Two men suspected over separate holiday season homicides in Lyneham and Phillip are behind bars.
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The violent deaths of avid punk fan Nicholas Sofer-Schreiber, 27, and the much-loved grandfather Miodrag Gajic, 71, shocked the ACT, coming days apart between late December and New Year's Day.
The killings, which are not linked in any way, sparked major investigations, involving criminal investigations detectives, forensics and uniformed police.
The probe into Mr Sofer-Schreiber's stabbing death spanned seven weeks and took detectives almost 900 kilometres from his Hall Street unit, near Lyneham shops, to a property in Grafton, in northern NSW.
Their investigations culminated with a major breakthrough on Friday, when they arrested the man believed to have inflicted multiple stab wounds on Mr Sofer-Schreiber.
The suspect is understood to have been known to the victim.
He has not been charged but has been held in police custody pending an appearance in the ACT Magistrates Court on Saturday morning.
Also on Friday, the identity of a suspect in the killing of Mr Gajic in Phillip was revealed during a bail hearing for unrelated crimes.
Police told a court they believed Danny Klobucar, 25, killed the victim, who suffered ''significant'' head injuries, and left him lying in his Mansfield Place unit on New Year's Day.
Klobucar was arrested for a string of other offences he allegedly committed later that night at the Lighthouse Pub in Belconnen.
He was accused of acting bizarrely and threatening to fight people inside the pub, and damaging the venue's property.
Klobucar was arrested by police and taken into custody, before being transferred to the Canberra Hospital's psychiatric unit for treatment.
Klobucar has not been charged over the death of Mr Gajic, but suspicions were aired by police as they tried to prevent him from being released on bail in the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday on the other charges.
His lawyer, Michael Kukulies-Smith, said his client had changed markedly since his treatment in the hospital's psychiatric unit, where he had stayed for about a month before being moved to the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
During that time, police continued their homicide investigation, carrying out a raid on Klobucar's grandfather's home in Chapman, and continuing a lengthy search of the Mugga Lane tip for a bloodied shoe thought to be among the piles of rubbish.
Homicide detectives also told the court Klobucar was suspected of committing another serious attack on a victim inside his home in similar circumstances a month before the death of Mr Gajic.
That attack left the victim in hospital and police said he now feared for his life, believing Klobucar would come back and ''finish the job'' if released into the community.
Police said they also feared for the safety of some individuals at the Lighthouse Pub.
Mr Kukulies-Smith told the court any risk Klobucar posed could be managed by bail conditions requiring him to report to police and submit to drug and alcohol testing.
He said police appeared to be attempting to detain Klobucar without charge to allow them to continue investigations, something the court should not allow.
''If there is sufficient material to lay the [murder] charge, then it ought to be brought, not left in this speculative state,'' he said.
Police said they had enough evidence to charge Klobucar and expected to lay the murder charge at his next court appearance in late March.
Magistrate Peter Dingwall refused Klobucar bail, saying there was a real risk that he would flee the ACT, because of the seriousness of the impending charges.