As federal and local police agencies work to piece together a case against Elias Abuelazam in the 18 stabbing attacks — five of them fatal — that frightened residents across three states, a picture of the 6-foot-4 Israeli citizen known to acquaintances as "Big Boy" is beginning to surface.

Abuelazam, 33, waived his right to fight extradition Friday in an Atlanta court and is scheduled to be returned to Michigan, where he is charged with assault with intent to murder in one of the 18 attacks, most of which occurred in Michigan and targeted black victims.

Abuelazam grew up in a well-to-do Christian Arab family in the city of Ramle, Israel, where former neighbors and acquaintances described him as a shy, quiet geek who fell in with the wrong crowd. They said he eventually fell prey to drugs and "criminal elements," which led his single mother — his father is reported to have died when Elias was very young — to send him to the United States, where many relatives now live. He arrived sometime around 1995.

(In a visit back to Israel a few months ago, Abuelazam seems to have fallen into his old ways. Police confirmed acquaintances' reports that Abuelazam stabbed a friend with a screwdriver during a fight in Beit She'an. Investigators did not pursue a case because the victim chose not to press charges, police said.)

Neighbors said Abuelazam intended to study to be a pharmacist, but they did not know whether he actually completed his studies. It is known that he moved around the country, eventually settling in Leesburg, Va., a suburb of Washington. An apartment in Bradenton, Fla., where he has relatives, is listed as his formal address in court documents.

In July 2004, Abuelazam married Jessica Nimitz, a Texas teenager. They divorced in 2007; Nimitz has declined to comment on her ex-husband's arrest, saying she was still trying to absorb the news.

---

North Spring Behavioral Healthcare confirmed in a statement that Abuelazam worked at its residential treatment facility in Leesburg for young offenders, saying his employment ended in 2008.

In May, family connections led Abuelazam back to the Flint, Mich., area, one of the places he is known to have briefly lived in earlier. The Detroit Free Press reported that he lived in a house on Maryland Avenue in east Flint next door to relatives. Neighbors declined to comment.

That's the same month the string of stabbings began.

Acquaintances in Flint and Leesburg alike described Abuelazam as a large who was quiet and seemed self-controlled — unless something set off his temper.

Neighborhood kids in Leesburg told The Loudoun Times that Abuelazam was "respectful" and "nice" and would buy them ice cream, candy and sodas. He liked to hang around the neighborhood and chat with people on the street.

One of those neighbors was Jammie Lane, 44, who was found dead in his home on March 26, 2009. Police have not officially connected Abuelazam to Lane's death but say they are taking a closer look at the case since Abuelazam's arrest.

"We were all just neighbors," said Steve McCabe, 30, who lived nearby. "There were times when we — me, Jammie and him — we would stand out here and just talk. We would sit out and talk and laugh."

Echoing many people in Leesburg and Flint, McCabe told the Loudoun Times that Abuelazam "was really quiet and real nice. You wouldn't even know he was there."

Until he got angry.

Leesburg neighbors said there were times when, for no apparent reason, Abuelazam would fly into a rage with a "crazy look." On those occasions, they would be physically afraid of their 6-foot-4, 230-pound neighbor.

Neighbors related how Abuelazam would harshly kick his dogs when he thought they had misbehaved. Once, he accused Chris Theriot, 16, of trying to steal his pit bull terrier.

"When he was mad, he just had this rage in his face. It was a crazy look, like, 'Hey, if you don't get out of my way, there's going to be a problem,'" Chris told the Loudoun paper. "I was severely afraid of him. Physically afraid."

At the King Water Market in Flint, where Abuelazam worked for about a month before leaving Aug. 2, customers told The Flint Journal that the clerk they knew as Eli joked with the regulars and doggedly flirted with young ladies.

"He was a little standoffish, but he seemed OK," Steve Cornell, manager of the Family Dollar store next door, told the Journal.

Monica Butler, a customer, said Abuelazam was "flirty" — "he would always try to pick them up or get a number."

Abdulla Farah, his manager at the King Water Market, and others said Abuelazam was always friendly and respectful with African-American customers, complicating any easy conclusion that he may have specifically targeted black victims. Leesburg police said they assumed the attacker had a racial motive, but the Flint prosecutor has said there was no evidence to support that supposition.

All in all, Farah said, Abuelazam seemed to be "a good guy."

"All of my employees would not talk nothing about this guy. ... I never got no indication that [any] of my employees got any suspicions of this guy," Farah said.

At the same time, the "quiet" and "calm" Abuelazam was involved in numerous brushes with the law, with citations and minor arrests recorded in multiple locations.

Just last month, he was questioned by police twice on the same day — first in an incident in which he was charged with providing alcohol to a minor and later that day in a traffic stop — marking the second and third times police are known to have investigated him since the stabbings began. He was also arrested last week during a traffic stop and later released in Northern Virginia, a few hours before one of the stabbing victims was attacked.

Now it's up to the authorities — and eventually, perhaps, a jury — to sort through the contradictions.

"I do not believe these charges are true," Abuelazam's mother, Iyam al-Azzam, told Israel Radio. "Elias, my son, is a religious, God-fearing man who always assists anyone who needs help."

But a former classmate painted a very different portrait for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.

"In recent years he experienced something that changed him entirely," the classmate said, adding that he would picks fights with "anyone who looked him in the eye."

When Abuelazam got angry, this acquaintance said, it would take three people to restrain him.

Jessica Harthorn of NBC station WEYI of Flint, Mich., tracked down relatives of some of the victims of the Michigan serial stabber and says it was a day of tears, hugs and anger.

Cries of relief from the family of Arnold Minor after they learn his suspected killer has been arrested.

49-year-old Minor was the fifth person murdered by Flint's serial killer.

He died here on Saginaw Street, just south of downtown Flint on August 2.

Thursday, the suspected killer, 33-year-old Elias Abuelazam was arrested boarding a plane at an airport in Atlanta, Georgia.

"I want them to hang 'im up by his nuts, string him up and let him hang for a while," said Elzora Minor, the mother of Arnold Minor.

Harthorn heard similar sentiments from Richard Booker, who survived an attack July 19.

---

"I hope they kill him, I don't want to waste my tax dollars on a nutty killer," said Richard Booker, a victim of the serial killer.

He was slashed down his abdomen, stabbed in the liver and cut to the bone on his forearms.

Booker says he was walking down Charles Road about 10:30 at night, he was walking back from Beecher Beer and Wine, when he saw a man on the side of the road. He asked Booker for help unlatching the hood of his car.

"I'm trying to help him open it, and he just snuck around from behind and gutted me like a fish," said Booker.

After the attack, Booker dragged himself to his front porch, losing eight pints of blood. He was on the brink of death when his wife found him.

"I didn't feel a lot of pain. I was just scared to death, because I know I was bleeding a lot, and I wasn't ready to die," said Booker.

That was his last thought before waking up in the I.C.U two weeks later.

"Just pray to God, let me live," said Booker.

The first of the five fatal stabbings attributed to Elias Abuelazam occurred May 24, just a couple of blocks from his residence in Flint, Mich. Until last night, when police swarmed the house where he lived, neighbors never put 2 and 2 together.

"We knew something was going on. We figured it had to be pretty big," Ruth Harper, who lives across the street from Abuelazam's home, told NBC station WILX of Lansing today. She says she and others in the neighborhood were rattled awake about 3:30 a.m. when police entered the suspect's home.

It all makes sense now to neighbor Joann Acre.

"I saw him yesterday bring a suitcase outside. He brought the suitcase next door," she says. "You don't think [the whole ordeal] going to land near you." ...

---

"We know about the killing down the road. We just didn't know it was part of everything else happening," Harper says.

Her husband, however, did take notice of Abuelazam's car. Her neighbor's dark green SUV matched the description of the suspect's car, but they never called police.

"He more or less noticed it," she explains.

The arrest of Elias Abuelazam in a string of stabbings, five of them fatal, has revived interest in an unsolved Leesburg, Va., slaying last year.

Authorities have not linked the March 2009 stabbing death of Jammie Lane, 44, to Abuelazam, who is charged so far with a single count of assault with intent to murder in Flint, Mich., where most of the 18 assaults occurred.

Lane lived on the same block of Adams Drive in Leesburg, but police have noted that Abuelazam was believed to no longer be living there when Lane was killed.

The Lane homicide remains one of Leesburg's most prominent open cases, and Police Chief Joseph Price was asked about it at a news conference this afternoon.

---

"We are going to explore all possible connections," he said. "That case remains a very active case."

Police in Bradenton, Fla., where Abuelazam was listed as the resident of an apartment unit, said they also were reviewing open cases for possible links to Abuelazam.

The manager of the market where Elias Abuelazam worked for about a month describes him as "a good guy, a friendly guy" who got along well with African-American customers.

That's an interesting point because nearly all of the 18 known victims of the serial stabber were African-American. Michigan authorities say they have no other evidence of a racial motive, noting that Flint is a predominantly black city and the attacks were crimes of opportunity late at night.

Abdulla Farah, manager of the King Water Market in Flint, spoke briefly to reporters outside his shop this morning. He says he hired Abuelazam to cover for a part-time employee and "he needed a job."

"He was a good guy," Farah says. "I mean all of my employees would not talk nothing about this guy. ... I never got no indication that [any] of my employees got any suspicions of this guy."

"I'm really kind of confused," says Farah, who says his brother, Peter, was a murder victim last year.

---

Court records show that Peter Farah, 23, was shot to death at the Dayton Market in Dayton, Mich., on April 9, 2009. Two 20-year-old men were arrested and charged with murder in Peter Farah's death. The dispensation of those charges could not immediately be determined.

If Abuelazam is the culprit in the current cases, "he should be hanged," Farah says.

You can watch the full raw video of Farah's remarks here.