CALGARY -- What began as a long shot ended up being one of the final links to catch a convicted double-killer wanted for escaping a Bosnian prison.

Alberta's fugitive apprehension sheriff support team tracked down Elvir Pobric, the subject of a 13-year international manhunt, in southwest Calgary, calling on city cops to pick him up in a traffic stop Tuesday.

At the time, the fugitive, who had changed his appearance, growing out his hair and sporting a bit of a beard, was doing deliveries for his aluminium siding company, said Sgt. Richard Nyberg with the fugitive apprehension team.

"He didn't say a word," Nyberg said.

Pobric is said to have entered Canada in 1999, under his own name, as a refugee.

The 37-year-old has reportedly been living in Hamilton and Grimsby, Ont., with a wife and children, for the past several years and also travelling to Calgary where he ran his one-man Ontario Custom Aluminium Ltd. company.

Police said Porbric was three years into a 20-year double-murder sentence when he was part of a 1996 prison break in Bosnia.

He was doing time for the execution-style shooting of two associates who traded in black-market foreign currency in a Bosnian village in April 1992, burning both bodies afterward.

Recently, Sgt. Michael Csoke, with the Hamilton police Fugitive Apprehension Unit, reportedly received a lead from the daughter of one of Pobric's victims suggesting he was in Canada.

Nyberg, who met Csoke at a conference in Toronto, said Csoke called him to see if he could find a lead on the fugitive.

"It was a longshot," Nyberg said yesterday.

As it happened, Pobric had been pulled over in February for driving an uninsured vehicle.

At the time, there were no warrants for his arrest and police were unaware he was wanted elsewhere.

Using information from that incident, police recently tracked Pobric down and the Alberta sheriff's fugitive apprehension team called on Calgary cops this week to pull him over in a traffic stop.

"It's great," Nyberg said of the teamwork.

"I think he thought he had warrants for operating an uninsured vehicle and thought that was the end of it ... that no one was on to him."

NADIA.MOHARIB@SUNMEDIA.CA