A Japanese businessman has been arrested on suspicion of murder more than a quarter-century after an infamous downtown shooting that left his wife dead and sparked an international furor, police said.
Kazuyoshi Miura, 60, had already been convicted in Japan in 1994 of the murder of his wife, Kazumi Miura, but that verdict was overturned by the country's high courts 10 years ago.
Miura was arrested on Friday while visiting Saipan, a US commonwealth territory in the Pacific, police said in a statement.
"A murder suspect who has been eluding [the] dragnet has been finally captured," the Los Angeles Police Department said. "Miura's extradition is pending."
Miura's attorney, Junichiro Hironaka, told Japan's Fuji TV late on Saturday that the arrest "astonished" him.
"My understanding was that the case was already closed both in Japan and the US, especially after their joint investigation," he said. "It's quite a surprise."
DOUBLE SHOOTING
Miura and his wife were visiting Los Angeles on Nov. 18, 1981, when they were shot in a parking lot. Miura was hit in the right leg, while his 28-year-old wife was shot in the head.
His wife remained in a coma and was taken to Japan, where she eventually died. Miura blamed street robbers and railed from his hospital bed against what he said was a violent city.
The Los Angeles Police Department pledged to find the real killers.
Miura, a clothing importer who traveled regularly to the US, had said he would write then-US president Ronald Reagan and then-Californian governor Edmund. Brown and urge them to make the city safer.
But n 1984, Miura's image as a grieving husband was tarnished by a series of news articles.
Miura reportedly collected about US$1.4 million at today's exchange rate in life insurance policies he had taken out on his wife. In addition, an actress who claimed to be Miura's lover told a paper that Miura had hired her to kill his wife in their hotel on a trip to Los Angeles three months before the shootings.
IMPRISONED
Miura was arrested in Japan in 1985 on suspicion of assaulting his wife with intent to kill her for insurance money in the hotel incident. He was convicted of attempted murder and while serving a six-year sentence was charged in 1988 with his wife's murder.
Miura was convicted of that charge in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison. Four years later, however, a high court overturned the sentence, dismissing a lower court's ruling that he conspired with a friend to kill his wife.
News of Miura's arrest made front-page headlines in Japan.
"Why now?" asked the Mainichi Shimbun.
A duty official at Japan's National Police Agency said that there was no notice from US authorities before the arrest and that the news surprised him.
After his acquittal in 2003, Miura often spoke publicly about false accusation and hounding media coverage.
He has been arrested at least twice since 2003, most recently on suspicion of stealing health supplements at a drugstore near Tokyo last year. Miura denied the charges and is free on bail. His trial is pending.
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