yonkers.

NYPD and Yonkers detectives found Crawford’s latest victim when they went to his basement apartment Tuesday afternoon to ask about the cold Bronx and Yonkers slayings.

They found the 41-year-old woman — whose name has not been released — dead of nine stab wounds to her chest, police said.

The woman had been seen alive earlier in the day, sources said.

Crawford had fled. He was arrested later in the afternoon about 1 1/2 miles from his home.

Police say the slaying Tuesday was the latest in Crawford’s 40-year history of violence against women, which began in 1973 with a series of stabbings in his hometown of Charleston, SC.

He was paroled from Sing Sing Prison in 2008 after serving 13 years for the attempted murder of a Yonkers woman.

Because of Crawford’s violent history, NYPD detectives alerted their counterparts in Suffolk County, who are are investigating the mysterious slayings of 10 people whose bodies have been found at Gilgo Beach.

But Suffolk detectives doubt Crawford is a suspect. “This guy’s M.O. doesn’t fit with what we have here at all,” said a Suffolk law enforcement source.

Mount Vernon officials say the killing Tuesday fits a pattern for Crawford.

“He does have an anger issue and he did in fact murder this lady and he has done this in the past,” said Mount Vernon police commissioner Carl Bell.

“This is probably the closest Mount Vernon has come to a serial killer in a long time.”