IPSWICH, England — Have police cracked the case of the “Suffolk Strangler”? Officers arrested a 37-year-old man yesterday on suspicion of killing five prostitutes — a series of slayings that terrified this quiet corner of eastern England.

The suspect reportedly was the same man who was quoted in The Sunday Mirror as saying that he knew all five victims — all of them prostitutes who worked in Ipswich — and had been interviewed by police about the killings.

The man, Tom Stephens, said he was not the killer who had dumped the victims’ naked bodies in rural areas around Ipswich, 70 miles northeast of London.

“I don’t have alibis for some of the times (of the killings), actually I’m not entirely sure I have tight alibis for any of the times. But I’m not worried about being charged. I’m innocent,” he told The Sunday Mirror.

Stephens, a supermarket worker and part-time taxi driver, reportedly led a quiet life. He is known to have visited an Internet blog site under the pseudonym “The Bishop,” listing his interests as “keeping fit” and music, particularly from the 1980s. The arrest came 16 tense days after the first body was found dumped in a stream, but authorities did not declare that they have solved the case.

The arrest nonetheless caused a sensation in Britain. Cameras swarmed along the police line at the end of Jubilee Close, the street where the suspect lived in Trimley St. Martin, eight miles southeast of Ipswich, and rival television news helicopters buzzed overhead.

“I just feel sick to the stomach, this is just on our own doorstep,” said a neighbour who identified herself only as Mrs. Wynel.

“Well it’s all just very frightening knowing that the possible — because it’s not confirmed, is it, yet? — but a possible murderer was where I used to walk alone sometimes,” said neighbour Evelyn Davey. “My husband doesn’t let me out of his sight since all this happened.”

The first hint of a development in the case was a police announcement early yesterday of a postponement of coroner’s inquests into the deaths of Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls. No explanation was given.

Suffolk police said they arrested the suspect at 7.20 a.m. but refused to identify him or say where he was being held.

“He has been arrested on the suspicion of murdering all five women,” said Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull.

In the Sunday Mirror interview, Stephens was quoted as saying that he had already been interviewed under caution — meaning that he was regarded as a suspect and had been warned of his legal rights.

“From the police profiling it does look like me — white male between 25 and 40, knows the area, works strange hours. The bodies have got close to my house,” Stephens was quoted as saying.

“If new information, coincidental information, crops up, I could get arrested,” Stephens was quoted as saying. He added, however, he was confident he would not be charged.

Stephens said he was a friend of all the dead women. “I was closest to Tania. And Gemma as well. I was close to the others as well. But I should have been there to look over them.”

He said he had visited around 50 prostitutes in the year after his eight-year marriage collapsed. “Over time I have been involved with most of the (dead) girls.”

At one point he described himself as a “protector” of the women, but he also said he was as “close as there was to a pimp.”

In excerpts from an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. aired yesterday, Stephens said he sometimes drove the women to collect their drugs.

A neighbour said he had seen police taking a keen interest in Stephens’ house earlier this month.

“About a week and a half ago forensic teams were at that house for four to five hours,” said Geoffrey Bond, 53. “They took some stuff away in boxes from the area.”

Lesley-Anne Barber, 50, who lives near Stephens, described him as “a bit of a weirdo.”

“He used to just wander around in the back garden. He didn’t seem the sort of person that would want to have anything to do with anyone,” Barber said.