GRANITE CITY, Ill. (AP) - The Illinois State Police on Tuesday evening captured an ex-con suspected of killing eight people in two states, authorities said.

The ISP caught up with 28-year-old Nicholas T. Sheley in Granite City, about 10 miles north of St. Louis, said FBI spokeswoman Kelly Brennan. She did not immediately have more information.

A spokeswoman with the Granite City police department said Sheley was in custody there, but she declined to give details.

Sheley was arrested around 7 p.m. outside Bindy's, a Granite City bar, said bartender Katie Ronk.

Sheley ordered a glass of water and went to the bathroom before another bartender and customer recognized him, Ronk said. They notified police who arrived minutes later with FBI agents and took Sheley into custody while he smoked a cigarette outside the bar.

The FBI on Tuesday launched a manhunt for Sheley, who they said was armed and dangerous and suspected of killing eight people in Illinois and Missouri.

His alleged victims include a 93-year-old man, a child, and a couple whose blood-soaked dogs were found roaming a motel parking lot, although he has only been charged with murder in one of the deaths.

Sheley was charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery and vehicular hijacking in the death of Ronald Randall, whose body was found Monday behind a grocery store in Galesburg, in northwestern Illinois, police said. An autopsy shows the 65-year-old died from blunt force trauma to the head.

Investigators said the other victims all appeared to have died in the same manner and that evidence linked to Sheley was recovered at each scene, but both the FBI and Illinois State Police declined to elaborate.

Public records show Sheley has multiple convictions for robbery, drugs and weapons charges and has spent three years in prison.

Sheley's uncle, Joe Sheley, 47, of Sterling, told The Associated Press before his capture that Nicholas Sheley recently struggled with drugs and his rap sheet includes arrests for home invasion.

"He's been in trouble many times over the years, but something like this, yeah, it's out of character," Joe Sheley said. "He's got a temper like anybody else. Just doesn't want to be messed with. Won't back down. But to go looking for a fight, looking for trouble, no."

Sheley spent nearly three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for aggravated robbery between 2000 and 2003 and another 17 months on parole, which ended in April 2005, said IDOC spokesman Derek Schnapp.

The killings began with the beating death of 93-year-old Russell Reed, a Sterling man whose body was found stuffed in the trunk of a car Thursday. Sheley also is from Sterling, a town of 15,000 about 100 miles west of Chicago.

On Monday, police discovered the bodies of two men in their 20s, a woman and a child in an apartment on a street of single-family homes in nearby Rock Falls. Police believe they likely died late Saturday or early Sunday, and one was connected to Reed.

Sheley was acquainted with the male victims, Brock Branson and Kenneth Ulvey, said Illinois State Police Region Two Commander Mark Maton. The IDs of the woman and child were not immediately released.

Also Monday, Randall's body was found near a trash bin behind the grocery store. Authorities said he likely was killed Saturday evening.

More than 250 miles away Monday, the bodies of Tom and Jill Estes of Sherwood, Ark., were found behind a gas station in the St. Louis suburb of Festus, Mo., said Bill Baker with the St. Louis Area Major Case Squad.

The couple had checked into a Comfort Inn in Festus on Friday and were last seen late Sunday. The couple's dogs were found in the hotel parking lot, unharmed but covered with blood.

Unrelated to the killings, federal prosecutors in northern Illinois charged Sheley Tuesday with fleeing the state to avoid prosecution for a June 14 felony home invasion in Sterling.

At one point Sheley was in Iowa, and stopped to call his wife Saturday from a rest area between Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, an FBI agent said in an affidavit.

Authorities believe Sheley's crisscrossing didn't stop there. William Monroe, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago field office, said he believes Sheley also traveled last week to buy drugs in Chicago, where two handguns taken from Reed - the first man killed - were recovered.

Investigators has said Sheley was last seen around 11:30 p.m. in downtown St. Louis near Busch Stadium.

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Associated Press writers Daniel Yovich in Sterling, Sophia Tareen, Ashley M. Heher and Don Babwin in Chicago and Jim Suhr in St. Louis contributed to this report.