Man held after policeman overhears him describing murder

A man was arrested in the Spanish capital after a plainclothes policeman sitting next to him on a bus overheard him recounting a murder during a conversation on his cell phone.

The arrest, which police announced via Twitter, was made Monday when the alleged killer arrived in Madrid from the southern city of Malaga.

The suspect boarded the intercity bus after allegedly stabbing a man to death in Malaga.

Once on the bus, he told someone on his cell phone that he had stabbed a man.

And that conversation, according to the same sources, was overheard by the person sitting beside him, a plainclothes police officer, who then got in contact with his colleagues to tell them what had happened.

They in turn called a police station in Malaga to verify the truth of what the young man had said on his cell phone, and they decided to deploy police to arrest him upon his arrival in Madrid.

Up to that point, the plainclothes policeman was sending text messages to the officers who participated in the arrest operation to give them details regarding the suspect's appearance.

These details allowed the police to take the self-described murderer into custody as soon as he arrived at the Madrid bus terminal.