PEORIA — Fueled by pornography and a growing sexual compulsion, Larry D. Bright would lure prostitutes and other women from local bars to the small guesthouse behind his mother’s home in Peoria with promises of cash and drugs, prosecutors said Thursday.

There, Bright, 38, had sex with them, then strangled them, according to prosecutors.

In Peoria Circuit Court Thursday, he tried to enter a guilty plea as he was formally charged with the first-degree murder of Linda Neal, a 40-year-old Peoria woman whose naked body was found near the Mackinaw River in September. But Judge Albert Purham rejected the plea and scheduled another hearing for Feb. 24.

State’s Atty. Kevin Lyons said Bright has confessed to killing eight women around Peoria, including Neal. Through videotaped confessions and cooperation, Bright has led police and prosecutors to six sites around Peoria County, Lyons said. Some spots were the sites where past bodies had been discovered, others were new places where human bones have been unearthed, Lyons said.

Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Bright appeared before Purham via closed-circuit television from Tazewell County Jail, where he is being held. When asked if he needed an attorney, Bright said, “I just would like to plead guilty.” Besides Neal, prosecutors said Bright will be charged with the murders of Brenda Erving, 41, Barbara Williams, 36, Sabrina Payne, 36, Shaconda Thomas, 32, Laura Lollar, 33, Shirley Ann Trapp, 45, and Tamara “Tammy” Walls, 29. Four of the women’s bodies have been found, while investigators are in the process of matching DNA to bone fragments and body parts of the remaining four, Lyons said.

The cases of two other women found murdered in the area–Wanda Jackson, 40, and Frederickia Brown, 29–are still being investigated.

The charges brought a sense of closure to a spree of killings that targeted African-American women. Between March 2001 and Oct. 15, 2004, the bodies of six of the women were found in rural parts of Peoria and Tazewell Counties. Four others fitting the same description–black with a history of prostitution and/or drug abuse–had disappeared from the area. A 13-officer multi-jurisdictional task force was launched in October to look into the deaths and disappearances.

Lyons said he couldn’t say exactly what compelled Bright into his alleged killing spree. But he said friends and relatives revealed Bright’s growing penchant for black women and violent tendencies after sex.

“He appeared to demonstrate to people who knew him a peculiar attachment to African-American women, sex with African-American women and pornography that had African-American women as participants,” Lyons said.

Some relatives of Bright, reached at their homes, declined to comment.

Even as Bright made his court appearance, investigators were discovering more body parts in locations he previously pointed out , Lyons said. At the home Bright shared with his mother, Shirley, in the 3400 block of Starr Street, Peoria police officers and forensic specialists set up two tents and wandered in and out of the guest house where prosecutors said Bright did his killings, as a Caterpillar front-end loader dug up the yard.

Other locations investigators are looking at include Tremont, Pottstown and Norwood, prosecutors said. Prosecutors also said police collared Bright with the help of about a half-dozen prostitutes who were lured to the Starr Street home by Bright, had sex with him, then escaped or left when Bright became violent, Lyons said. Only when police pursued the women did Bright emerge as a potential suspect in the slayings, Lyons said.

Bright allegedly kept one woman in his guesthouse at knife-point for two weeks in July, according to court records. She managed to leave the home, but the incident wasn’t discovered by police until December, when Bright was arrested and charged with “aggravated unlawful restraint,” records show.

Police investigators searching Bright’s home for clues last week noticed a patch of overturned dirt beside the house, Lyons said. Bright’s mother said they had removed some raspberry bushes, but when investigators sifted through the area they discovered a handful of bones that forensic experts later determined to be human vertebrae, he said.

Prosecutors got a warrant to dig up the yard and when they served Bright with the warrant in jail, he began to cooperate, Lyons said.

Bright would dump the naked victims’ bodies in rural corners of Peoria County, or dismember and burn the bodies over an open fire pit in his yard, crushing the charred bones and ferrying them in buckets to fields or near relatives’ homes around the county, prosecutors alleged.

Bright told police how he choked his victims, Lyons said.On Wednesday, Bright accompanied police to his Starr Street property and other spots around the Peoria area where he had allegedly buried body parts, Lyons said.

Bright oscillated between clearly remembering dates and locations and muttering about the “voices” that were talking to him, said Tazewell State’s Atty. Stewart Umholtz, who is assisting in the prosecution.

“He appears to be very credible, very believable,” Umholtz said. “He uses dates and locations as reference points, rather than the victims’ names.”

In the Neal case, prosecutors said Bright recounted how he met her at a bar in September and drove her back to his home in his pickup. After having sex with Neal, Bright allegedly choked her and hauled her naked body into his truck by a leather bootlace tied around her neck, Lyons said. He then drove her to a wooded area near the Mackinaw River, near Hopedale, and dragged her to a levee, he said. Her body was found Sept. 25 by a group of campers.

Relatives of the victims expressed a mix of relief and sadness over the charges.

“It gives me a little relief. The killing can stop” said Gertrude Payne of Chicago, whose daughter Sabrina was found dead in July 2003 in a field northeast of Tremont. “But it ain’t going to ever leave me. Once you lose one of your children, it doesn’t ever leave you.”

Before the hearing, Kevin Walls, Tamara Walls’ older brother, visited Bright’s Starr Street home to gaze at the hive of investigators swarming over the property. Tamara Walls vanished Sept. 22, though prosecutors count her as one of Bright’s victims.