Husband Denies L.A. Slaying Plot
TOKYO -- A flamboyant businessman today denied in court that he conspired to kill his wife in Los Angeles eight years ago to collect $1.3 million in insurance money, a lawyer for the defendant said.
The attorney quoted Kazuyoshi Miura, 41, as telling the Tokyo district court in the opening hearing of his trial: “I did not kill nor swindle insurance money at all.”
Miura’s wife Kazumi, then 28, was shot in the head with a .22-caliber rifle in Los Angeles. She remained in a coma for more than a year until she died in a hospital in Japan after being flown home in a U.S. military aircraft at Miura’s insistence.
A Miura associate, Yoshikuni Okubo, 36, admitted that he violated Japanese laws controlling the possession of firearms by keeping a rifle illegally in Japan from 1982 to 1987 after he returned from Los Angeles, said the attorney, Yoichi Kitamura.
But Okubo denied involvement in the Nov. 18, 1981, shooting in Los Angeles, Kitamura said.
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