Man Arrested in Killing of a Dentist

It was a crude device, a silencer fashioned from a plastic bleach bottle wrapped in duct tape and left behind among the leaves in a Queens playground where a 34-year-old orthodontist was shot and killed as his estranged wife and 4-year-old daughter looked on.

But the homemade silencer provided a crucial clue in the murder of Dr. Daniel Malakov, the police said yesterday, and led to an arrest that linked the killing to an extended family feud.

Fingerprints on the duct tape were matched to a man with a family tie to Dr. Malakov’s wife, Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova, the police said. The original fingerprints had been taken when the man was arrested in 1994 for evading the fare at a Manhattan subway station.

On Sunday, New York City detectives traveled to Chamblee, Ga., a community of about 10,000 near Atlanta. With deputies of the DeKalb County sheriff’s office, they arrested the man, Mikhail Mallayev, 50, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who is related to a sister of Dr. Borukhova.