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Japanese, L.A. police confer on slaying

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Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Two Japanese investigators conferred with Los Angeles police here Monday on the unsolved murder of Kazumi Miura, a Japanese importer’s wife who was fatally wounded on a downtown Los Angeles street in November, 1981.

The Japanese officers reportedly flew here to speak with Los Angeles detectives about an earlier incident in which the woman suffered minor head wounds as the result of what Japanese press reports have indicated was an attack by an actress hired by Kazuyoshi Miura, the victim’s husband.

Los Angeles police contend there is no evidence to establish that the August, 1981, injuries were caused by anything more sinister than a bathroom accident at a Los Angeles hotel.

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Following Monday’s closed-door conference between detectives from both sides of the Pacific, Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Dan Cooke said he could make no statement.

Died in Japan

After Mrs. Miura, 28, was shot in the head during the subsequent street attack, she never regained consciousness and died in Japan about a year later.

Her husband, then 34, was shot in the leg but recovered. Miura said that he and his wife were shot by one of two Latino men who then escaped in an old green car, taking $1,200.

The case became the focus of intense scrutiny by the Japanese media after reporters learned in 1983 that the woman’s life had been heavily insured through three American companies and that her husband had collected $655,000.

Then, in March of last year, the corpse of a woman found in a vacant field five years earlier was identified as that of Chizuko Shiraishi, 34, who by Miura’s own admission once was his business associate and lover. Miura also admitted that he had used Shiraishi’s bank card and secret identification number to withdraw $21,000 from her bank account shortly after she left Japan in 1979.

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Said Money Was Loaned

Miura said he made the withdrawal because he had loaned Shiraishi money.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service records showed that Shiraishi arrived in Los Angeles on March 29, 1979. In an interview, Miura said he was in Los Angeles at that time but that he did not know his former lover was here then and did not see her.

The Shiraishi case was assigned to Los Angeles Police Detectives Phil Sartuche and Bill Williams of the department’s Major Crimes Division. They also have been investigating the Miura shootings, which occurred at Fremont Avenue near 1st Street on Nov. 18, 1981.

Since the beginning of the case, the Los Angeles Police Department has said that Miura was “a victim, not a suspect” in the street crime.

Woman Claims Murder Plot

Last summer, former actress Michiko Yazawa told a Japanese newspaper that she had been hired by Miura to kill his wife in their room at the New Otani Hotel in August, 1981. But she said that after striking her intended victim with a hammer-like tool, she could not go through with the scheme and fled.

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Mrs. Miura, who suffered a head injury and received medical treatment at that time, did not report the purported attack to police.

The two Japanese investigators--one from the National Police Department and the other from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department--were understood to have flown to Los Angeles to discuss Yazawa’s statements with Sartuche and Williams.

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