Italian Court OKs Extradition of Man Sought in Insurance Fraud-Murder Case

An Italian appeals court Saturday granted a U.S. request for the extradition of an American wanted in Los Angeles in the slaying of a North Hollywood bookkeeper and the defrauding of an insurance company of $1.5 million.

When the two-day court hearing opened Friday in Cagliari, Sardinia, the accused American for the first time admitted he was John Barrett Hawkins, 28, a partner in a Columbus, Ohio, athletic clothing business, wanted on charges of murder and conspiracy in insurance fraud and in Ohio for theft.

“I don’t want to go to California because they have the electric chair there,” Hawkins erroneously told reporters while the court was considering its verdict. “I have never harmed anybody. When the murder was committed, I was in Ohio.”

Authorities accuse Hawkins of complicity in the April, 1988, murder of Ellis Henry Greene, 32, an AIDS victim who was picked up at the Rawhide bar in North Hollywood and killed by Dr. Richard Boggs, Hawkins’ accomplice in the insurance fraud, in Glendale.

Hawkins and Boggs then claimed that Greene was Melvin Hanson, Hawkins’ partner in the Ohio clothing business, whose life was insured for $1.5 million, with Hawkins as the sole beneficiary.

Hawkins had the body cremated, collected the insurance money and then fled abroad, leaving his car abandoned at the Columbus airport.

After an insurance detective uncovered the fraud, Hanson and Boggs were arrested and jailed and Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Hawkins. Boggs was convicted in December, 1990, of murder and eight related counts of fraud and assault.

Italian police arrested Hawkins on Aug. 2 aboard his 15-meter catamaran Carpe Diem in the tiny tourist port of Cannigione in northeast Sardinia.

Authorities were led to Hawkins by a Dutch woman after the “Oprah Winfrey Show” rebroadcast a profile of Hawkins that had appeared on “America’s Most Wanted.” The woman, who saw the show in Europe, had befriended Hawkins and became angered when she learned that he was bisexual, authorities said.

Hawkins, tall and athletic with long, wavy auburn hair, claimed he was Glen Donald Haweon, a British citizen born in Northern Ireland.

But four days after his arrest, a Cagliari court confirmed his identity as Hawkins, partly on the basis of a white birthmark on his lower abdomen.

The U.S. application for Hawkins’ extradition was long delayed by judicial procedure, complicated by an Italian law that bans extraditing a murder suspect to a country that has the death penalty. The objection was lifted when the U.S. Embassy in Rome gave the court formal assurance that Hawkins would not be sentenced to death.

But Hawkins’ Italian defense lawyer announced he would appeal the extradition order before the Cassation court, Italy’s highest court of appeal, meaning the extradition would be delayed pending the high court’s ruling.

On Jan. 2, Hawkins tried to escape from Cagliari’s Buoncammino jail. He sawed through the bars of his jail cell and under cover of darkness used a rope made of knotted sheets to lower himself to the prison courtyard, which is surrounded by a high wall. But guards caught him in the courtyard.