Eric Bellucci, 30, was taken into custody this morning, New York police Detective Joe Cavitolo told AOL News. "He has to be brought back to New York. We're working on that now."
Authorities had been looking for Bellucci since Wednesday night, when the bodies of his parents, Arthur Bellucci, 61, and Marian Bellucci, 56, were found inside their Staten Island home. The couple's daughter, Vanessa Bellucci, 25, alerted police to the homicides when she went to check on them and found blood in an entryway.
According to Cavitolo, the couple had been stabbed to death. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
While investigating the crime scene, authorities went to check on other members of the Bellucci family and launched a search for Eric Bellucci. Authorities later found his car in a parking lot at Newark Liberty International Airport. Investigators learned he had boarded the flight to Israel, where a friend of his lives, the NY Daily News reported.
Eric Sultan, AP
Israeli police escort a man detained at Ben Gurion International airport near Tel Aviv on Friday. A police spokesman wouldn't name the suspect, but the New York Post identified him as Staten Island resident Eric Bellucci, 30.
Bellucci's plane landed Thursday morning in Tel Aviv, where Israeli officers and members of the NYPD began a massive manhunt for the fugitive suspect.
Bellucci and his mother, a registered nurse, reportedly operated a home health care company called Caremates. Arthur Bellucci was a real estate agent.
According to the Daily News, Bellucci is a diagnosed schizophrenic whose life spun out of control after he graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts, where he was a star football and baseball player.
Bellucci has been committed to a hospital on at least two separate occasions in recent years for psychological evaluations. A relative had recently taken firearms Bellucci had purchased out of state to a police buy-back program in Brooklyn, The New York Times reported.
Eric Bellucci's uncle, Joe Ciervo, told the Staten Island Advance that his nephew was acting "strange and delusional" in recent weeks.
The police manhunt for Bellucci in Israel continued until this morning when he was captured at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport.
Bellucci had tried to buy a plane ticket to China, but his credit card would not authorize the payment. The clerk sent him to the ATM to get some cash. After Bellucci left the counter, the clerk suddenly remembered the story about the murder and tipped off Israeli police officers who had been searching the airport for him.
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The duty police officer at the airport, Yoetz Zandani, told Israel Army Radio, "I identified him after they pointed out someone who looked suspicious. I approached him, quite a tall guy with a hat on his head, and he went into a defensive crouch. I realized he was on his guard and that something was wrong."Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai ordered Bellucci deported immediately, but under Israeli law he has three days to appeal the deportation.
Frank Floridia, a former police officer and close friend of the Bellucci family, told the Advance that while he is shocked by the murders, he is not surprised.
"[Arthur] just felt that Eric was going to get violent. He was volatile. Anything could set him off," Floridia said. "[Eric] thought Marian was out to get him."