Miura Named as Sole Suspect in 2 Slayings

Japanese importer Kazuyoshi Miura was named by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner on Thursday as the sole suspect in the 1979 slaying of a former lover and the 1981 murder of his wife.

Reiner made the accusations hours after Miura, 38, and waitress Michiko Yazawa were indicted in Tokyo in the attempted murder of Kazumi Miura at the New Otani Hotel in downtown Los Angeles three months before Mrs. Miura was fatally shot.

The Japanese prosecutors said Yazawa, 25, has confessed that she attacked Mrs. Miura with a hammer-like instrument that Miura gave her when she refused to use a pistol.

Mrs. Miura, 28, survived that attack on Aug. 13, 1981, but three months later she was shot on a Los Angeles street, fell into a coma and died in late 1982 in Japan without regaining consciousness.

The body of his former lover, Chizuko Shiraishi, 34, was found in May, 1979, several weeks after she arrived in Los Angeles, but her remains were were not identified until March, 1984.

‘Victim of a Crime’

In response to Reiner’s allegations, Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Lt. Dan Cooke said the two detectives assigned to the case since shortly after the shooting “do not have sufficient information to name anyone in these murders. . . . He (Miura) is viewed as a victim of a crime.” Miura was slightly wounded in the leg. The Japanese prosecutors quoted Yazawa as saying that Miura told her he had insured his wife’s life for $140,000 but that the amount actually was $655,000.

Miura, the prosecutors said, has admitted that he knew Yazawa but has denied that he asked her to kill his wife.

The Miura case has drawn great attention from the Japanese news media and, on the day he was arrested while leaving a downtown Tokyo hotel, 200 to 300 Japanese newspaper and television reporters and cameramen were on hand.

The shooting of the Miuras initially was viewed in Japan as evidence that Los Angeles was unsafe for Japanese tourists. The U.S. government flew Mrs. Miura--blind, speechless and virtually comatose--back to Japan aboard an Air Force military hospital plane.

Japanese prosecutors said they have found little material evidence and have not been able to find the hammer-like weapon, which Miura is said to have bought in Los Angeles. They said, however, that they have taken statements from nearly 200 witnesses to support Yazawa’s confession.

As a motive for the two slayings, they cited debts incurred by Miura’s clothing firm, the now-defunct Fulham Road Ltd.

Reiner, speaking at a crowded news conference Thursday afternoon, said: “Presently we do not have any suspects other than Miura.”

He was asked if his office was at odds with the Japanese and Los Angeles police, since neither department has mentioned Miura as a murder suspect.

“I don’t know that I agree that (the) various agencies are at odds,” Reiner said. “I think at this point there is a concurrence of view that Mr. Miura is a suspect in the murder of his wife, he is a suspect in the murder of his mistress and he is also a charged defendant . . . in Japan for the attempted murder of his wife just a few months previous to when he did, in fact, have her murdered.”

“The motive,” Reiner said, “is obvious--money and a great deal of it.”

He said that Mrs. Miura was insured for “$600,000-plus” and that Shiraishi’s bank account of $21,000 was taken by Miura. Reiner admitted that the four Japanese detectives who have been working recently with the Los Angeles Police Department on the case have not contacted his office’s new Asian Investigative Unit, which is conducting a parallel investigation of the murders and the hammer attack.

He said that his office would prefer that Miura be prosecuted in Japan “because of the logistics” but that the suspect would be extradited to Los Angeles if necessary.

Japanese law permitting prosecution of Japanese nationals for crimes committed elsewhere is rarely invoked, according to observers there, and has never been used in cases of crimes allegedly committed in the United States.

Japanese police and prosecutors are expected to question Miura about the 1979 death of Shiraishi, who is identified as a former business associate and lover of Miura.

Japanese immigration records show that Shiraishi arrived in Los Angeles on March 29, 1979, two days after Miura arrived there. Her body, which was found in May, 1979, was not identified until March, 1984.

Miura’s present wife, Yoshie, issued a statement from Miura after his arrest in Tokyo on Sept. 11 in which he said that any confession the police might make public would be the result of “physical violence or spiritual suffering” inflicted on him by the police.

Shortly before his arrest, he said that any evidence pointing toward him could only have been fabricated by the Japanese press.

In her confession, Yazawa said she accepted $2,500 from Miura to finance her trip to Los Angeles in August, 1981. She said she stayed at the New Otani, where the Miuras were staying. Posing as a dressmaker, she said, she visited the Miuras’ room when Miura was absent, supposedly to take Mrs. Miura’s measurements. She said she hit her in the back of the head with a weapon that weighed more than two pounds. She said that Miura’s wife resisted and that she fled.

Miura is said to have told the police that the injury to his wife’s head, which was treated by a doctor in Los Angeles, was caused by a fall in the bathroom.

Jameson reported from Tokyo and Belcher from Los Angeles.