LOS ANGELES – A Japanese businessman whose conviction in the 1981 shooting of his wife was overturned in Japan a decade ago has been arrested on suspicion of murder in her killing, 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.
"A murder suspect who has been eluding (the) dragnet has been finally captured," 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. The LAPD vowed to find the killers, but the crime sparked an international furor because it reinforced Japanese stereotypes of violence in the U.S.
Miura was arrested in 1985 on suspicion of assaulting his wife with intent to kill her for insurance money, and was arrested again in 1988 for allegedly arranging her murder.
In 1994, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison but in 1998 a Japanese high court overturned the finding that Miura planned to kill his wife, in conspiracy with a friend in Los Angeles.
Complicated cases can drag out for years in Japan, prompting criticism from human rights activists and lawyers over the slow proceedings.
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