Quote:
A former California lawyer accused of strangling his ex-wife on a Mediterranean cruise and tossing her overboard more than a dozen years ago was convicted of first-degree murder by a jury on Monday.
Lonnie Loren Kocontes, 62, killed his ex-wife, Micki Kanesaki, in a bid to snag $1 million in inheritance, carefully charting a plan before he choked her and dumped her into the ocean in 2006, according to the district attorney’s office in Orange County, Calif.
“But he made a mistake," Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “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.”
The cause of death was asphyxiation, according to authorities.
Kanesaki’s body was found floating in waters off Paola, Italy, on May 27, 2006, two days after Kocontes reported her missing, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
So if he just knocked her out and then dumped the body in the ocean, he would have gotten away with it?
