Japanese Woman Confesses to L.A. Murder Plot

A former girlfriend of flamboyant Tokyo businessman Kazuyoshi Miura pleaded guilty Wednesday to attempted murder in an attack on Miura’s wife, Kazumi, four years ago at the New Otani Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

But Michiko Yazawa, 25, denied that she had conspired with Miura, who has also been charged in the incident, to obtain part of the equivalent of $480,000 in insurance Miura had taken out on his wife.

Speaking through her lawyer, Kurayoshi Harayama, Yazawa told Tokyo District Court judges she had believed that Miura would marry her if she killed his wife for him.

“The purpose of collecting insurance money was secondary,” the lawyer told the court.

‘Feeling Remorse’

“The defendant is feeling remorse and wishes to take responsibility for her crime,” Harayama told reporters after the hearing.

Such statements are commonly heard from defendants in Japan seeking clemency in the courts.

In her confession, Yazawa said Miura told her she could get into the couple’s hotel room by pretending to be a seamstress. Once inside, she could bludgeon Kazumi Miura to death with a hammer-like instrument that Miura provided, Yazawa said.

The former film actress emphasized in her testimony that, although she did inflict a wound on the back of Kazumi Miura’s head, she ended the attack. Earlier reports had indicated that Kazumi Miura, who returned to Japan a few days after the incident, told friends she had overpowered her assailant.

Three months later, Kazumi Miura suffered a fatal head wound in a shooting incident on a Los Angeles street during another visit with her husband, who was slightly wounded in the leg. She was returned to Japan and lay in a coma for nearly a year before dying.

Wednesday’s hearing was the first court session in a case that has come to be known in Japan as the “Los Angeles Suspicion.” It has attracted wide attention in Japan. Television, newspapers and magazines played a strong part in helping police build a case against Kazuyoshi Miura, who is also under investigation in the 1979 murder in Los Angeles of Chizuko Shiraishi, his former lover.

In talking with reporters, Miura has denied all charges against him. Also, he has dismissed as inaccurate Yazawa’s confession, which became the basis of the prosecution’s case against him and Yazawa.

Yazawa’s guilty plea is considered likely to have a serious effect on Miura’s trial, which is not expected to begin until after Yazawa has been sentenced.

If convicted, Miura could face the death penalty.

Miura has fought his accusers head-on in the media. Until his arrest in September, Miura charged as much as $2,000 for television interviews. He also wrote a best-selling book and starred in a television series dealing with his case.

Yazawa and Miura are charged under a rarely invoked statute that holds Japanese citizens liable for crimes committed abroad. Their case is doubly rare, because the law is normally used to increase the severity of sentences handed down against Japanese by foreign courts.

Japanese prosecutors decided to take action on the case after California’s statute of limitations ruled out prosecution. When it became clear that the California authorities would take no legal action, jurisdiction reverted to Japan, according to the Japanese statute on overseas crimes.

In a statement read in court, Yazawa said she told Miura she did not want to commit a crime in Japan, because the “Japanese police are too efficient.”

Miura then suggested murder in the United States, she said.