Killer a star in SA cop TV show
High life, brazen jail escape but deadly duo in jail after 20 years on run
JOHN la Cote would arrive for work in a Ferrari and sometimes he would bring along his English butler.
“You were aware of there being money behind him,” recalls former film director Cedric Sundström.
It was 20 years ago, and Sundström and La Cote were working on a police reality TV show called Duty Calls in Johannesburg. Long days and nights were spent in police stations waiting for officers to be called out on a crime. The show aired between 2000 and 2003.
What the police and the rest of the film crew didn’t know then was that they were working with a killer, and John la Cote was not his real name.
His real name was Jean Claude LaCote and with his ex-wife, Hilde van Acker, he had killed British businessman Marcus John Mitchell, execution-style.
This week the two, nicknamed the “Devil Couple”, flew into Belgium from the Ivory Coast after they were extradited from the West African country. They are facing jail time after they were convicted in 2011, in absentia.
The return to justice came 24 years after they shot Mitchell twice in the head and neck, in the Belgium coastal town of De Haan.
In those two decades, the couple had successfully evaded an international manhunt and escaped police custody twice. The couple enjoyed a highflying lifestyle of mansions and luxury cars.
It is believed Mitchell was murdered after he confronted LaCote about money that went missing. He had gone into business with LaCote in a deal where he would front money to buy aviation parts.
After he was shot dead, Mitchell’s body was hidden in sand dunes and later discovered by children playing nearby.
On the day of the murder they fled to the UK by ferry. Later that same year, they were arrested in Belgium, but were later released by police as they continued their investigation into the couple.
The pair took the chance and fled to Brazil before arriving in South Africa in 1999.
“He came out and he made an agreement with the police,” says Sundström.
LaCote came across as the moneyed TV producer who got the police to agree to being filmed while they went about their duties. “It was at times harrowing stuff,” says Sundström.
A lot of their filming was in Hillbrow, and they also hung out at the old Brixton Murder and Robbery offices.
LaCote, at first, took up residence in Lonehill Estates, before moving to a multimillion-rand mansion in Observatory.
At one stage the police nearly caught LaCote. He was red-flagged when he arrived at Wonderboom Airport in Pretoria. The red flag notice alerted officials that Interpol was looking for him and Van Acker.
But there was confusion over his status and, according to a report in the Independent on Saturday’s sister paper, The Saturday Star at the time, police were asked to simply keep “an eye on him”.
“At the time, we were unaware of all this, and from our dealings with him, we thought it was a case of mistaken identity,” remembers Sundström.
Duty Calls was a great success. In 2003, LaCote conned a wealthy Irish businessman out of €2 million, in a scheme to buy aeroplanes. The money was wired to a South African bank account and there it disappeared. There were five other fraud cases LaCote was charged with.
And while LaCote and Van Acker were being sought by Interpol, they didn’t appear to take too many precautions in hiding their identities. On the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission website there is evidence that the pair each registered companies, using their own names and birth dates.
In 2007, the SAPS finally caught up with LaCote when he was arrested and placed in a Johannesburg jail. He wasn’t there for long.
Van Acker sprung him from jail in a brazen escape. She and others posed as police officers and, using fake paperwork, convinced officials to release him so they could interview him as part of the investigation. It took police a week to notice he had vanished. The couple slipped out of the country and were believed to have gone back to Brazil.
But Belgium authorities did not give up in their hunt for the pair. In 2016, the couple was placed on Europol’s most wanted list. A year later, Van Acker was featured in the agency’s Crime Has No Gender campaign.
Then, in November last year, the pair were arrested in the Ivory Coast, where they were living under the pseudonyms Stephane Lacote and Marlene LaCote Vacker.
It is understood the couple will ask for a retrial.