Baltimore police have made an arrest in the body in the manhole caper.

Two things come to mind while reading the police charging documents: people (at least homicide detectives) still read the paper and we are relevant; and suspected bad guys in Baltimore are the laziest in the country. At left, Baltimore Sun photographer Jed Kirschbaum inadvertently captures the suspect's house in a photo, which helps police make an arrest and shows that the suspect allegedly didn't travel very far to dispose of the body.

First, some background. On Friday, two Verizon workers checking wires in an underground vault open a manhole cover and see a body floating in about six feet of water on Benninghaus Road, just off York in mid-Govans. They call police who call the fire department who get the body out. It as of a white female floating face down wearing a black fleece hooded jacket and black pants. The hands were missing; the left foot had fallen off and was floating neaby with a shoe still on. Cops also found one small hoop earing. She was wearing her work uniform.

The body was taken to the Medical Examiner's Office for an autospy and to determine an ID. The vault is a confined space 12 feet deep and 21 feet wide, and if whoever threw the body down there thought it might float through the city sewer system, they were mistaken.

On Saturday morning, Howard County Police Detective Tom Lau was reading the Baltimore Sun and noticed the article. But more than that, city police charging documents state that he "observed what he believed to be a photo of the house where the missing girl's boyfriend was living at the time of her disappearance." He drove up to the city with his folder and met with the city homicide detective leading the investigation, Daniel T. Nicholoson IV.

As a result, the body (police now say she was strangled) has now been identified as that of Elda Vasquez (also spelled Vazquez), 30 who had been reported missing on Jan. 29, 2008. Her family lives in Mexico. A month earlier, the victim had sought a protective order against her boyfriend charging that he hit her, struck her in the head and tried to drag her into the woods. She also he had been stalking her and told authorities that he had threatened to kill her.

Colleagues at the Red Robin restaurant in Columbia, where Vasquez had worked, reported her missing when she didn't show up for work for two weeks. She also hadn't shown up at another job at Eggspectation in Ellicott City.

The boyfriend, in the country illegally since January 2001, was identified as a suspect in her disappearance but not charged. Police at the time seached his house at 543 Benninghaus Road, near the manhole cover, anf found the victim's property and a "Dear John" letter written to the victim "indicating displeasure with her and saying goodbye," according to the police charging documents.

Over the weekend, police showed photographs of the victim to her co-workers, along with a gold necklace with an eagle charm that was found on her body, and they positively identified her. Police also said that the suspect's house on Benninghaus Road is 15 yards from the manhole.

That brings me to the lazy side of criminals. Though the manhole cover weights more than 100 pounds, police allege the killer didn't go too far from his own living room to dump the body.

Victor Hernandez Cruz, 40, who now lives in Columbia, was arrested and charged over the weekend with first-degree murder.