Murder, Fraud Suspect Arrested on Italian Isle : Fugitive: The man is sought in scheme to kill a stranger and identify him as a business partner, collecting a $1.5-million insurance settlement.

An Ohio man sought by Glendale police for three years on suspicion of arranging the murder of a North Hollywood bookkeeper to use his body in a $1.5-million insurance fraud has been arrested on a yacht in Europe, Italian officials said Saturday.

John Barrett Hawkins, 28, was taken into custody Thursday on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia after Italian police were informed of his whereabouts through a tip, Italian authorities said. He was being held in jail pending extradition proceedings, they said.

Hawkins was wanted on charges of taking part in a conspiracy to murder a man whose body was misidentified as that of Hawkins’ business partner by a doctor who was an accomplice. The alleged scheme allowed Hawkins to collect a $1.5-million insurance policy on the partner’s life.

Italian authorities said he eluded capture by using false passports and a variety of disguises and aliases, according to a report by Reuters.

Police said Hawkins and two accomplices had been cruising around Sardinia for a month on a catamaran named Carpe Diem--Latin for “seize the day”--before berthing at Cannigione, near Olbia on the northeast coast of the island.

Military police from the U.S. submarine base at La Maddalena in Sardinia helped arrest him, a base spokesman confirmed.

Hawkins has been charged by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office with murder, conspiracy to commit murder for financial gain, grand theft and insurance fraud in the death of Ellis Greene, a North Hollywood man whose body was found in April, 1988, in the Glendale office of Dr. Richard Boggs.

Prosecutors said Hawkins, along with business partner Melvin Hanson and Boggs, conspired to kill Greene, who was lured to Boggs’ office on April 16, 1988, subdued with an electric stun gun and suffocated.

Boggs called paramedics and misidentified Greene’s body as Hanson’s, they said, describing the dead man as a patient with a history of heart trouble. Hawkins, who was Hanson’s sole beneficiary, also identified the dead man as Hanson, prosecutors said.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office released the body to Hawkins after the two men positively identified the corpse. In Greene’s wallet, coroner’s officials found two credit cards and a photocopy of a birth certificate, all in Hanson’s name.

Hawkins, who was Hanson’s business partner in a failing Ohio athletic clothing firm, immediately ordered the body cremated and collected $1.5 million in death benefits, prosecutors said.

Police discovered the body’s identity when fingerprints taken from the corpse by the coroner’s office were checked against those of missing persons. Greene, a bookkeeper for a San Fernando Valley accountant, was last seen leaving the Bullet Club Bar in North Hollywood on April 15, 1988.

After police began investigating, Hawkins fled in July without collecting $500,000 from two other insurance companies. Hanson also fled, underwent plastic surgery in Mexico and took the name of Wolfgang von Snowden, Los Angeles prosecutors said. He was arrested returning to the United States and is awaiting trial in Los Angeles on charges of murder and conspiracy.

Boggs was convicted in Los Angeles in December of murder and eight related counts of fraud and assault with a stun gun. He is awaiting sentencing.