The arrest of three men in the December slayings of two Louisiana State University students brought relief Friday to a campus shaken by the school’s first homicide in more than a decade.

“I’m thrilled that they caught them,” Michelle Hathaway, 38, a graduate student in costume design, said a day after the men were taken into custody. “I’m much more comfortable now that, hopefully, they caught the right people.”

Investigators haven’t said what led them to the suspects five months after Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam were killed during a home invasion at a student apartment complex on the edge of campus. The two doctoral students from India were each shot in the head.

Police believe the killings were part of a robbery, said Allam’s uncle, Narayana Allam in Hyderabad, India, who had spoken with the slain student’s father.

“We are happy about one thing _ that we have come to know the motive behind the killing,” Narayana Allam said.

Spokesmen for four different police agencies involved in the investigation referred questions to East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Doug Moreau. Moreau said he asked the agencies not to release details about the case, and he said he didn’t know anything more than what had been released to the media.

“What I’ve done is review what we can get our hands on so far, which is what you have. And the police, of course, are still writing their reports and finishing them,” he said in an interview.

Allam, 33, a chemistry student from Hyderabad, and Komma, 31, a biology student from Kurnool, were found dead by Allam’s pregnant wife at the apartment complex for married and graduate students.

The university’s handling of the killings drew complaints when administrators and police didn’t lock down the campus or reschedule final exams, even though the killers were at large and officers had no suspects at the time.

Police patrols were increased on the 28,000-student campus, and students were urged to be cautious as they wrapped up the semester and headed home for the holiday break.

A resident of the apartments, Sujeong Baek, said the complex now feels more secure. The university has installed surveillance cameras and a tall fence, blocked off all but one entry gate and posted police in the area at night.

“Every evening, I see the policemen,” said Baek, 27, an English major from South Korea.

The three suspects live near each other in a north Baton Rouge neighborhood about 11 miles from the LSU apartments.

Michael Lewis, Casey Gathers, and Devin Parker each face first-degree murder charges and were being held at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on Friday. A date for their first court appearance had not been set.

The arrest warrants say Parker claimed Gathers shot both victims and that Parker admitted that he, Lewis and Gathers forced the two students inside the apartment.

“Parker was able to provide details to detectives about the murders that were not released to the public,” the warrants say.

Lewis and Gathers were arrested Thursday in Vermilion Parish, on the southwest coast more than 70 miles from Baton Rouge, where both were working offshore. Police said Parker was arrested Wednesday in Baton Rouge on an unrelated simple robbery charge.

Each has a criminal history, according to court records.

Lewis, 19, faces aggravated rape and second-degree kidnapping charges in an alleged 2006 attack on a 15-year-old girl, according to the documents. He also received six months of probation in 2007 on a charge of simple criminal damage to property.

Gathers, 20, pleaded guilty to a felony theft charge and received two years of probation earlier this year, according to the state corrections department. He also faces pending charges of marijuana possession and firearm possession, court documents show.

Parker, 19, was sentenced to three years’ probation in 2006 after pleading guilty to burglary, according to court records.

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Associated Press writers Doug Simpson in Baton Rouge and Omer Farooq in Hyderabad, India, contributed to this report.