MICKI Kansaki was thrilled when her ex-husband, with whom she had recently reconciled, invited her on a romantic Mediterranean cruise.
But just four days into the voyage, on May 26, 2006, distraught lawyer Lonnie Loren Kocontes told staff Micki, 52, had disappeared.
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The couple, from California, shared dinner and wine the previous evening, before returning to their cabin on the Island Escape – but Lonnie claimed he woke at 4.30am to find his wife gone.
At approximately 6am, Kocontes, now 66, reported her missing.
A chilling discovery came nearly 36 hours later when a passing vessel off the coast of Paola, Italy, recovered Micki’s lifeless body.
Investigators were quick to zero in on Kocontes, as the last person known to have seen his ex-wife alive.
Autopsy reports provided gruesome confirmation – Micki had been strangled before her body was callously discarded overboard.
The forensic evidence was damning – there were no signs of water inhalation, firmly establishing that her life was snuffed out prior to entering the sea.
Throughout the investigations – which feature in the Channel 5 documentary The Push: Murder on a Cruise Ship tonight – Kocontes played the role of the grieving widower willing to help the police with their investigations.
But, behind the veneer of a high-flying lawyer consumed with grief, lay a man driven by cold, calculated greed.
Investigations revealed that despite their acrimonious divorce, Kocontes and Micki had ensured they remained financially entangled – each was named as an executor on the other’s will and they shared bulging bank accounts.
But it would take seven years – and a huge FBI sting – before the calculated killer was finally snared.
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Kacontes was jailed for life in 2020 and Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer wrote in a statement that Kocontes “almost got away with the perfect crime.“
Controlling husband
Micki Kanesaki was five years old when she traveled from Japan to the United States with her family to start a new life.
Micki, who was described as “smart and beautiful”, met Kocontes while she was working as a secretary of a law firm and romance blossomed.
The pair tied the knot in 1995 and bought a house together in Orange County, California. Micki was Lonnie’s third wife.
To the outside world, they were the perfect couple. But in reality, cracks in their marriage began to show shortly after they wed.
She began opening up to co-workers that her husband was controlling, especially when it comes to the way he handled their finances.
Just six years after their wedding, the couple split up and Kocontes moved out of their home to an apartment near his office..
Other infamous wife killers
- Nat Fraser – In 1998, Arlene Fraser disappeared from her home in Elgin, Scotland. Her body was never found. Her husband, Nat Fraser, was convicted of her murder in 2003, but the conviction was later quashed. In 2012, after a retrial, he was again found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 17 years.
- Kashif Anwar – In 2021, Fawziyah Javed, who was pregnant at the time, was pushed to her death from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh by her husband, Kashif Anwar. She had reportedly planned to divorce him due to his abusive behavior. Anwar was convicted of her murder in 2023 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years.
- Robert Brown – In 2010, British Airways pilot Robert Brown killed his estranged wife, Joanna Simpson, by bludgeoning her with a claw hammer at their home in Windsor, Berkshire. He then buried her body in a pre-dug grave in Windsor Great Park. Brown was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and sentenced to 26 years in prison
- David Venables – A pig farmer from Worcestershire, David Venables murdered his wife, Brenda, in 1982 to continue an affair. He disposed of her body in a septic tank on their property, leading to a 37-year mystery. Her remains were discovered in 2019, and Venables was convicted in 2022 at the age of 89. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 18 years and died in prison aged 92.
- In 1978, Robert Spangler murdered his wife, Nancy, and their two children in their Colorado home, staging the scene to appear as a murder-suicide. Years later, in 1993, he killed his third wife, Donna Sundling, by pushing her off a cliff in the Grand Canyon. Spangler confessed to these crimes in 2000 and died in prison in 2001.
By 2006, Kocontes had managed to worm his way back into Micki’s life.
Julie Sanarita, Micki’s niece, told US show Dateline: “He said he was going to change, he was going to work less, and things were going to be better. She was just so happy.”
To prove himself, he decided to take her on a luxurious Mediterranean cruise.
Although another couple, Bill Price and Susan McQueen, were meant to join them, they pulled out at the last minute due to an emergency.
Shocking crime
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On 21 May 2006, the couple flew to Spain to join the cruise. According to authorities, Kocontes was sure to pick a ship which had cabins with windows and balconies.
However, four days into their cruise, Micki was nowhere to be found.
According to reports, Kocontes suggested she may have fallen overboard after becoming sick from too much wine.
Police at the port of Naples confiscated an empty wine bottle, prescription medicine and vitamins. Kocontes was questioned, then released.
He later told cops he thought Micki might have taken her own life, telling them: “I can’t rule suicide out. When she would be sad and she would drink, she talked in general terms wishing that she were dead. She’s talked about wanting to kill herself in the past.”
Her disappearance sparked a frantic search. The Italian Coast Guard desperately searched for Micki in the open water to no avail.
Kocontes was so convincing as the worried and panicked husband that it was decided to allow him to fly back to the States.
But the day he left, Micki’s lifeless body was discovered in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Paola, Italy.
Despite all of his painstaking planning to pick the perfect ship, the perfect room and the perfect time to commit a murder, the fact that he strangled her before throwing her overboard gave us the very evidence to convict him of murder
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer
On June 16, an autopsy into her death turned the case on its head and rocked investigators – Micki had been murdered.
She had bruises all over her body, with the ones at the base of her neck more prominent. This told cops all they needed to know – she had been strangled.
A further probe revealed that there was no water in her lungs. This meant she was dead before her body was thrown overboard.
Suspicion immediately fell on Kocontes. Since Micki was a US citizen, the FBI stepped in to take over the investigation.
As the investigations went on, the FBI asked Micki’s niece to secretly record conversations with him about the murder.
Their suspicions grew further when Kocontes repeatedly referred to his wife as “the body” rather than by her name.
Desperate to piece together what happened to Micki, the FBI invited Kocontes to take a lie detector test, which he failed.
Investigators also discovered that he was the sole beneficiary of several joint bank accounts and also stood to gain from the sale of their home.
Although they were divorced, they had updated their wills to make each other executors of their estates.
Kocontes had attempted to move more than $1million (£770,000) between several bank accounts after Micki’s death.
Even so, the evidence against the lawyer remained circumstantial, and not enough to convict.
Final blow
Kocontes’ friend, Bill Price, who was meant to be on the cruise, realised that immediately after landing in the US, Kocontes had been so see another ex, Amy Nguyen.
Amy had become Kocontes’ fourth wife after his divorce from Micki but they split shortly before he reconciled with his ex.
In 2009, Amy told Bill and wife Susan that Kocontes had confessed to her that he would kill Micki on the cruise.
Amy, whose relationship with Kocontes had hit the rocks at the time, claimed that she did not go to the cops because she didn’t take him seriously.
The concerned couple recorded the conversation with Amy and passed it on to the cops.
Although Amy initially refused to cooperate with investigators, she later agreed after being given immunity for giving false testimony at a grand jury.
In February 2013, seven years after Micki’s death, Kocontes was arrested and later charged with her murder.
Judgement day
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The case finally went to trial in 2020. In the witness box, Kocontes attempted to portray Micki as a volatile woman who had a temper and fiercely denied killing her.
He claimed he and Micki had reconciled and were planning on getting remarried. However, prosecutors said he had no plans of marrying Micki and had planned to kill her all along.
In June, a jury found him guilty of the crime. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in September 2020 – he was 62 at the time.
District Attorney Todd Spitzer said: “Despite all of his painstaking planning to pick the perfect ship, the perfect room and the perfect time to commit a murder, the fact that he strangled her before throwing her overboard gave us the very evidence to convict him of murder.
“She couldn’t breathe in water because she was dead long before her body ever hit the ocean and when authorities found her, her cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation – not drowning.
While awaiting trial, Kacontes was hit with additional charges for allegedly attempting to solicit the murder of Amy in order to stop her from testifying.
However, following his conviction and life sentence, prosecutors moved to dismiss the solicitation charges.
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