Troy Graves was brought back to Philadelphia last night, the city he left two years ago after allegedly assaulting six women inside their Center City homes and strangling graduate student Shannon Schieber.

Graves was accompanied aboard United Airlines Flight 1026 from Denver by Philadelphia Homicide Division detectives and District Attorney's Office prosecutors who had been in Colorado interviewing the 30-year-old Air Force enlisted man.

His plane was met on the tarmac about 7 p.m. by a four-vehicle convoy of city police vehicles. Dressed in a blue prison jumpsuit and wearing arm shackles, Graves was taken directly from the plane under tight security, placed in a van, and driven to Police Headquarters to be fingerprinted and processed, and to await arraignment on murder and assault charges.

Police said last night that Graves would probably be arraigned today.

Graves is accused of strangling Schieber on May 7, 1998, during an attack inside the 23-year-old Wharton student's second-floor apartment near 23d and Spruce Streets. The attack was one of six attacks on women in Center City between 1997 and 1999.

Authorities say DNA evidence links Graves, who lived in Philadelphia from 1991 until he joined the Air Force in 1999, to all six sexual attacks and the slaying.

DNA evidence also has linked Graves to the attacks of seven women near the Colorado State University campus. At the time of the attacks, Graves was stationed at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., and was living in Fort Collins with his wife of less than a year, Amy Wade.

Troy Graves was only allowed to exit the plane on the tarmac. (JOHN COSTELLO / Inquirer)

Graves, who was arrested last month after Fort Collins police tied him to several anonymous letters detailing the crimes there as well as the Schieber case in Philadelphia, pleaded guilty last week to the Colorado charges and was sentenced to life in prison.

Graves' public defender in Colorado, Kathryn Hay, has said her client entered his pleas with the understanding that he would be imprisoned in Colorado and that Pennsylvania authorities would not pursue the death penalty against him.

Although Philadelphia prosecutors have been working on a similar plea arrangement with Graves, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham has remained noncommittal on whether her office would seek the death penalty.

Complicating matters is that in one of the anonymous letters sent to Colorado police, the writer - believed to be Graves - said he did not kill Schieber.

A contingent of Philadelphia police with long ties to the Center City rapist investigation flew to Fort Collins last month after Graves was arrested.

Detectives Jeff Piree and Chuck Boyle from the Homicide Division and Lt. Thomas McDevitt and Officer Carl Latorre of the Special Victims Unit returned on Monday with prosecutors to begin the process of getting him back to Philadelphia to face court action.

Police officials were accompanied in Colorado by the chief of the district attorney's homicide unit, Charles Gallagher, and the lead prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Arlene Fisk.