A ''COLD-BLOODED assassin'' who has been on the run for 15 years has been caught in north Queensland.
Luke Andrew Hunter, 42, who in the late 1990s was No. 4 on Australia's most wanted list, was arrested yesterday at a home at Herberton in the Atherton Tablelands after a police operation.
Hunter escaped from the Borallon Correctional Centre, near Ipswich, in February 1996, by breaking through a fence with bolt cutters.
He was serving a 21-year jail term after the Newcastle Supreme Court found him guilty in 1990 of the jealousy-driven murder of his lover's husband, Brian Phillip Nagle, 36.
In sentencing Hunter, Justice Peter Newman said the murder was a ''cold-blooded assassination'' of his best mate, who was shot in the head with a rifle while on a shooting trip.
He then began living with Mr Nagle's wife until Mr Nagle's body was found almost a month after the murder in a grave in bushland at Yarrowitch, near Walcha.
Hunter is being held in custody in Cairns and is expected to be transferred into the care of Corrective Services in Brisbane today.
He could face one charge of unlawful escape from custody.
Luke Andrew Hunter, 42, who in the late 1990s was No. 4 on Australia's most wanted list, was arrested yesterday at a home at Herberton in the Atherton Tablelands after a police operation.
Hunter escaped from the Borallon Correctional Centre, near Ipswich, in February 1996, by breaking through a fence with bolt cutters.
He then began living with Mr Nagle's wife until Mr Nagle's body was found almost a month after the murder in a grave in bushland at Yarrowitch, near Walcha.
Hunter is being held in custody in Cairns and is expected to be transferred into the care of Corrective Services in Brisbane today.
He could face one charge of unlawful escape from custody.
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