A former lawyer had nearly committed the ‘perfect crime’ after murdering his ex-wife and throwing her into the sea – but one huge error made him become the prime suspect
A lawyer who was found guilty of throwing his ex-wife’s body off a cruise ship nearly got away with the murder, but slipped up when he made a huge error.
Californian lawyer Lonnie Loren Kocontes was convicted of first-degree murder after he killed his ex-wife Micki Kanesaki while they were on holiday together.
Prosecutors said the 62-year-old killed her in order to inherit more than $1m (£781,005) from the combined money from their bank accounts and the sale of their home that they shared joint ownership of.
Koncontes, from Florida, had planned the perfect ‘death’ as he had specifically chosen the perfect ship, the perfect room and the perfect time to commit a murder, but as he’d strangled her before throwing her overboard, it gave the prosecutors the evidence to convict him of murder.
During his sentencing in 2006, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer wrote in a statement that Kocontes “almost got away with the perfect crime” and said: “She couldn’t breathe in water because she was dead long before her body ever hit the ocean and when authorities found her, her cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation – not drowning.”
The former lawyer said that while they were divorced, he and Kanesaki had rekindled, and planned to get re-married, despite already re-marrying another woman named Amy Ngyuen. Prosecutors said that Kocontes had no intention of actually marrying his 52-year-old ex-wife, and was planning to kill her and make it look like an accident. The pair had also had their wills updated to make each other the executors of their estates, according to Knewz.
The cruise, which was from from Spain to Italy, left on May 21, 2006, and Kanesaki was last seen alive the night of May 25, according to the authorities, and while testifying, Kocontes said he had nothing to do with it, as he had taken a sleeping pill on the night of his ex-wife’s death and had woken up to find Kanesaki missing, according to AP.
He reported her missing that night, and had returned to the US before Kanesaki’s body had been found floating off the Italian coast, on 27 May, 2006.
But he then slipped up and made himself the main suspect of the murder when in 2008, an FBI investigation launched after Kocontes attempted to move $1m between banks accounts that he shared with Ms Nguyen, who told the authorities that Kocontes had said he had asked a friend to kill his ex-wife.
The 62-year-old was indicted for Kanesaki’s murder in 2013 and has been in police custody since then and it was then reported that Kocontes is also facing charges of attempting to solicit the murder of Ms Nguyen while he was in prison, in order to stop her from testifying against him.
The Push: Murder on a Cruise Ship is airing on Channel 5 on Sunday, March 16 at 10pm – 11:30pm
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