JESSE JAMES HOLLYWOOD CAPTURED.

Byline: Phillip W. Browne Staff Writer

Fugitive Jesse James Hollywood, the accused mastermind in the kidnapping and brutal slaying of West Hills teenager Nick Markowitz, has been captured after nearly five years on the run, authorities said late Wednesday.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Anderson and the FBI are scheduled to release details of the capture during a news conference this morning, a department spokesman said in a recorded statement. No details of Hollywood's capture were released.

Contacted by phone, Nick's father, Jeff Markowitz, said he had not yet been contacted by authorities. The slaying of his 15-year-old son, the trials of four other suspects and the years-long search for Hollywood has been extremely painful for him and his family, he said.

``I'm not going to react to this until I hear it from the mouth of a detective or the FBI,'' Markowitz said. ``This has happened about four times before, and it turned out they didn't have him. I'm going to wait and see.''

Hollywood has been charged with capital murder in the execution-style slaying of Nick in August 2000. Authorities tracked him to Colorado, Las Vegas, Nev., and eventually to British Columbia, but were always a step or two behind him. California prosecutors have previously said that if he was ever apprehended in Canada, authorities there would have refused to extradite him back to the United States if he was facing capital-murder charges.

He was on the most-wanted lists for the FBI, Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The brutal crime was featured on ``America's Most Wanted'' in June 2004, as well as ``Unsolved Mysteries.''

In addition to true-crime TV shows, the case is the subject of a dramatic movie being produced by filmmaker Nick Cassavetes ("The Notebook").

Authorities said Hollywood was a drug dealer who orchestrated a plot to kidnap and kill Markowitz, 15, because the teen's half-brother owed him money for drugs.

According to police, in August 2000, Hollywood and his cohorts were cruising Nick's West Hills neighborhood looking for 22-year-old Benjamin Markowitz but found the teenager instead. They grabbed the teen and took him to the house of one of the suspect's parents in Santa Barbara, where they drugged him and kept him for two days.

They then drove him to a remote site in the foothills above Santa Barbara, shot him nine times and buried him in a shallow grave. His body was found by hikers.

Four other men have already been tried, convicted and sentenced in the case.

--Graham Pressley, 21, who admitted to digging Nick's grave, was sentenced as a juvenile and will be released on his 25th birthday.

--Ryan Hoyt, who was convicted of first-degree murder for firing the fatal shots, has been sentenced to die by lethal injection.

--Jesse Rugge, found guilty of kidnap for ransom but acquitted of Nick's murder, is serving a sentence of seven years to life.

--William Skidmore pleaded guilty to kidnap and robbery and was given a nine-year sentence.

Phillip W. Browne, [phone]

phillip.browne(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- color) HOLLYWOOD

(2) MARKOWITZ