At the SoHo 54 Hotel in Manhattan this month, a man and woman argued about how long he would be allowed to stay in room 1109.
The dispute escalated, and the 26-year-old man flew into a rage, police officials said on Tuesday. He then hit the woman, Denisse Oleas-Arancibia, 38, in the head with an iron.
Soon after, the man left SoHo 54, the police said. Hotel staff later found Ms. Oleas-Arancibia in the room, dead.
Law enforcement had few leads until Feb. 18, when Raad Almansoori was arrested in Scottsdale, Ariz., accused of stabbing a woman working at a McDonald’s restaurant.
That’s when Mr. Almansoori said he was wanted for a murder in New York City.
“Google ‘SoHo 54 Hotel,’” he told investigators, said Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives at the New York Police Department, who spoke at a news conference on Tuesday.
Mr. Almansoori is still in police custody in Maricopa County in Arizona. But a prosecutor from the office of the Manhattan district attorney has traveled there to arrange his extradition to New York, where Chief Kenny said the police will charge him in the killing of Ms. Oleas-Arancibia, who he said had been working as an escort.
