Killer on the run over 1996 Briton's murder held in Ivory Coast

Jean-Claude LaCote worked on a South African police reality series while he was wanted for murder

Jean-Claude LaCote was on a Europol most wanted list. EPA

A Frenchman who worked on police reality television show while on the run for murdering a British businessman 23 years ago has finally been captured in the Ivory Coast.

Jean-Claude Lacote, 53, and his wife Hilde Van Acker, 56, were both jailed for life in their absence for the killing of businessman Marcus Mitchell who was shot twice in the head in Belgium in 1996.

Mr Mitchell, a married father of three, had been conned into putting up money for an apparently legitimate business deal to buy aviation parts, one of a number of scams that LaCote was involved with.

The arrests came after more than a decade of few sightings since he walked out of a South African jail in 2008 before he was due to stand trial for an unrelated fraud.

“The two were arrested in Abidjan. Mr LaCote on Wednesday night and Mrs Van Acker on Thursday morning,” Brussels prosecutors spokesman Celine D'Have told AFP. Belgian prosecutors will ask for the couple to be extradited from the Ivory Coast.

The pair fled Europe in the aftermath of the 1996 killing and 20 years later were put on a most wanted list of criminals run by Europol, the EU policing agency.

Mr Mitchell's family had believed that LaCote was most likely in Africa. His widow, who has started a new life and declined to be identified, told The National: "I … am pleased to hear of the arrest of both of them. I only hope that the Belgium Police manage to extradite them."

While he was on the run LaCote, a TV producer, worked on South African reality police show Duty Calls, which ran for ten programmes, and demonstrated how officers "dealt with violent criminals and dangerous crime scenes".

A British court heard that, in 2003, he masterminded a crime to con £1m from an Irish airline and shipping entrepreneur, which was laundered through gold bullion, works of art and a new Ferrari.

He landed up in prison for that fraud but managed to escape when his then girlfriend, Ms Acker, along with accomplices, posed as a police officer with fake paperwork in 2008 to secure his release. It took South African authorities a week to realise that LaCote had gone.