2008-02-23 23:04:32 -
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Japanese businessman whose conviction in the 1981 shooting of his wife in downtown Los Angeles was overturned in Japan a decade ago has been arrested on suspicion of her murder, Los Angeles police said.
Kazuyoshi Miura, 60, was arrested Friday while visiting Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, after cold case
detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department worked with authorities in the U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific. He faces extradition to the U.S., police said.
ĞA murder suspect who has been eluding (the) dragnet has been finally captured,ğ the LAPD said in a news release late Friday. Officer April Harding, a department spokeswoman, said no other details were available Saturday.
Miura and his wife Kazumi were visiting Los Angeles on Nov. 18, 1981, when they were shot in a downtown parking lot. He was hit in the right leg; his 28-year-old wife was shot in the head, went into a coma and died the following year in Japan.
Miura blamed street robbers in the attack and railed against the violent city from his hospital bed, reinforcing Japanese stereotypes of violence in the U.S. as the city was preparing for the 1984 Olympics and was particularly sensitive about its overseas image. The LAPD vowed to find the killers.
Miura, a clothing importer who traveled regularly to the U.S., said he would write then-President Ronald Reagan and then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and urge them to make the city safer.
ĞMany young Japanese will be coming to the U.S. with their dreams in their hearts,ğ Miura said at the time, according to the Los Angeles Times. ĞI strongly hope this accident will never occur again.
In 1984, Miura's image as a bereaved husband was tarnished by a series of news articles in Japan. Miura reportedly collected about $1.4 million at today's exchange rate on life insurance policies he had taken out on his wife.
In addition, an actress who claimed to be Miura's lover told a Japanese newspaper that Miura had hired her to kill his wife on a trip to Los Angeles three months before the shootings.
Miura was arrested in 1985, accused of the attempted murder of his wife. He was convicted of that charge, and while serving a six-year sentence was charged with his wife's murder in 1988.
Miura was convicted of that charge in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison. Four years later, however, a Japanese high court overturned the sentence, throwing out a lower court's determination that Miura conspired with a friend in Los Angeles to kill his wife.
Complicated cases can drag out for years in Japan, prompting criticism from human rights activists and lawyers over the slow proceedings.