Phoenix ? Police arrested a man in two sexual assaults blamed on the city’s elusive Baseline Killer. But they stopped well short of saying Thursday that they have caught the predator who has been spreading fear across the Phoenix area.

Mark Goudeau, a 42-year-old construction worker, was arrested Wednesday and accused of attacking two sisters, ages 21 and 24, in September 2005 while they were walking in a park at night.

Police said forensic evidence tied him to the two crimes, but they would not elaborate and did not say exactly how the women were assaulted.

The Baseline Killer, so-named because his earliest crimes occurred along Phoenix’s Baseline Road, has been linked to 23 crimes in the Phoenix metropolitan area dating to August 2005, including eight killings, 11 sexual assaults of women and girls, and several robberies. Investigators said they connected the crimes through forensic evidence or similarities in the way they were committed.

“This suspect has been arrested for the sexual assault of two victims in one case only and is not connected to any of the other offenses in this series at this time,” Police Chief Jack Harris said.

He said there may be other people who committed crimes that are part of the Baseline Killer investigation who have not yet been caught.

Goudeau made an initial appearance in court Thursday, looking fatigued and a bit shellshocked as he was asked by a judge to state his name and birthdate. He was booked for investigation of aggravated assault, kidnapping, sexual abuse and sexual assault and was ordered held without bail.

His attorney, Corwin Townsend, said he would plead not guilty.

“My husband is innocent,” Goudeau’s wife, Wendy Carr, told The Associated Press. “This is a huge miscarriage of justice. And they have an innocent man in prison. This is all a mistake. He shouldn’t be in prison for something he didn’t do.”

Police Cmdr. Kim Humphrey said Goudeau resembles a widely circulated police sketch depicting the Baseline Killer as a man with dreadlocks. But neighbors told reporters he does not look like the man in the sketch.

According to the Department of Corrections, Goudeau has convictions of three aggravated assaults in 1989 and armed robbery and kidnapping in 1990. He served 13 years on those convictions before being paroled in 2004, eight years before his sentence was to end.