Case draws media frenzy

Retired LAPD Lt. Jimmy Sakoda stepped before no less than 11 TV cameras and dozens of reporters Saturday to speak about a Los Angeles homicide case he has followed for more than 25 years.

Dressed in a dapper dark suit and gray tie, Sakoda offered no new details about the convoluted case involving Kazuyoshi Miura, a Japanese businessman who allegedly conspired to kill his wife on a downtown Los Angeles street in 1981. More than a decade after being acquitted of the crime in Japan, Miura was arrested Feb. 22 by U.S. authorities in Saipan acting on a warrant issued years ago by Los Angeles police and the district attorney’s office on charges of murder and conspiracy.

But to the roomful of mostly Japanese journalists -- who not only attended but also arranged the Redondo Beach news conference -- Sakoda’s appearance was news enough. It gave them one more peg for one more story to feed the voracious appetite in Japan for news, any news, about a case considered much bigger than O.J. Simpson’s.

Like Simpson, Miura has persistently proclaimed his innocence.

Since Miura’s arrest in Saipan, dozens of reporters have been dispatched to Los Angeles from Tokyo, New York and Washington, D.C. Scrambling for any shred of news, they have plied the police with interview requests, camping out at the home of Los Angeles Police Department Chief William J. Bratton. They have tracked down old witnesses and prosecutors and bombarded Sakoda until he finally agreed to speak Saturday.

Among those present was Noriaki Takada from Nippon TV, who flew in from New York and may have to forgo coverage of the space shuttle launch in Florida for Miura, he said.

Hiroo Watanabe, a Washington, D.C., correspondent from Japan’s newspaper Sankei Shimbun, said he was taken off the presidential campaign for round-the-clock coverage of Miura; he will miss the Texas primary Tuesday as he and his Los Angeles bureau colleague, Michiya Matsuo, churn out stories every day for both morning and evening editions on every angle they can think of. (Angles include an interview with LAPD Det. Rick Jackson, reaction of the Japanese American community, the involvement of Sakoda, and differences in Japanese and U.S. legal processes.)

“It’s really tiring,” Matsuo said with a laugh. “It’s hard to find new developments.”

The mass convergence of Japanese reporters on Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth territory where Miura is being held while L.A. authorities seek his extradition, has revived the ailing taxi industry, according to the Saipan Tribune. The newspaper reported that more than 100 Japanese reporters had arrived in Saipan, paying taxi drivers as much as $450 a day, compared with their normal daily earnings of $15 or less.

Obsession with the Miura case, several reporters said, has stemmed from its dramatic twists and turns over more than two decades. Miura was initially portrayed as a “tragic hero” who personified every Japanese tourist’s fear of being harmed in the United States’ crime-ridden inner cities, one reporter said. Miura had said two men shot him in the leg and his wife, Kazumi, in the head and robbed them while they were visiting Los Angeles.

In the mid-1980s, however, the Bungei Shunju magazine came out with a sensational series of articles that overturned that image and raised suspicions that Miura had planned the killing to collect $650,000 in insurance money.

As Los Angeles and Japanese police worked together, Miura was convicted of the crime by a Japanese court in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison. But that decision was reversed by the Tokyo High Court in 1998 when a judge determined that the wife’s assailant was unknown.

After Miura’s release from prison in Japan, he fashioned himself as a human rights advocate for those wrongly prosecuted, holding monthly forums about the issue. He wrote a book and made a movie about himself, and aggressively -- and often successfully -- sued news organizations for defamation. Even today, several Japanese reporters said, Miura enjoys celebrity and support from some scholars and human rights activists for raising the concept of presumed innocence.

“It’s a haunted case,” Matsuo said.

Matsuo said an “underground network” in Japan has closely followed Miura, and a few days before his arrest in Saipan, rumors had flown that he might be nabbed. When the story landed on The Times website Feb. 23, Matsuo said he got a call from Tokyo almost immediately. He’s been covering the story ever since.

For his part, Sakoda told reporters that he always viewed Miura as a prime suspect but that other investigators within the LAPD’s major crimes unit began focusing more on “two male hippie types.” The divergence caused “a great deal of frustration, a great deal of internal difficulties,” he said.

The retired police lieutenant, who has no formal role in the case at the moment, said he was pleased that the investigation had refocused on Miura and explained why he relentlessly tracked him, even after retirement.

According to the LAPD’s Jackson, it was Sakoda who tipped off police to Miura’s visit to Saipan.

A 26-year police veteran, Sakoda served as head of the LAPD’s Asian Task Force until 1984, then worked as a detective in the L.A. County district attorney’s Asian criminal investigation unit from 1985 until 1999. He currently runs his own private risk assessment firm.

Sakoda said some of his drive to see the case to its end stemmed from a professional sense of responsibility that most law enforcement officers have.

But some of it, he said, was personal. He had gotten to know the victim’s parents and sister, and felt a sense of obligation and duty to them as a Japanese American, he said.

“I just can’t see someone get away with something like this,” Sakoda said. “I didn’t spend my whole 24 hours, seven days a week on this, but I did keep tabs on him.”

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teresa.watanabe@latimes.com