Dateline NBC - Open Water

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

A romantic Mediterranean cruise was intended to rekindle the love between Micki Kanesaki and her ex-husband Lonnie Kocontes. But when Micki vanishes, an investigation reveals secret recordings, a surprising star witness, and an undercover hitman. Josh Mankiewicz reports.

I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline, the cruise ship mystery, a passenger overboard, and an ocean of questions. He says, Mickey's missing. I said, what do you mean she's missing? It's devastating. Her last moments in life still haunt me. I just thought, what a horrible way to die. We found a lot of things suspicious. There's no video of it happening. There's no eyewitness testimony. There's no fingerprints.

She was dead before she landed in the water. I was approached by the FBI to record my conversations. You're interrogating somebody who's a murder suspect. Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this. This is just phenomenally devious, what you're describing. Yes. I realized I was being used. It's time the truth come out now. Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Open Water.

The call came in the middle of the night. It was their friend in a panic. Lonnie was in Napoli, and Mickey had gone missing off the boat, and that's where it started. And what did you think? That was a take to the count of three kind of, you know, repeat all of that, let me hear it one more time type of thing. No matter how many times she heard it, it just didn't make sense.

You think of all of these things, everything starts rushing through your head. Except this was clearly true. I just saw a disaster happening in a foreign country. You say, this can't be. This can't be. Knew it in my heart. There's got to be another explanation. There was an explanation, all right. It just wasn't the one anyone was expecting. My instinct said, this is going to go sideways fast. I just didn't know which way or how, how we were going to get there. Naples is a marvelous city.

It's beautiful, it's chaotic. Marco Grasso is an investigative reporter for the Italian newspaper Il Secolo Decimonimo. It's full of life, it's full of colors, and it's a beautiful place to visit as a tourist. One of those tourists was Lani Kakatas, an American who arrived in Naples in May 2006 on board a cruise ship, the Island Escape. The Island Escape started from Palma de Mallorca in Spain, then stopped in Messina in Sicily. Lonnie had booked the cruise as a way to rekindle the flame

with his longtime love, Mickey Kanesaki. The couple had been married for years and then divorced. This was a new beginning, a chance to rediscover some amore. They spent the day exploring Messina on the island of Sicily. They took a bus to see the sights. Here's Mickey by Orion's Fountain. After the excursion, they returned to the island escape, and the cruise ship began its journey to the next stop, Naples. Less than 24 hours later, and still in open water, the trip took an awful turn. Lonnie's friend Bill Price was sound asleep back in Florida when the phone rang.

3.10 in the morning, I was in the bed with my dog. I picked up the phone, and it was him. Lonnie. Lonnie. Lonnie. How's he sound? Concerned. He said, I have a problem. I said, where are you? He says, I'm in Italy.

And I said, okay. And he says, Mickey's missing. I said, what do you mean she's missing? He said, we can't find her. When did he tell you he had last seen Mickey? He said that he had gone to bed that night. They had some drinks in the club. He couldn't sleep, so he took some Ambient.

And he woke up the next morning and she wasn't there. And that's when Lonnie sounded the alarm. Yes. Apparently he reported her, couldn't find her. He asked for them to look. The crew of the island escape started searching the ship, and the captain made an announcement to passengers to be on the lookout for Mickey. Then he checked Lonnie and Mickey's cabin

and found nothing amiss. He recalled a bottle of wine in the trash and this chair on the balcony in upright position. According to the captain, the Mediterranean had been calm. There was good weather and it was a very quiet night. The sea was very quiet. The crew showed Mickey's photo to the other passengers. Then, as scheduled, The island escaped, Dr. Naples. Bill spoke with Lonnie again. I kept saying, she's got to be around there somewhere.

Something's happened. Bathroom somewhere. You can't just disappear. He said they've sent people over and over and they can't find her. Almost 12 hours later, the island escaped, prepared to leave port and continue on with the cruise. There was still no sign of Mickey. Lonnie quickly packed up his things and Mickey's and got off the island escape. Reality was setting in. The woman he loved may have gone overboard.

Italian Coast Guard started searching for Mickey. Lonnie checked into the Hotel Mercure. From his room, he spoke again with Bill. He said, everything in here is in Italian. He said, I don't speak the language. He said, I'm scared. Lonnie also spoke with his friend Susan McQueen, who says she could hear fear in Lonnie's voice. He was claiming that he was being treated unjustly, that no one spoke English, and that everyone was just being mean to him, treating him as if he had done something wrong, and that he was out of his element, and he didn't know what to do. That's when Lonnie Kakatas made a decision that would come back to haunt him.

When we come back, Mickey is missing and Lonnie is desperate. He was a disheveled mess and he was acting fearful. It just seemed like he should just go. To protect himself. Yes. He says, can you get me out of here? When the cruise ship Island Escape docked in Naples, Italy during the early morning hours of May 26, 2006, American tourist Mickey Kanesaki was no longer among its passengers.

Soon, her brother Toshi got a call from the State Department. You're the brother of Mickey Kanesaki? Yeah, yes. Well, she's missing off of this cruise. Missing? What do you mean missing? Well, go find her. Mickey's ex-husband-slash-boyfriend, Lonnie Kakatas, was in a Naples hotel. He was waiting to hear from the Italian Coast Guard, which was searching the Mediterranean for Mickey. According to his friend Susan McQueen, Lonnie sounded frantic. He was a disheveled mess, and he was acting fearful.

He was acting very fearful and very irrational. The Lonnie Susan knew was never irrational. He was a pretty spectacular fireball of an attorney. Lonnie graduated from law school with honors in 1992. By the time Susan met him, he was an attorney at a top law firm in Los Angeles. Susan was a private investigator. He put in 25 out of 24 hours a day. I mean, he was a very truly dedicated, fast-thinking attorney. He had the respect of us. Us meant Susan and Bill Price, a retired Washington, D.C. cop turned investigator, now partners with Susan in business and life.

They both came to respect Lonnie. The guy is phenomenal. Not just hardworking, but smart. Extremely. And out of that, a friendship grew. Yes. He was like a brother that I never had. I could count on him. Especially when Bill needed major heart surgery and felt he wasn't receiving the care he needed from hospital staff. So I made a call to him. He was there. And that hospital changed their whole tune.

I mean, he legally was ready to take all of them on. That's a good friend. It was a very good friend. Bill recovered. He and Susan spent time with Lonnie, along with a secretary at Lonnie's law firm named Mickey Kanasaki. He saw Mickey getting off the elevator one day and said she was beautiful and she had this beautiful black shiny hair. And he knew right away when he saw her he was going to ask her out and so forth.

He really pursued her, didn't he? Yes, he did. Mickey was smart, beautiful, had a great sense of humor. Sue White was also a secretary who worked side by side with Mickey for several years. She worked for a high-powered partner in the firm. She had to know what she was doing. She just didn't ruffle feathers. Wanda Carter also worked with Mickey at the law firm. When there was a deadline and sometimes I was pressed for time, she would offer. She'd just come up and say, what can I do to help you? She would step up.

Right, she would step up. Then Mickey started working with Lonnie Kakandis. She started working overtime. And apparently, that's when she started doing work for Lonnie. In the evenings, nobody's around or a few people are around. And that's when something blossomed. Yes. They kept that definitely something blossomed. Yes. They kept that definitely quiet at work.

They definitely did. He was charming. She definitely thought that. Mickey's niece, Julie Saranita, was in college then. What'd she like about him? I think she liked that he had similar interests, that he was a hard worker, and she appreciated that. Mickey and Lonnie bought this home in Orange County, California. They married in 1995.

That bliss did not last. That allure that he initially had, that initial attraction, disappeared with time. It didn't take long for it to crumble, like a Jenga game, where the pieces started to fall, come out, and it all toppled over. What was she telling you? A lot of it had to do with control, control of money. Guys like to be in control. I've noticed that. It's kind of a shame. Yeah. So the wall came tumbling down. Like many relationships, this one was complicated. After six years of marriage, the couple divorced, and Lonnie got an apartment in downtown LA near his office. He still spent time at the home he and Mickey

owned together in Orange County. And somehow that seemed to work better. They were still close. And maybe they'd work things out after all. In early 2006, Lonnie booked them both on a romantic cruise. It was my understanding he was trying to repair their marriage, repair their relationship, and go on a cruise together. Maybe they've turned a corner. Sounds like a really big step for him.

In fact, Lonnie had booked two cabins on board the island escape. He says, we're going to take a cruise, Mickey and I, and we want you and Susan to join us. Then Susan's mother needed an operation, and she and Bill had to cancel at the last minute. And now, just two days into that cruise, Mickey was missing. If she had, in fact, fallen overboard, what were the odds of finding her? According to Italian journalist Marco Grasso, not good. Usually, bodies are never found when they disappear in open waters. Lonnie spoke with both Bill and Susan several times while he was in Naples.

They worried what might happen to Lonnie in a foreign country with an unfamiliar legal system. We've seen or heard of people in other countries being arrested and unjustly or maybe unfairly accused of something at a time and being restrained. And it just seemed like you need to just come back. Before this spirals out of control in some legal way that you can't get your hands around. I don't even think I was thinking that far ahead. You're just saying, get yourself out where you can communicate and get questions answered. It just seemed like he should just go. To protect himself?

Yes. He says, can you get me out of here? I said, yeah, I can do that. There's an Italian saying that goes, see Naples and die. The idea is that everyone should visit this memorable place while they're alive, and that once you see it, you may not want to leave. Well, Mickey Kanesaki didn't make it to Naples, and now Lonnie Kakadis definitely wanted to leave. Lonnie took a cab to the Naples airport. Bill had booked him a flight to Tampa, Florida, where Bill lived. All this while Mickey was still missing.

That would not last. Coming up. It's like, how does this happen? A sudden discovery at sea. I was in shock and disbelief. Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this. When Dateline continues. Along the Italian peninsula lie the vast waters of the Mediterranean.

It's here the Astraea calls home. The Astrarea travels the Italian coast doing scientific research. At about 4 p.m. on May 27, 2006, Captain Massimo Collorito made a different kind of discovery. I saw something in the distance that was directly right straight by the bow, straight ahead. I got closer to it. I realized it was a body in the water. He immediately got on his radio. Earlier that morning, he'd seen an alert. The Coast Guard was searching for an American passenger missing from a cruise ship the day before. The advisory they sent out was about a person lost at the sea who was wearing a black shirt and green pants.

So I let them know right away that we had found the person they were looking for. There seemed no doubt. This was Mickey Kanesaki. We were not a part of a search party. Finding her was truly random. As they approached Mickey's body, the captain said his crew was careful not to touch her. We used a strap and passed it around her chest.

Then we lifted the body with a crane in the best way to not touch the body. They brought Mickey's body onto the Estrella and covered her with a sheet. Then they met up with the Coast Guard and Mickey's body was moved to their boat. Finding a body in the sea isn't something that happens every day. And then on top of that, to bring it on board.

Journalist Marco Grasso heard about the grim discovery. I was very surprised and that was the moment in which we started following and covering this case with a body and the body was taken to Vibo Valencia. Vibo Valencia is a small town near the coast in southern Italy. That's where Italian authorities opened their investigation, and the State Department called Mickey's niece, Julie Saranita. I was in shock and disbelief. I just talked to her a few days before. I was at first asking, are you sure you have the right person? I had no clue how in the heck she would end up overboard. The news hit Mickey's friends hard. I was very sad.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it at all. It's like, how does this happen? I couldn't believe my ears. Devastating. Lonnie broke the news to his friend Bill Price. He said he was glad they found the body and that he can't imagine what happened. Lonnie was calling long distance.

Although Bill had booked the flight from Italy to Tampa, Lonnie didn't go there. He changed his ticket and flew to California. He said, I just wanted to go home. I said, okay. I said, if you're okay, you know, that's fine with me. At the same time in Vibo, Valencia, an Italian prosecutor named Alfredo Ladonio was assigned to Mickey's case.

He knew what his investigation needed to address. The circumstances of the dead, the cause of the dead, the date and the location. He soon discovered there were no obvious answers to those questions. A search of the island escape hadn't turned up any clues. She could have fallen in the water, plummeting from the ship. So anything could have happened. Mickey's death could have been an accident, or suicide, or murder. Everyone had questions for Lonnie, especially Julie.

Nothing I would have ever imagined could have prepared me for this. Coming up, another woman enters the picture. His wife's missing off a cruise ship. He flies to the home of the other woman. I mean, it's like putting a target on you and saying, please investigate me. Absolutely. When an American citizen dies mysteriously overseas, the case falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI. An agent arrived at Lonnie's home in Orange County, California,

within hours of the discovery of Mickey's body. Lonnie called his friend Bill Price to tell him the Bureau was on the case. He said, well, what do I do now? I said, what do you mean, what do you do? I says, the FBI's there. I said, talk to them. I said, they're on it.

I said, this is good. I'm all happy about this. Here's something Bill wasn't happy about. Learning right then that when Lonnie flew from Italy to Southern California, it wasn't to sleep in his own bed. It was to visit a woman Lonnie had been dating until he decided to patch things up with Mickey. His wife's missing off a cruise ship. He flies home, not to visit his friend, but to the home of the other woman. I mean, if you're Lonnie, it's like putting a target

on you and saying, please investigate me. Absolutely. The first thing out of my mouth was, do you know how this looks? He said, I need a consoling. I said, it's like I'm talking to a moron. As sharp an attorney as he was, Lonnie seemed tone deaf to how his actions would play. The initial impression was, the guy's not quite right. The FBI's Rick Simpson said Lonnie seemed almost too eager to show agents he had no marks on his body. He volunteered to disrobe for them to try and convince the agents that, you know, he wasn't involved in any physical struggle. He's answering questions that he hasn't been asked. Exactly, yes. Lonnie repeated the story he told his pal Bill. They were in the room. They had wine. Mickey, he said, left to get some herbal tea. Lonnie took Ambien and fell asleep.

He woke up at 4 30 in the morning and her light was on but she wasn't there and he was alarmed so he went looking for her. What's Lonnie's demeanor during this interview? I mean, is this a guy frantic at losing the love of his life? No. No, they didn't have that impression. Did the FBI find it suspicious that Lonnie left Italy before Mickey's body was found? Yes. We found a lot of things suspicious. He was in a hurry to get out of there, obviously.

Mickey's niece, Julie Serenita, spoke with the FBI, too. She talked about her aunt's relationship with Lonnie in the months before the cruise. 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. Happy and excited about her luxury Italian cruise. She had said that he's planning everything and this was such a surprise and they're reconciling. She couldn't wait to go. Now, just days after that conversation, her Aunt Mickey was dead and Julie believed Lonnie knew more than he was saying. She soon found out the feds believed the same thing. I was approached by the FBI. Would I be willing to record

my conversations with him and to get details? They gave her a crash course in recording protocol. And told her to let Lonnie do the talking. Maybe she was nauseous and slightly intoxicated, you know? How many drinks do you think she had that night on the ship?

Well, we just drank the wine. And she had probably a couple of good-sized glasses. Lonnie's theory of what had happened was what? He thought that either she committed suicide and jumped, or there was foul play and perhaps maybe one of the crew cabins or all the different people from all the different countries, someone had murdered her. I mean, there's only three possibilities. She was murdered, she jumped, or it's an accident.

Right now I have no information to tell me what. All I know is that they found the body and there's going to be an autopsy. He was fixated on the condition of the body. He said multiple times, I need to see the body. I need the condition of the body. I don't know what's going on with the body. Julie would continue to learn more from the FBI and she continued speaking with Lonnie. I called him frequently. And he didn't seem suspicious about that? No, not at all. I mean, I checked on his well-being. He was more interested also talking to me. I think he just found it a welcome reprieve. Someone was talking to him from the family. Julie did think Lonnie was acting strangely, even though there was no evidence he'd done anything to Mickey,

or for that matter, any evidence that Mickey's death was anything but accidental. However, that was about to change. Coming up... I just thought, what a horrible way to die. Stunning new details from the autopsy. Someone on board was a killer. There's got to be an explanation here. This isn't Lonnie.

Right. This wouldn't be his nature. If not Lonnie, then who? When Dateline continues. Mickey Kanesaki never lived to see her 53rd birthday. She was found floating in the waters of the Mediterranean. Wanda Carter was haunted, thinking about her friend's final moments. I thought, oh my God, I hope she wasn't alive when she was in that water, trying to save herself. And I just thought, what a horrible way to die.

Mickey's body was brought to this hospital in Vibo, Valencia, Italy. Dr. Pietrantonio Ricci performed the autopsy. I received the case and I conducted the autopsy on June 16th. What he found told a sinister story. Dr. Ricci saw Mickey's body was badly bruised, especially at the base of her neck, a sign of strangulation. He also noted bruising on her inner thighs, possibly evidence of sexual assault. Perhaps most significant was what the autopsy did not show. We did not find water in her lungs, nor did we find water in her stomach. Meaning, Miki Kanesaki was already dead when she hit the water. That told Italian prosecutor Alfredo Laudonio this was a deliberate act of murder.

This was fundamental. The death come not from accidental circumstances, but was provoked. Lonnie Kakatas, the tenacious attorney, seemed to understand that if Mickey's death was a homicide, he would be a suspect. And so he turned to two trusted friends, investigators Susan McQueen and Bill Price. Bill, the former cop, gave Lonnie some blunt advice about dealing with the FBI. I said, you need to find out what happened. If you didn't do anything, you need to find out what happened and give it to them. Susan was confident she and Bill could help Lonnie do just that. There's got to be an explanation here.

This isn't Lonnie. Right. This wouldn't be his nature. We've got to find out what here. This isn't Lonnie. Right. This wouldn't be his nature. We've got to find out what happened. We need to do this research. And the first goal was to get back on that boat and try and interview people and ascertain what happened into the moments leading up to her death. So a couple of months after Mickey's death, they traveled to Italy and booked a cabin aboard the island escape. We wanted to take measurements of different places on the ship where they had low railings, where they had higher railings. We wanted to meet with the captain so we'd get permission to go into the exact room that he went into. The room Mickey and Lonnie were staying in?

Yes. They met with the captain and didn't learn much from him, except this. There were almost 1,500 passengers and crew on board the island escape at the time Mickey went overboard, meaning, potentially, hundreds of possible suspects from a wide range of countries. Those people, those potential suspects or persons of interest,

they're going to be hard to track down. We wanted a manifest. Cruise Line was fighting to give it to us. And then you're going to run it against lists of sex offenders and anybody with a criminal record. Correct. Yes. Except they couldn't get the manifest. So that was a dead end.

They had more luck with the autopsy report. Lonnie hadn't been able to get a copy, but Susan's talents as an investigator and her Italian language skills paid off. You're good at this, aren't you? I was able to get the copy. Susan thought the autopsy report wasn't definitive, and what was there pointed away from Lonnie. It indicated that she had been raped, strangled, and obviously thrown overboard.

That sounds to me more like an assailant that didn't know her than some fight with Lonnie. Possibly. Susan and Bill found out there were no security cameras anywhere on the ship. And according to the crew, no one on board at the time reported hearing anything suspicious. Nobody saw or heard Lonnie and Mickey fighting? No. Nobody saw Mickey in any kind of struggle with anybody? Not that I could find.

And no one saw anybody menacing either one of them. Not that I could find. And no one saw anybody menacing either one of them? Not that I could find. And where was she on the ship when she went into the water? No real way to know. No way to know. Lots of open questions. Susan and Bill felt the Italians had stopped investigating once Lonnie left and never really looked at other suspects.

The FBI, on the other hand, was just getting started. Coming up. He had built a good story to bolster his defense from the beginning. The FBI digs deep, but what would they find? He just said, see, I told you. I told you I didn't do anything. Toshi Kanasaki's early childhood was spent in Japan. The only boy with three sisters. Mickey was the youngest. Their father left his job at a Japanese coal mine to work on a farm in California's Central Valley. Eventually, he brought you all over here. 1960, brought the wife and the four kids. They traveled by ship to their new home. Mickey was maybe five or six, and I was eight. I think when you're that young, we're here in this strange country,

but it was kind of slightly exciting because we're so young, we don't comprehend what really happened. Decades later, Toshi and his wife Carolyn were trying to understand how Mickey had lost her life in another country, so far from home. We were devastated. How could this be? One minute she's excited going on this cruise and the next she's not alive anymore. How can this be? We're just completely shocked. The FBI was investigating Mickey's death and learning more about her relationship with Lonnie, including the crisis their marriage faced in 1999. A client of the firm said Lonnie had done something terrible. Mickey's niece, Julie Serenita, heard about it. An accusation came up that he had sex

with the client's daughter, and the client obviously was upset. And what made it worse was she was a minor. And he denied it and swore up and down that nothing happened. Lonnie was arrested. He insisted he was innocent, And Mickey stood by him. She wanted to believe him. Of course, she loved him. The law firm fired Lonnie, and he was concerned about possible legal problems. His idea was to divorce to protect his assets in the event that he got sued. So everything went in her name temporarily. And so the idea was they'd be legally divorced but not

actually divorced and maybe they'd get together again? They stayed as a man and wife but on paper they were legally divorced. To fight the sex charges Lonnie turned to his friends Susan McQueen and Bill Price for help. We were tracking where he'd been at what time by key cards and license plates and so forth. And apparently we had him at work when he was supposed to be where they claimed he was. Lonnie was never prosecuted, and the charges were later dropped. Is your work related to why he was never prosecuted for that? I like to think so. Even so, things were tense between Lonnie and Mickey.

Bill says Lonnie would sometimes call him in mid-argument. He'd say, listen, she's out of control. And then he'd say, don't you dare hit me and stuff like that. And you would hear a crash. You'd hear things breaking in the background. And when he told me that she's drinking and she went through a bottle of wine and she's nasty, I'm thinking, why are you putting up with this? Mickey's friend Sue never heard about any of that. In fact, Sue had no idea Mickey was even divorced. So she was really sort of hiding a lot of things that went on in her life from... Hiding big things.

One more thing FBI Special Agent Rick Simpson learned. At the time of Mickey's death, the couple's assets were worth almost two million dollars, including that beautiful home in Orange County. When Mickey died, all of it went to Lonnie. That sounds like a motive. It does. Except no one had seen or heard Lonnie fighting with Mickey on the cruise ship. There was no evidence he'd been the one to harm her in any way, let alone kill her and throw her overboard. And Lonnie's account never changed. He took to Ambien, went to sleep, and she left to go get herbal tea. He had built a good story, if you will, to bolster his defense from the beginning. Of course, it was possible Lonnie was simply telling the truth.

While the FBI suspected he was responsible for Mickey's death, the Bureau didn't have much evidence to back up that suspicion. In December 2006, the U.S. attorney brought the case to a federal grand jury. Except the grand jury's role was only to investigate, not to issue an indictment. If you had proof that Lonnie had killed his ex-wife, you would have taken that to a grand jury and gotten an indictment. And I have to believe that you didn't do that because you thought there wasn't anything really that proved that beyond your suspicions. We in the FBI are investigators and our role is to find facts. Whether a case is presented to a grand jury, that's a prosecutorial decision. And the Justice Department apparently decided there wasn't enough to go forward at that point.

At some point they made that determination. So the grand jury met, and no charges were filed against Lonnie. He just said, see, I told you. He said, I told you I didn't do anything. To Lonnie, it must have felt like vindication. To his friend Bill Price, it was starting to feel like something else. Coming up, a plan to help prove Lonnie's innocence. I said, let's show the FBI that you have nothing to hide. And a secret about the other woman in Lonnie's life. Explain to me how Lonnie kept this hidden from everybody. Crafty. I mean, he's a smart man. When Dateline continues. Susan McQueen and Bill Price are proof you can spend years as a dogged and determined investigator,

only to have that tough exterior melt away as easily as your prized mastiffs can drool. Dogs bring you love. You can leave for five minutes, come back, and their tail's a wagon. They act like they haven't seen you in years. Bill organizes and runs dog shows for the American Kennel Club. Susan is a professional handler. Training a champion requires some significant instinct, doesn't it? Yes, it does.

And from the beginning, Susan's investigative instincts had told her her friend Lonnie Kakadis was no killer. Bill thought the same. But I'm thinking, I know this guy for these years. I know how he responds to dogs and animals. He's no murderer. And to prove it, Bill came up with a plan. I said, I'll get him to take a polygraph. I said, let's show the FBI that you have nothing to hide and you're going to take this test. Lonnie agreed. He was now living in Florida.

So Bill set up the test with a friend named Mike Brentnell, who was also an expert polygraph examiner. Lonnie answered 11 questions, including, did you kill Mickey? Did you cause the death of Mickey Kanesaki? Were you present when Mickey was killed? The examiner asked those questions three times. The results were not what Bill Price had hoped for. They came out. Lonnie said, I have to use the bathroom. And as he walked away, Mike said, you in on this? I said, you want to repeat that again? Am I in on it? In on what? He says, you know he's guilty. And I said, is this a joke?

He said, no. I said, he's guilty? I said, Mike, this isn't funny. He said, I'm not trying to be funny. So I took a deep breath. And that's when it flashes before you, the little things that you want to overlook. Little things like the height of the railing on the island escape, and the realization of how difficult it would be for the 5'3 Mickey to go off that balcony by accident. Now Bill's investigator's brain was telling him, along with the polygraph, that Lonnie knew more than he was saying. As much as he wanted to believe Lonnie was innocent,

the evidence was pointing elsewhere. Now you're thinking, am I being played for a fool here? Yes. I wasn't willing to accept it, but I'm thinking about it, yes. What to do about that nagging feeling? Well, during the time he'd been helping Lonnie, Bill had also been talking with FBI Special Agent Rick Simpson. I think he was working hard to kind of navigate his own internal contradictions, right? He was trying to navigate his own moral compass in that situation. It's a difficult situation. It sounds like you had some sympathy for what Bill was going through. Yes, I do. You were convinced Bill was a straight

shooter. He wasn't slanting things towards Lonnie's interest when he would talk with you. I didn't have any doubt that Bill was being honest with us. He couldn't say the same about Lonnie Kakadis. Special Agent Simpson had been keeping a close eye on Lonnie's finances. When Mickey died, Lonnie inherited all her money and moved it to an overseas bank. I think he moved it offshore because he knew he had murdered Mickey and that's where the money came from and he knew what that meant. That's my conclusion.

Offshore, that money was untouchable. Then when Lonnie tried to repatriate more than a million dollars to a bank in Florida, Agent Simpson pounced. The Fed seized the money and began a civil case against Lonnie, who hired attorney David Michael. Why was Lonnie moving his money around the world? My understanding is that he was trying to do some overseas financial investment where some country was paying high interest rates for U.S. currency. In other words, Lonnie wasn't trying to hide that money. He was merely investing it. Lonnie's attorney argued in the civil asset case that the federal government couldn't prove Lonnie was guilty of killing Mickey to get his hands on her money. So they had no right to seize it.

And he won. That's when the federal government went to the district attorney. The government had lost, but it wasn't over. The U.S. attorney handling that civil case sent several boxes of evidence here to the Orange County, California District Attorney's Office. And he said, I just think there's more to this case. Can you take a look at it for criminal liability? Susan Price, no relation to Bill, is an assistant DA. She and Deputy DA Seton Hunt

learned that in Florida, Lonnie had married again. Then something else in the case file really caught their attention. It was another woman, another ex-wife. Who's Amy Nguyen? Amy Nguyen is a teacher. She's originally from Vietnam. Amy is the woman Lonnie went to see in California after he came back from Italy. Here she is in a photo from the school where she's a fifth grade teacher. Amy and Lonnie had met online. Amy loved Lonnie. I don't think she expected as much from him as I think he probably thought Mickey expected of him. Investigators discovered Amy wasn't just Lonnie's girlfriend.

She'd been his wife. They married in July 2005, but it only lasted a few months before Lonnie divorced Amy and returned to Mickey. Just a few months after that, Lonnie booked the cruise. And then, after Mickey went overboard, Lonnie's first stop in the U.S. was at Amy's house. To continue a relationship Lonnie had largely kept secret. Explain to me how Lonnie kept this entire relationship, this marriage, with Amy Nguyen sort of hidden from everybody, including you, I guess. I don't have an answer for you. Crafty. I mean, he's a smart man. Bill said he, too, was completely in the dark.

Lonnie had bought a huge house and a very nice Lexus for Amy Wynne. Unbeknownst to Mickey. Unbeknownst to me, too. This is my friend. Well, if Lonnie planned a future with Amy, it didn't pan out. In early 2007, when he sold his home and left California for Florida, he left Amy too. However, the FBI knew all about Amy. In fact, she had testified before that federal grand jury. What essentially was her story?

That she knew nothing, that to her knowledge he had no intent. Basically, in front of the grand jury, her testimony was, I don't know anything about any plan to do away with Mickey, and he didn't say anything about it, and as far as I know, there's nothing to any of it. Correct. After his assets were seized by the FBI in late 2008, Lonnie wanted to know if Amy was still sticking with that story. Apparently, he thought Amy might be upset with him after things between them hadn't worked out.

So in January 2009, Lonnie asked Susan and Bill to visit Amy. Despite Bill's misgivings about Lonnie, they agreed. And that conversation changed everything. Coming up. This just went into a completely different direction than I had any expectation of hearing. A bombshell of a story captured on tape. You know that you're being recorded. Her fear told me she was telling the truth with us. You can't create that kind of fear. It had been years since Mickey Kanesaki plunged from the deck of a cruise ship, dead before she hit the waters of the Mediterranean.

Private investigators Susan McQueen and Bill Price sailed those same waters, retraced those steps on the island escape, all to prove their friend Lonnie Gakatas did not kill Mickey. It just didn't seem possible. It just didn't seem possible. Bill agreed at first, and then over time, he came to believe it did seem possible. My gut was telling me he was guilty as hell by this time. I had to fight with that part, wrestle with it. And slowly, I was moving away from the friendship because I wasn't comfortable with it. Even so, at Lonnie's request, they agreed to meet with his ex-wife, Amy Nguyen, a woman Lonnie had married and then divorced, all of it unbeknownst to both of them.

I think she was genuinely hurt. She really thought that she had a relationship that she was moving forward with there. She loved Lonnie. I believe she did. You think Lonnie loved her? I believe he did. Lonnie asked his friends and investigators to confirm what Amy had already told the FBI, that she knew nothing about Mickey's death. The meeting happened in January 2009, three years after that fatal cruise. Bill stayed in the car. Susan's instincts told her she might do better with Amy one-on-one. I meet with her and I talk to her about what kind of contact has she had, who's been calling her from the federal government, what are their questions, How is she feeling? How does she feel about Lonnie? We go through all of these things. And then she starts to become very emotional. And this just went into a completely different direction than I had any expectation of hearing. Amy Nguyen began

to tell a story that was the complete opposite of what she'd said under oath to a federal grand jury. Now she told Susan that Lonnie had planned to kill Mickey on the cruise and booked the island escape specifically to get away with it. There was more, Amy said. Lonnie didn't do it alone. He told Amy his well-connected friend helped him arrange Mickey's murder. That friend's name? Bill Price. In that conversation, Amy describes Bill as being sort of at the center of this,

yeah, this guy who sort of has these, this army of assassins that he can send out after whomever. Exactly. Which, as you can imagine, was news to Bill's partner, Susan. Not that she believed it, just the opposite. But she also realized if Amy believed it, that had to be because of Lonnie. So at some point in this interview, I waved to Bill to come out of the car. Does Amy know that Bill's outside at that exact moment? She had no idea he was with me. Bill walked over and they turned on a recorder. Does Amy know that Bill's outside at that exact moment? She had no idea he was with me. Bill walked over, and they turned on a recorder. How about with his connections regarding the cruise ship? Let me tell me that the ocean has a connection, a big connection, that he has to have his people come and do that. Do what? Throw Mickey out of the boat. Bill had questions too.

Interesting. He makes that face and I don't know why. Did he tell this before the incident or after the incident? Before the incident. How do you determine whether Amy is telling the truth to you and therefore lying at the grand jury, or whether she was telling the truth at the grand jury and she's lying to you because she's angry at Lonnie

because after all was said and done, he didn't come back to her. Her fear told me she was telling the truth with us. You can't create that kind of fear. She was afraid of Lonnie. She was afraid of Lonnie. She was afraid of Bill. It was a double whammy. Amy said that Lonnie had planned the murder. That was bad enough. Then

she said Lonnie implicated Bill before the cruise. Remember, Lonnie had invited Bill and Susan to come along. They had to cancel at the last minute. Now it began to look as if Lonnie's invitation was part of the plan too. Maybe he'd asked Bill to go with him, so Bill could take the fall for Mickey's murder. That's your friend doing that? My friend, yes. The guy that was nearly a brother to you? Yes. The guy you had been an investigator for,

the guy you'd been to dinner with, the guy you'd defended, the guy you were trying to exonerate? Yes. I think you're lucky Lonnie wasn't in front of you at that moment. I think that's an accurate statement, yes. The anger and fury that I felt at that moment was incomprehensible. Lonnie was counting on the two of them to prove he wasn't involved in Mickey's murder. Now they had evidence on tape that he was.

When I flew back into Tampa, I immediately called him at his house and said, I want to see you and I want to see you in person. He stood in my dining room area and I said, did you tell her that I had anything to do with Mickey's death? And or that I had connections to do this? Did you make her believe that I had anything to do with her death? Yeah, I did. I said, why? He said, I wanted her to think I had power and I was a big guy. I said, you should know that I have a tape recording and it's going to the FBI.

What did Lonnie say when you said that? Please don't. I was just trying to impress her. I said, okay. And I said, get out of my house and don't ever come near me. Don't come around me. I said, I don't want to hear from you again. And then when he left, I called Agent Simpson and said, I don't want to hear from you again. And then when he left, I called

Agent Simpson and said, I have a recording for you. He called and said that he and Susan had gone to see Amy. And that was, I think, a real turning point for Bill. He wanted Lonnie to be innocent. Sure. But I think over time, he came to the conclusion that he wasn't, but I think it took some time for him to come to that conclusion. That recording of Amy's new story eventually made its way to Orange County Assistant DA Susan Price.

If Bill and Susan hadn't recorded her saying that, she might, to this day, be defending Lonnie. That's absolutely true. Now it was up to prosecutors and that would take a few years because Amy Nguyen was the key and it turned out that was a problem. Coming up. She just said, I don't want to talk to you. I have no interest in talking to you. A problem indeed. How were they going to solve that? I'm tired of it, Amy. I'm tired of him. I need your help. I said it's time for you to step up to the plate.

When Dateline continues. As Toshi and Carolyn Kanesaki patiently waited for answers, they would sometimes visit Mickey's gravesite and see the name Lonnie Kakantis on the headstone next to hers. That was difficult. The first seven years, we thought that. We knew they were investigating him, but... Didn't seem to be going anywhere. No. Not really, no.

We just lived our life, but me, it's always in the back of my mind. It's not going away. Because Mickey's gone. It turned out Assistant DA Susan Price was investigating Lonnie, especially after she listened to that recording where Lonnie's ex-wife Amy Nguyen told Lonnie's own investigators that she knew about his plan to murder Mickey on the cruise ship. Let me tell you that I feel a connection, a deep connection, that these fantastic people come and do that.

Do what? The prosecutor knew she needed to meet Amy. We actually did go to Northern California and arrived at her doorstep. Unannounced. Unannounced. And when you said to her, as I'm pretty sure you did in that interview, somebody's been murdered here and we think you have important information. She said, I don't or I'm not talking.

Well, we didn't even get that far. She just said, I don't want to talk to you. I have no interest in talking to you. So we came back home. They weren't giving up. The DA asked Sergeant Don Vogt from the Orange County Sheriff's Department to assist with the case. A top priority, try to talk with Amy. Then I went up to talk to her, and she did not want to cooperate with law enforcement.

They compelled her with a subpoena. And when Amy finally came down to Orange County, prosecutors invited someone else to the meeting, Bill Price. Bill Price, Amy Nguyen. I don't know if you guys know each other. So go ahead and have a seat. My objective under their direction was to get her to talk. In that meeting, Amy was emotional and at times said she didn't know who Bill was, even though that was clearly not true. Bill told her law enforcement already knew all about their previous conversation. Do you understand that they have that tape for you? That I turned it in because I'm protecting myself and my family? Do you understand that? You can't say you don't know. You'd be lying. If he's telling you to do this, Amy, this is not good.

Amy, why are you protecting him? I did not protect him. I don't know him. She was still scared, maybe of Bill. Remember, Lonnie had made him sound like a gangster. And as he pressed Amy, Bill seemed to lean into that role. I am not here to kill you. I am here to protect my name and to protect you and bring you underneath my coat. I'm here to tell them that if they mess with you, they mess with me.

I'm here to bring in the if they mess with you, they mess with me. I'm here to bring in the best attorneys if I have to. What I'm not here to do is protect his lies and him from hurting me and everybody else around us. I'm tired of it, Amy. I'm tired of him. I need your help. I need you to be with me. I said, it's time the truth come out now. I said, and he's made fools out of all of us. I said, now it's time for you to step up to the plate. The DA gave Amy immunity for her testimony, and she agreed to cooperate. She told sheriff's investigators her own version of what happened on that cruise, how Lonnie had booked it planning to kill Mickey.

And then, Amy said, Lonnie threatened her, forcing her to lie to the federal grand jury. Bill started this trying to help out Lonnie and ended it helping you guys. Absolutely. He did. Four days after that interview, Sergeant Vogt traveled to Safety Harbor, Florida, where Lonnie lived. Lonnie wasn't in the house. We found him about one hour away at a strip mall operating his new business, which was these bouncy houses for children. We told him he was under arrest for the murder of Mickey Konosaki. Of course, we randized him, and at that point, he declined to give us a statement.

He didn't say anything? He didn't say anything. It was Lonnie's right to remain silent as he was under arrest for murder. He was booked into the Pasco County Jail. How'd that feel? Actually, it felt pretty good. It felt pretty good. For Mickey's family, it was welcome news. What'd you think? Finally.

I go, what a relief. After seven years. Because I knew he had something to do with Mickey's murder. One thing had not changed. There was still no physical evidence tying Lonnie to Mickey's death. Would this case be enough for a jury? Coming up... There's no blood in the room.

There's no evidence of a struggle. There's nothing. Where's the evidence? Where is it? Could Mickey herself help prove this case? He never anticipated that her body would ever be recovered. Attorney David Michael had already defended Lonnie Kakadas in civil court, protecting his assets from seizure by the feds. Now there was much more than money at stake.

I was stunned that he had been arrested, actually. I was absolutely stunned. This had been arrested, actually. I was absolutely stunned. This time, the charge was murder. Lonnie faced life in prison. I've been doing criminal defense for 45 years. I've done some heavy stuff, and I will tell you that my belief 100% is that Lonnie Kakantas is innocent of killing Mickey Kanesaki. Lonnie pleaded not guilty. Attorney Michael knew the case relied on Amy Nguyen, whose story he says was one big lie, influenced by none other than Bill Price. He scared the hell out of Amy Nguyen. I have money. I can protect you. I can save you. Come on. He's a rat. He's a scumbag. He said horrible things

about you. Horrible stuff. I've never heard of it before. And that's when Amy Nguyen, I guess you could say, turned. Why is it so hard to believe that she was frightened of Lonnie, that she lied for him, and that she eventually stopped lying for him and told the truth? There's no basis at all for what she's saying to be true. It's just fantasy stuff. And the fact that when they investigated the island escape, there's no blood in the room. There's no blood anywhere.

There's no evidence of a struggle. There's nothing. Where's the evidence? Where is it, you know? Yeah, she got killed. But that doesn't mean that Lonnie Kakantas did it. As Sergeant Don Vogt worked with the Orange County DAs to gather evidence against Lonnie, one thing became clear. The

island escape was not the luxury cruise ship Mickey had looked forward to. I kind of get the feeling that if you grew up watching The Love Boat, you probably would not recognize the island escape. You definitely would not recognize the Island Escape. You definitely would not. The Island Escape was a former ferry boat, once used to transport cars, then later tourists who were looking to save a buck. This was not the type of ship that an American attorney would view as a vacation type of a vessel. It's designed to be cheap and cheerful.

It has one peculiar feature, though, that was appealing to Lonnie Cacantes. It's a straight drop into the sea from the balconies that were welded onto the side of this converted ferry. On most modern cruise ships, if you fall off the Aloha deck, you've got a good chance of landing on the Lido deck. Not so on the Island Escape. Those balconies guaranteed that in a fall, the only thing you'd hit was the Mediterranean, almost seven stories straight down. That's a long fall, and as you're standing there looking over the balcony, it's a long fall into the ocean, definitely.

A jury would decide if this unusual defendant was guilty of Mickey's murder. An attorney himself, Lonnie filed motion after motion and delayed the trial for years. Lonnie is a bright man. Lonnie worked very hard as an attorney. Throughout these proceedings, he wrote a lot of the briefs that were presented to the court. And how did he do? He's a good attorney. However, he was blinded by his own narcissism and he's not as smart as he thinks he is. David Michael did not represent Lonnie for the criminal trial. Instead, Lonnie had a public defender. Opening statements began in February 2020. The defendant believed that the last chapter of Mickey's life was overseas, but it is not. The last chapter is here. Their first witness, the captain of the island escape,

he testified about going to Mickey and Lonnie's cabin just hours after her disappearance and speaking with Lonnie. He was not upset at all. It was very cool. His conversation, when I asked him various questions, he wasn't talking quickly or nervously.

It was very measured. The people called Julie Saranita. The jury also heard the recorded calls between Mickey's niece Julie and Lonnie. He'd been eager to talk until Julie asked him this question. Is there any way that you had anything to do with Mickey's death? What do you think? I just had to ask. I think you know the answer to that already.

He got really angry at me, and the first thing he said, he's like, what do you think? The only reason why I asked was because the FBI told me she had died before she hit the water. I don't know. She might have been robbed, if that's true. Well, that's all they told me. That's all I know. I don't know what happened to her. I didn't have anything to do with it. Okay? And I don't appreciate the implication. Julie had done what she could to help investigators. Now she realized Mickey herself was key to proving the case. He never anticipated that her body would ever be recovered. Remember how Lonnie had mentioned Mickey's drinking, suggesting she'd gotten drunk, maybe fallen overboard by accident and drowned? Her body told a different story.

According to the toxicology report, Mickey was not under the influence of alcohol when she died, and the autopsy found no water in her lungs. However, there were bruises, some around her neck. Italian pathologist Dr. Ricci testified through an interpreter that it was clear evidence Mickey had been strangled. Mechanical asphyxia. Through strangulation or by means of strangulation. Under cross-examination, Dr. Ricci testified that despite those bruises on Mickey's thighs,

he did not believe Mickey had been raped. He did see trauma to the back of Mickey's head, possibly caused by a blood object. Could it have been a wine bottle that didn't break? It could be any object that had a convex surface. I could have a beer. It could be even a bottle, yes. The question was why Lonnie would want her dead. According to prosecutors, the motive was money.

Lonnie had been the beneficiary of Mickey's will, meaning all that money he'd parked with her during his legal troubles belonged to Lonnie after she died. When Bill Price took the witness stand, it was to testify against his former close friend. He looked down, looked around. He couldn't look me in the eye, but I looked at him. I'm not ashamed of anything I said or did. Remember, Bill had confronted Lonnie about what Amy told him, which was that Bill helped to arrange the murder.

Lonnie's response? He told me, don't worry about it, that she'd already testified in a grand jury, and therefore the FBI wouldn't believe her. And so he told you that she wouldn't be believed anyway, is that right? That's correct. So here was the moment. Amy Nguyen was called to testify. Thank you, Your Honor. The people call Amy Nguyen. In court, the judge would not allow us to take pictures of her face. Amy testified that Lonnie told her he booked the cruise for himself

and Mickey and his supposedly well-connected friend, Bill Price. And did he tell you what his plan was? He said that Bill's people will throw Mickey in the water and Bill and his girlfriend will be his witness. In other words, his alibi. But when Bill canceled at the last minute, Amy says Lonnie told her this. Remember, if Amy was telling the truth on the stand, it meant she had previously lied to a federal grand jury. We had assessed the reality that she had given a prior statement under oath, but we also took everything we know to be true about our jobs and human beings and evaluated her in person to see whether we believed her. So a little bit of a gut check

there for me, at least. And you believed her? Absolutely. And you thought a jury would? Absolutely. Before the jury had a chance to deliberate, this courtroom and the world would have to face a new reality, a global pandemic. Coming up. We're seeing that there's a travel ban in Italy. And I'm thinking, what is happening? The trial suddenly had a stop. But the case, not over yet. An undercover plan is about to be revealed. I actually posed as a hitman. And it was a stunner. When Dateline continues. by march of 2020 the trial of lani kakadas for the murder of mickey kanesaki was well underway

in fact the courtroom was probably one of the last places left with order. Outside, it was chaos. The impact of coronavirus around the world is becoming more dire. It's a global battle against a virus spreading fast. In Italy tonight, infections are spiking. All of these witnesses had come from Italy, and literally within 48 hours of the last one going back to Italy, there's news about coronavirus hitting Italy. And within a day, we're seeing that there's a travel ban in Italy. And I'm thinking, what is happening? Next, the Orange County court calendar was wiped clean. Were you worried when the trial had to pause because of the pandemic? Yes, I was. That delay lasted more than two months.

Then on May 26, 2020, with COVID-19 cases still spreading in Orange County, the judge called a hearing to determine whether Lonnie's case could move forward. Toshi went to court with a heavy heart. It was the 14th anniversary of Mickey's death. The hearing was live-streamed to the public, and no surprise, the defense argued for a mistrial. Among the reasons, after the long delay, jurors couldn't possibly remember everything, putting Lonnie at a disadvantage, to which the judge said, We have to continue. It's so important to have the rule of law, even during a pandemic. The judge denied the motion for a mistrial, and two days later, all 16 jurors returned.

Following social distancing guidelines, jurors would spread throughout the courtroom, and everyone would wear masks except the witnesses. And the first witness to take the stand was Lonnie Kakadas. I don't know if my ex-wife was killed. I don't know what happened to my ex-wife, Mickey. Lonnie had an explanation for everything. Why did you book a cabin with a balcony? Well, I didn't want to cheap out. I mean, I was trying to impress Mickey with the fact that I was trying to change.

You know, I want more vacations, spend more money. All of it was to salvage a relationship that, according to Lonnie, Mickey's hot temper had destroyed. Well, she broke telephones. She threw things. One particular incident in 2001, she broke a fax machine, threw it from the second level down to the living room floor. That time, the cops were called. Lonnie said he talked them down from arresting Mickey. So when Lonnie learned that

Mickey's niece Julie was trying to get him arrested for Mickey's murder by secretly taping their conversations, Lonnie said he was really hurt. And then for her to accuse me of something I didn't do after I thought we were trying to help each other upset me greatly. Lonnie said Julie wasn't the only one who took advantage of his kindness. There was also Bill Price, the friend who turned on him. And of course, Amy Nguyen. Lonnie called her a gold digger, said she was lying, and said Bill Price put her up to it.

I don't trust Amy Wynn, didn't trust Amy Wynn, and don't trust Amy Wynn when it comes to an intimate relationship. I did not expect her to start making up lies about me again. Lonnie said Amy wasn't the only person telling lies about him. There was also someone he met behind bars. Someone who was prepared to tell the jury quite a story. Back in April of 2014, a year after Lonnie was arrested for Mickey's murder, the Orange County DA's office got a call. An inmate named Tony, a frequent flyer in the criminal justice system, was requesting an emergency

landing. Sergeant Don Vogt set up a meeting. So Tony had told us that he was approached by Lonnie Cocontis, who asked Tony and another inmate if they were willing to have Lonnie's third wife recant her statement and then have her killed. This is Amy we're talking about? Correct. What happens next? We created a hitman named Greg, who's going to be a hitman for Lonnie Koukontis to take care of Lonnie's third wife. Greg was played by an undercover investigator named Bill. We've disguised him so he can get more work in the future. How often when you're asked to pose as a hitman,

is the person that you're going to supposedly be working for already behind bars? In the six cases that I actually posed as a hitman, four of the six were already behind bars. How many of those six cases were men wanting you to kill their wives? Six out of six. This has to give you a dim view of men, or at least of husbands. Well, at least one's in custody. Tony, the informant, then introduced Greg, the hitman, to Lonnie, the inmate. I think people, maybe from watching TV shows or movies, have this idea that this all happens in one phone call. No, he was definitely feeling me out during the first few conversations. But after he got some bad news at court,

he opened up much more with me on the phone. What kind of money are we talking about here? Lonnie was offering $100,000 for me to kill Amy. Greg said the ever-so-careful Lonnie spoke in code. He told me it was time to take the property off the market. Another call. I said, well, I just want to make sure we're good foreclosing on property D-16, which is his code. He goes, and he agreed. It is time. When you hear that, you know, we can go into court with that. Yes. He knows I'm not a realtor. Then a surprising thing happened.

Someone wanted to call the cops. And it was Lonnie. Coming up. How many times have you lied to this jury since yesterday morning? None. He had an answer for everything. Lonnie Kakades, innocent man or guilty as charged? He had 14 years to come up with a story. 14 years. 12 jurors were about to decide his fate. Everyone who knew him said Lonnie Kakatas was a resourceful, hardworking attorney.

According to prosecutors, in the years leading up to his trial, Lonnie had done more than file motions. They said he also tried to hire a hitman to take out the key witness against him, his ex-wife, Amy Nguyen. Lonnie thought the hitman's name was Greg. He was wrong. It was Bill. And Bill wasn't a hitman. He was an undercover cop who followed up on their conversations with a letter to Lonnie. I asked him to specify some of the terms that we were using during this investigation to get clarification from him. That sounds like it's going to make somebody suspicious.

And it did. Lonnie may have realized he'd been the target of a sting operation. And true to form, he went on the offensive, asking his attorney's office to call the police. Lonnie never said that he wanted Amy to win killed. It's only that investigator that can try this. He cut off communication after that. He called me one more time and he said that Tony had misled me about the entire process. He was doing damage control at that point. But unfortunately for Lonnie, the damage was already done. Prosecutors charged Lonnie with solicitation to commit murder.

He denied it and said he'd been set up by a jailhouse informant who was looking to cut a deal. Assistant DA Susan Price had waited years for the chance to cross-examine Lonnie. How many times have you lied to this jury since yesterday morning? None. You've been truthful? Yes. Tell me about cross-examining Lonnie. You're smiling. Well, I've never cross-examined a defendant quite like Lonnie Kakantis. He had an answer for everything, a very lengthy answer for everything, a very self-serving answer for everything. The world's out to get me.

He was the victim of everybody. You have testified about how you've been victimized by different people. Would you agree with that? Well, I have been victimized. I'm pretty naive. That was how he played it anyway. And under cross-examination, Lonnie did not crack. You testified yesterday that Vicki, when she drank,

she became unpredictable. She was unpredictable when she drank. Was she unpredictable on the night you saw her alive last? She was okay that evening. Was she violent towards you on the night you last saw her alive? No. Lonnie insisted there was no argument and no violence. I don't know what caused her death, so I don't know if her drinking was a factor or not.

Because you believe she could have strangled herself? I don't believe she was strangled. And, of course, she could not have strangled herself. When you finish cross-examining Lonnie, you think, we've got it? No, I never think we've got it. I did think, to me, he doesn't seem credible. But I didn't know if any of the jurors felt sorry for him. Five months after trial started, the case was handed to a jury.

Would they see an innocent man taken advantage of time and again? Or a heartless murderer? Mickey's brother Toshi wondered. He had 14 years to come up with a story. 14 years. Over and over to make everything fit. After just an hour of deliberation, it all came undone. The verdict?

Guilty of first-degree murder for financial gain. How did Lonnie take it? Shook his head. He stood there and shook his... Because I watched him. I'm watching him. He's shaking his head. He wouldn't look back at you. Mm-mm.

Mm-mm. Mickey's niece, Julie, had been waiting, too. And as soon as I heard the verdict, it was just this big sense of relief, like my aunt finally got justice. Lonnie Kakadis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is appealing his conviction. Because of the life sentence, the DA's office dropped the murder-for-hire charge.

For Bill Price, who thought of Lonnie as a brother and then ended up turning him in, it had been a very long road. How's your conscience? Relieved. Whether Mickey was a good person or a bad person, nobody deserves to die that way. Nobody does.

And I suppose the guilt that I would have had then would be I believed him. That hurts. You're a pro and he fooled you. Yeah. For Miki Kanesaki, the ocean always carried hope. A coal miner's daughter from Japan, she'd once traveled across the sea for a better life. And the island escape was supposed to carry her and Lonnie to calmer shores.

He didn't know how good he had it. Yeah, he does not know. He did not know. Yeah. To the end, she was always there for him. And look what happened. Look what he did to her. She didn't deserve that. She had a lot to live for. She was a beautiful person. And I'm talking about her soul. She just had such a beautiful person. And I'm talking about her soul. She just had such a beautiful soul.

A soul lost at sea who found her way home. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Thursday at 10, 9 Central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, 9 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.